%0 Journal Article
%T Mechanical Description of a Hyper-Redundant Robot Joint Mechanism Used for a Design of a Biomimetic Robotic Fish
%A M. O. Afolayan
%A D. S. Yawas
%A C. O. Folayan
%A S. Y. Aku
%J Journal of Robotics
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/826364
%X A biologically inspired robot in the form of fish (mackerel) model using rubber (as the biomimetic material) for its hyper-redundant joint is presented in this paper. Computerized simulation of the most critical part of the model (the peduncle) shows that the rubber joints will be able to take up the stress that will be created. Furthermore, the frequency-induced softening of the rubber used was found to be critical if the joints are going to oscillate at frequency above 25£¿Hz. The robotic fish was able to attain a speed of 0.985£¿m/s while the tail beats at a maximum of 1.7£¿Hz when tested inside water. Furthermore, a minimum turning radius of 0.8£¿m (approximately 2 times the fish body length) was achieved. 1. Robotic Trends According to Peters [1], biomimetic robots, and evolutionary robots, emotion-controlled robots are ideas imitating life not with different approaches but with a common goal of improving the adaptivity and learning capabilities of robots, thus ¡°breeding¡± a new generation of robots with better ¡°survival¡± chances in their specific operational environment. Several functional biologically inspired robots are already in service [2] such as Sony AIBO, Honda ASIMO, Toyota Flute playing robot, Wall gecko (wall climbing robot) from Stanford University, and lately DARPA humming bird robot. Biomimetic robots imitate some characteristics of life forms such as mobility [3], vision [3¨C7], flying [3, 7, 8], and navigational methodology. Biomimetic systems are greatly desired because natural systems are highly optimized and efficient. Srinivasan [6] calls them shortcuts to mathematically complex issues of life. Take a look at fly or honey bee, they have very small brain and processing power, no researcher has ever built a robot with such visual capabilities like them at such a scale at least to our knowledge. Nearly all the five senses of living beings, that is, sight or vision [3, 7], hearing and touch (http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/ and http://www.sony.net/Products/aibo/index.html), smell [9], and taste (http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/robotics/nomad.asp) are imitated. The semiautonomous indoor airplane by [3] was only possible because of its mimicry of insect vision using optical flow. 2. Hyper-Redundant Robots These are robots in the form of serpentine or snake or rod shape. Snakes, tentacle, trunk, and fish are examples of biological hyper-redundant bodies. The redundancy means different ways to perform the same movement and is usually denoted in terms of degrees of freedom. Robots with a snake-like locomotion have these advantages: (1)the
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/826364/