A Soft Unmanned Underwater Vehicle with augmented thrust capability

The components which could make Soft Unmanned Underwater Vehicles a winning technology for a range of marine operations are addressed: these include vortex-enhanced thrust, added mass recovery and high degree of compliance of the vehicle. Based on these design criteria and recent advancement in soft-bodied, pulsed-jet thrusters, a new underwater vehicle is developed and tested.

[1]  P.R. Bandyopadhyay,et al.  Trends in biorobotic autonomous undersea vehicles , 2005, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering.

[2]  Jon Rigelsford,et al.  Underwater Robots: Motion and Force Control of Vehicle-Manipulator Systems , 2004 .

[3]  Paul S. Krueger,et al.  An over-pressure correction to the slug model for vortex ring circulation , 2003, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[4]  J. Dabiri Optimal Vortex Formation as a Unifying Principle in Biological Propulsion , 2009 .

[5]  C. Laschi,et al.  Biomimetic Vortex Propulsion: Toward the New Paradigm of Soft Unmanned Underwater Vehicles , 2013, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[6]  M. S. Triantafyllou,et al.  Ultra-fast escape of a deformable jet-propelled body , 2013, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[7]  Paul S. Krueger,et al.  The significance of vortex ring formation to the impulse and thrust of a starting jet , 2003 .

[8]  Gianluca Antonelli,et al.  Underwater robots: Motion and force control of vehicle , 2006 .

[9]  Cecilia Laschi,et al.  Soft robotics: a bioinspired evolution in robotics. , 2013, Trends in biotechnology.

[10]  K. Mohseni,et al.  Thrust Characterization of a Bioinspired Vortex Ring Thruster for Locomotion of Underwater Robots , 2008, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering.

[11]  Cecilia Laschi,et al.  An elastic pulsed-jet thruster for Soft Unmanned Underwater Vehicles , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[12]  Louis L. Whitcomb,et al.  Underwater robotics: out of the research laboratory and into the field , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[13]  John M. Gosline,et al.  Jet-Propelled Swimming in Squids , 1985 .

[14]  John O. Dabiri,et al.  Vortex-enhanced propulsion , 2010, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[15]  P. Krueger,et al.  Propulsive efficiency of a biomorphic pulsed-jet underwater vehicle , 2010, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[16]  Kamran Mohseni,et al.  Dynamic Modeling and Control of Biologically Inspired Vortex Ring Thrusters for Underwater Robot Locomotion , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[17]  Paul S. Krueger,et al.  Thrust Augmentation and Vortex Ring Evolution in a Fully-Pulsed Jet , 2005 .