Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators

TLDR

The study presents an autonomous soft-bodied robot designed to perform rapid continuum‑body escape maneuvers. The robot uses a compliant body with embedded fluidic elastomer actuators and onboard power, processing, and control to emulate fish anatomy and enable rapid escape responses. The robot demonstrates rapid escape maneuvers with input‑output dynamics comparable to biological fish, proving that soft robots can be self‑contained and perform rapid body motion.

Abstract

In this work we describe an autonomous soft-bodied robot that is both self-contained and capable of rapid, continuum-body motion. We detail the design, modeling, fabrication, and control of the soft fish, focusing on enabling the robot to perform rapid escape responses. The robot employs a compliant body with embedded actuators emulating the slender anatomical form of a fish. In addition, the robot has a novel fluidic actuation system that drives body motion and has all the subsystems of a traditional robot onboard: power, actuation, processing, and control. At the core of the fish's soft body is an array of fluidic elastomer actuators. We design the fish to emulate escape responses in addition to forward swimming because such maneuvers require rapid body accelerations and continuum-body motion. These maneuvers showcase the performance capabilities of this self-contained robot. The kinematics and controllability of the robot during simulated escape response maneuvers are analyzed and compared with studies on biological fish. We show that during escape responses, the soft-bodied robot has similar input-output relationships to those observed in biological fish. The major implication of this work is that we show soft robots can be both self-contained and capable of rapid body motion.