Design and Modeling of a Sperm-Inspired Helical Propulsion Robot
Liangwei Deng, Chao Zhou, Jian Wang, Junfeng Fan, Xiaocun Liao, Chunhui Zhu
Abstract
The development of biomimetics and the demand for higher propulsion efficiency lead to more research in helical propulsion robots. This letter presents a novel sperm-inspired robot that utilizes flexible tail as propulsion and analyzes the motion performance. Firstly, the robot's propulsion system is a center-fixed rotation mechanism that can accurately mimic the motion of the sperm tail. Secondly, based on resistance theory and Kirchhoff's rod theory, the dynamic model is established to analyse the propulsive performance. More importantly, it is found that the motion of helical propulsion can be divided into two models: roll and spin, and the allocation ratio of these two motions affects the propulsive performance. Thirdly, we introduce spoilers to alter the resistance of the head, thereby changing the allocation ratio of the roll and spin motion. Based on the proposed model, we conduct simulations and achieve optimization of spoiler size parameters. Finally, through experiments, the effectiveness of the robot is verified. Based on the optimization results of the spoilers, this robot can achieve propulsion with a maximum forward velocity of 12.78 cm/s.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2023_designandmodelin,
title = {Design and Modeling of a Sperm-Inspired Helical Propulsion Robot},
author = {Liangwei Deng and Chao Zhou and Jian Wang and Junfeng Fan and Xiaocun Liao and Chunhui Zhu},
booktitle = {RA-L 2023},
year = {2023}
}