Effects of a Bio-mimicked Flapping Path on Propulsion Efficiency of Two-segmental Fish Robots

Having an appropriate flapping path to yield efficient propulsion is an interesting issue in fish robotics. In most works, especially two-segmental structures, the flapping motion is limited to sinusoidal functions. In this paper, to cope with the aforementioned limitation, a conceptual non-sinusoidal path is proposed. The proposed flapping path and the conventional one, both are optimized for a sample fish robot. According to some simulation results, it is shown that if a proper actuator is employed to generate both optimized paths, the proposed approach yields more propulsion efficiency. Furthermore, it is discussed that our method can better imitate fish muscle output power. Finally, through experiments, some practical issues are considered.