A study on the swimming performance and the maneuverability of aRobotic fish with modular design

In this paper, a modular design approach to the robotic fish was presented, and the swimming performance and the maneuverability of the robotic fish were investigated as well. Based on the modular design, a robotic fish employing a carangiform swimming form has been developed, which was capable of cruising, accelerating, sharp turning etc. To obtain the performance of the robotic fish, a series of experiments were conducted to study the cruising performance by observing the kinematics parameters including frequency, amplitude and wave length, and to study the maneuverability by observing the turning angle, the angular velocity and the angular acceleration during the sharp turning. The experimental results proved that the robotic fish had good kinematic performance in the swimming.