Ethorobotics is an emerging field wherein robots are designed to conduct robot-animal interaction studies. Studies of robot-fish interaction are numerous and explore features of robotic fish design such as size, aspect ratio, caudal fin motion, and others. Improvement of the interaction of several species of fish with their robotic conspecifics has been demonstrated when the robot has an actuated caudal fin. In these studies, the caudal fin was commonly actuated by a small waterproof DC servo motor, which makes the noise generated by the servo motor a confounding factor when determining the effects of caudal fin motion on robot-fish interaction. Further, the robotic fish in these studies were commonly composed of a rigid body connected to a rigid caudal fin, whereas biological fish distribute motion along their length as they swim. In this paper, the design of an archer fish for ethorobotic studies with an SMA actuated caudal fin is presented. The robotic archer fish is 3D-printed, features a compliant spine, and the caudal fin is actuated by two SMA wires in an antagonistic configuration. Whether the use of a silent actuation approach improves fish-robot interaction is the subject of a preliminary study wherein the robotic archer fish is controlled by a motion platform that enables the robotic fish to turn, pitch, and move in three dimensions.


Design of Archer Fish With a Shape Memory Alloy Actuated Caudal Fin for Ethorobotic Studies

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace Division

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/SMASIS/SMASIS2020/volume/84027

SMASIS2020 - Virtual Conference

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.