RoboTuna (BIOSwimmer), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

[Airicist]

RoboTuna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboTuna) on Wikipedia

Built in Massachusetts by a firm called Boston Engineering (https://pr.ai/showthread.php?7568)

[Airicist]

"Robotuna Project To Model Real Fish (http://tech.mit.edu/V115/N49/robotuna.49n.html)"

by Damian Isla
October 17, 1995

[Airicist]

Article "Navy Builds Its Own Tuna Robot (https://www.military.com/defensetech/2014/07/02/navy-builds-its-own-tuna-robot)"

by Kris Osborn
July 2, 2014

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/w5-6F8RknUM

Olin College Robot Tuna, 2008-2009

Published on Jan 12, 2013


This robotic tuna is the final product of a team of students from the Olin College of Engineering. Julia Buck, Gui Cavalcanti, Paul Mandel, Erin Schumacher, Sarah Shiplett and Michael Taylor developed this robot under the guidance of Professor David Barrett over the 2008-2009 school year for a SCOPE (senior capstone) project sponsored by Boston Engineering. This effort was part of a Phase I SBTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) grant from the Office of Naval Research, held jointly by Olin College and Boston Engineering.

The robot is a hybrid of the design features of a regular submarine (i.e. dive planes, thruster-powered locomotion, and a rigid hull) combined with the flexible keel of a biological organism. This marriage produces a vehicle that can both move through the water quickly and turn on a dime, a set of traits not usually seen together in underwater vehicles of any type. The tuna is used as a biological model because its natural swimming gait holds the front 2/3 of the fish's body rigid, while the rear 1/3 moves; this allows the robot to utilize the front 2/3 of its body as a rigid, watertight hull, while the rear 1/3 is converted into a flooded flexible structure. The robot uses hydraulic actuators to move the flexible tail structure from side to side and electric motors for dive plane control.

Even though the tail structure only has one motor to move it from side to side, it still displayed the ability to swim by swishing its tail at a fixed frequency (without using its propeller to generate forward thrust). We believe that the robot could be engineered to swim at a relatively high cruising speed if its tail structure were tuned to an appropriate natural frequency, and if there was a sprung joint between the caudal fin and the rest of the tail. Unfortunately, this video was shot in the final days of our school year, and we had no ability to test this hypothesis.

Boston Engineering has since developed the project further into the GhostSwimmer and BIOSwimmer robots.

[Airicist]

"Protecting our Harbors and Ships with the BIOSwimmer (https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/st-snapshot-bioswimmer)"

September 17, 2012

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/JdvS-vTe3c0

How Reverse Engineering Propels BIOSwimmer Robotics Innovation

Published on Aug 14, 2015


Watch the evolution of Boston Engineering’s BIOSwimmer UUV from company president Bob Treiber, who shares how biology served as a model for Boston Engineering’s innovative unmanned under water vehicle robotics. Recorded at the PTC Live 2015 keynote sessions.

[Airicist2]

https://youtu.be/97J8eSmL65s

Deformable underwater robots

Feb 6, 2023


A team of engineers has devised a modular system to produce efficient, scalable aquabots. The system’s simple repeating elements can assemble into swimming forms ranging from eel-like to wing-shaped.

"Engineers devise a modular system to produce efficient, scalable aquabots (https://news.mit.edu/2023/engineers-devise-modular-system-efficient-scalable-aquabots-0206)"
The system’s simple repeating elements can assemble into swimming forms ranging from eel-like to wing-shaped.

by David L. Chandler (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlchandler1)
February 6, 2023