A STUDY ON THE PROPULSIVE MECHANISM OF A DOUBLE JOINTED FISH ROBOT UTILIZING SELF-EXCITATION CONTROL

Abstract

This paper describes a numerical and experimental study of a double jointed fish robot utilizing self-excitation control. The fish robot is composed of a streamlined body and a rectangular caudal fin. The body length is 280mm and it has a DC motor to actuate the first joint and a potentiometer to detect the angle of the second joint. The signal from the potentiometer is fed back into the DC motor, so that the system can be self-excited. In order to obtain a stable oscillation and a resultant stable propulsion, a torque limiter circuit is employed. From the experiment, it is found that the robot can stably propel using this control and the maximum propulsive speed is 0.42m/s.