CPG-based Multi-modal Swimming Control for Robotic Dolphin

Abstract

Inspired by the extraordinary swimming skills of dolphins in the nature, robotic dolphin, which has potentially wide applications in military and civil domains, has attracted increased attention recently. However, it must have a special locomotion controller for a robotic dolphin to achieve abundant swimming modes. To solve this problem, a central pattern generation(CPG)-based locomotion controller has been proposed in this paper. The CPG locomotion model was set up by modeling weakly coupled oscillators, which well match between the CPGs and the joint configuration of the robotic dolphin. In addition, the development of a robotic prototype, the controller design, as well as the aquatic tests are detailed. The multi-modal control experiments, such as swimming forward, turning, and heaving, verify the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed CPG-based locomotion control method for the multi-joint robotic dolphin.