State of the Art in Biomimetic Swimming Robots

Abstract

The presence of marine tasks demands investments on design and development of underwater robots. Among those robots, biomimetic swimming robots have shown superior performance since they are efficient in cruising, highly manoeuvrable, and noiseless during swimming. Accordingly, so far a number of fish robots with distinguished capabilities have been fabricated around the globe. The difference of the existing fish robots roots in their unlike but optimal nature of swimming. Hence, in order to design fish robots, the swimming characteristics of real fish including swimming mode and body/fin shape must be investigated primarily. Then the appropriate actuation system needs to be selected. This chapter aims at presenting state of the art in robotic fish while introducing their design elements and presenting suitable actuation mechanisms for fish robots. In this chapter, a fish robot is introduced and its design process is discussed as a case study.