Design and Testing of a Biomimetic Fish Robot with Rapid Prototyping

— One of the identified research needs in the field of robotics is to develop biomimetic robots for various applications, whose functionalities can be competitive to these of the creatures in nature. Many biomimetic robots have been proposed; while very few of them are cost-effective with their commercial values. We are motivated to develop a biomimetic fish robot at a low-cost in multiple ways: (1) customizing electromagnetic drives, (2) rapid prototyping robotic body to have best shape to accommodate parts, and (3) optimizing geometrics and volume based on power consumption. The robot possesses four degrees of freedom (DoF) to move freely in a 3-D space. In this paper, the mechanical structure, motion control, and the communication for human-robot-interaction of the robot are introduced in details. The conceptual robot has been prototyped and tested, and the experiments have proven the feasibility of our design concept and the innovations in (1) customizing electromagnetic actuators for a fish robot and (2) involving a human operator in the control system to reduce the sensing needs and increase the robot's capability to deal with uncertainties. The fish robot is miniaturized greatly in contrast to other counter-partners. The proposed design concept can be extended and used in the development of other biomimetic robots.