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Modelling of Buoyancy Based Actuation of an Inflatable Underwater Soft Robot

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Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 15052))

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Abstract

This paper presents a novel actuation method to change the buoyancy of an underwater soft robot by pumping denser and less dense liquids, than the liquid the robot is immersed in, into the robot to actively change the mass of the robot and cause it to experience a change in buoyancy. The technological research gap lies in the method of pumping lighter and heavier fluids into a soft robot to cause it to experience a change in mass and depth, which has not been explored before to the best of the author’s knowledge. An analysis of the forces that are placed on the robotic system and the necessary equations to determine the force produced by a solution with a particular ratio of solute to solvent are presented. Preliminary experiments were conducted to test the buoyancy-based actuation method discussed in this paper by building a two link, soft, inflatable robot arm. This robot was shown to change the floatation height of its links when denser fluid was pumped into its links.

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Acknowledgement

The work in this paper is funded by DSTL. Thank you to Dr Adrian Baker from DSTL and Dr Abu Bakar Dawood from QMUL for their guidance on this work. The authors of this paper have no competing interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queen Mary University of London, 327 mi End Rd, London, E1 4NS, UK

    Danyaal Kaleel & Kaspar Althoefer

  2. CNRS IRL Crossing , ENSTA Bretagne, Adelaide, Australia

    Benoit Clement

  3. Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

    Benoit Clement

Authors
  1. Danyaal Kaleel
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  2. Benoit Clement
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  3. Kaspar Althoefer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Danyaal Kaleel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Brunel University London, London, UK

    M. Nazmul Huda

  2. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK

    Mingfeng Wang

  3. Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Brunel University London, London, UK

    Tatiana Kalganova

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Kaleel, D., Clement, B., Althoefer, K. (2025). Modelling of Buoyancy Based Actuation of an Inflatable Underwater Soft Robot. In: Huda, M.N., Wang, M., Kalganova, T. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 15052. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72062-8_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72062-8_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-72061-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-72062-8

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