Actuated bivalve robot study of the burrowing locomotion in sediment

This paper presents the design and control of an actuated bivalve robot, which has been developed to study the burrowing locomotion of bivalves in sediment. The setup consists of a tank filled with sand and water, plastic models of bivalve shells capable of expelling water and an external actuation mechanism simulating the rocking burrowing motion typically used by these animals. The realistic shell shapes have been realized using three-dimensional plotting techniques allowing testing influences of different shell shapes and surface structures (sculptures) on the burrowing efficiency. Based on the experimental setup, the burrowing process has been reproduced. The results show that this setup can be used to identify correlations in the burrowing process. Further experimental work will investigate the influence of factors such as shell shape and sculpture or the motion sequence on the burrowing performance.