Initial development of a flapping propelled unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV)

Author

Xu, Yicun ; Zong, Guanghua ; Bi, Shusheng ; Gao, Jun

Author_Institution

Robot. Inst., Beihang Univ., Beijing

fYear

2007

fDate

15-18 Dec. 2007

Firstpage

524

Lastpage

529

Abstract

This paper studied the swimming modes of aquatic animals, then the development and experiment of a flapping propelled, radio-controlled UUV are described. The vehicle consists of a pair of flexible flapping wings as propeller; a pare of elevators and a rudder at the end of the shell provide the hydro-kinetic force for attitude control. The UUV prototype has a 70 cm wingspan, 50 cm length and a tonnage of 3.8 kg, with three-channel radio control system and a 1300 mAh M-Poly rechargeable battery for no less than 20 minutes of swimming. Speed achieved 0.7 m/s in the swimming test and the speed-length ratio is 1.4. The flexible biotic UUV should be further developed to adapt practical uses.

Keywords

attitude control; mobile robots; propulsion; remotely operated vehicles; underwater vehicles; Robo-Manta I; UUV; aquatic animals swimming modes; attitude control; flapping propelled unmanned underwater vehicle; hydro-kinetic force; radio-controlled UUV; three-channel radio control system; Animals; Batteries; Elevators; Force control; Propellers; Propulsion; Prototypes; Radio control; Testing; Underwater vehicles; Flapping Propulsion; UUV; flexible wing/fin;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Biomimetics, 2007. ROBIO 2007. IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Sanya

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1761-2

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-1758-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROBIO.2007.4522217

Filename

4522217