Collision-free motion planning for an Anguilliform robotic fish

Abstract

In this paper 1, a motion library and associated control strategies for collision-free motion planning are presented for a biomimetic robotic fish. The Anguilliform robotic fish consists of N links and N − 1 joints. Three major gaits of Anguilliform fish—forward moving, backward moving and turning—are investigated. By giving different reference to joint angles, such as adding reversed phase difference, or adding deflections to the original reference angles, the fish exhibits different locomotion patterns. The relations between the deflection angles, the turning radius and, the transverse displacement, are investigated, and a motion library is constructed based on these relations. Furthermore, we propose collision-free motion planning method based on the motion library. Results of two illustrative examples validate the effectiveness of the method.