Characteristics evaluation of a biomimetic microrobot for a Father-son Underwater Intervention Robotic system

To realize the underwater intervention, a Father-son Underwater Intervention Robotic System (FUIRS) is proposed in our laboratory. The FUIRS employs a novel biomimetic microrobot to realize underwater manipulation tasks. The main work of this paper is to describe the biomimetic microrobot which is inspired by an octopus. The microrobot is mainly composed of body and arm. We use IPMC to fabricate the arms. To investigate the most suitable arm shape, three commonly used arms were designed, i.e., regular rectangle shape, human finger shape and tapered shape. After analyzing the force and deflection features, the human finger shape arm was selected to be installed on the microrobot. The robot body is fabricated by the 3D printer. A micro proximity sensor was installed on it as the eyes. To enhance the payload of the microrobot, a novel buoyancy adjustment method was proposed which can provide 11.8mN additional buoyancy force. Finally, a series of underwater manipulation experiments were carried out and the results indicated that the biomimetic microrobot can realize underwater manipulation for the targets with different shape and size objects successfully.