High-Efficiency Closed-Loop Control of a Robotic Fish via Virtual Musculoskeletal Methodology

Improving propulsion efficiency holds the promise of enabling the robotic fish to work for a long time with a limited battery in its small body. In this paper, for the swimming of a bionic robotic fish, we present a virtual musculoskeletal control method from the bionic model of the joint driven by...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dong Xu, Yuanlin Zhang, Hongjie Fan, Cai Meng
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-09-01
Series:Applied Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/18/8602
Description
Summary:Improving propulsion efficiency holds the promise of enabling the robotic fish to work for a long time with a limited battery in its small body. In this paper, for the swimming of a bionic robotic fish, we present a virtual musculoskeletal control method from the bionic model of the joint driven by agonist muscle and antagonist muscle. A closed-loop method composed of two loops is proposed as a rule of thumb for the speed control of the robotic fish. The outer loop adjusts the swimming speed using the speed deviation; the inner loop regulates the stiffness according to the virtual muscle spindle feedback to fit the water environment. Compared with the proportion control, the evaluation results show that the virtual musculoskeletal methodology increases the efficiency by <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mn>3.4</mn><mo>%</mo></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> in the steady flow and <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mn>7</mn><mo>%</mo></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> in the Karman-vortex flow. This algorithm provides a new idea for the joint-space control of the bionic robots that need to reduce the energy consumption of movements.
ISSN:2076-3417