Bi-directional locomotion of a magnetically-actuated jellyfish-inspired soft robot

Abstract

Biomimetic compliant untethered robots find a plethora of applications in biomedical engineering, microfluidics, soft robotics, and deep-sea exploration. Flexible miniature robots in the form of magnetically actuated compliant swimmers are increasingly used for targeted drug delivery, robotic surgery, laparoscopy, and microfluidic device design. These applications require an in-depth understanding of the nonlinear large deformation structural mechanics, non-invasive remote-control and untethered actuation mechanisms, and associated fluid-structure interactions that arise between a soft smart robot and its surrounding fluid. The present work obtains numerical solutions for the temporal evolution of structural and flow variables using a fictitious domain method that employs a robust multi-physics computational model involving both fluid-structure interaction and magneto-elasto-dynamics. The magnetically-actuated soft robotic swimmer (jellyfishbot) is inspired by the most efficient aquatic swimmer, the jellyfish. The swimming kinematics and bi-directional locomotion are obtained for different waveforms and gradients of the external magnetic actuation. The breaking of temporal symmetry and its relative dominance is discussed as well.