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Design of a Bio-Inspired Autonomous Underwater Robot

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Abstract

The following paper presents the design and fabrication of an ostraciiform swimming robot and its navigation control and guidance system. Compared to other biomimetic vehicles, the chosen architecture has a lower propulsive efficiency but is easier to waterproof and capable to withstand greater pressures. To generate the alternating motion of the robot bio-inspired thruster, namely a plane fin, a transmission system was designed to replace the direct drive widely adopted in underwater biomimetic vehicles. The mechanical efficiency of two alternative mechanisms capable to actuate the fin were computed according to a preliminary sizing of the robot and its targeted swimming performances. Therefore, the more suitable solution was manufactured and installed aboard. At the same time, a proper navigation, guidance and control architecture (NGC) was designed and then integrated in the robot main controller. The proposed solution allows the vehicle to perform different missions autonomously once their profiles are received from the base station. Preliminary tests results and future works are discussed in the final conclusions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering & Mathematical Sciences (DIISM), Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy

    Daniele Costa, Giacomo Palmieri & Matteo-Claudio Palpacelli

  2. Department of Information Engineering (DII), Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy

    Luca Panebianco & David Scaradozzi

  3. Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Information et des Systèmes Equipe I&M (ESIL) – CNRS, Marseille, France

    David Scaradozzi

Authors
  1. Daniele Costa
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  2. Giacomo Palmieri
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  3. Matteo-Claudio Palpacelli
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  4. Luca Panebianco
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  5. David Scaradozzi
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Correspondence to Daniele Costa.

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Costa, D., Palmieri, G., Palpacelli, MC. et al. Design of a Bio-Inspired Autonomous Underwater Robot. J Intell Robot Syst 91, 181–192 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0678-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0678-3

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