Mechanism design of controllable wings for autonomous underwater gliders

Compared with autonomous underwater gliders (AUGs) with fixed wings, gliders with controllable wings have variable hydrodynamics coefficients to achieve better flight performance. In this paper, relations between flight performance and shapes of wings are analyzed. A combined mechanism which contains two sub-mechanisms is presented. It can achieve three kinds of shape changing motions including wings extending and rotating along two axes. With the method of mechanism synthesis, the second sub-mechanism with two degrees of freedom is designed. Rotation vector algorithm is used to establish kinematics models. Forward and inverse solutions of kinematics are obtained. Working space is analyzed. Results show that working space has good continuity and all bars have reasonable lengths. MATLAB is used in inverse solution and getting the control rules of motors. Motion simulation is carried out by ADAMS. Simulation results show that the variation range of wing´s length is o to 80mm. The variation range of sweep angle and attack angle is 0 to 70 degrees and 0 to 55 degrees. This design can satisfy needs of controllable AUGs.