The optimal stiffness for soft swimming robots depends on swimming speed, which means no single stiffness can maximise efficiency in all swimming conditions. Tunable stiffness would produce an increased range of high-efficiency swimming speeds for robots with flexible propulsors and enable soft control surfaces for steering underwater vehicles. We propose and demonstrate a method for tunable soft robotic stiffness using inflatable rubber tubes to stiffen a silicone foil through pressure and second moment of area change. We achieved double the effective stiffness of the system for an input pressure change from 0 to 0.8 bar and 2 J energy input. We achieved a resonant amplitude gain of 5 to 7 times the input amplitude and tripled the high-gain frequency range comparedto a foil with fixed stiffness. These results show that changing second moment of area is an energy effective approach tot unable-stiffness robots.
翻译:软游泳机器人的最佳僵硬度取决于游泳速度,这意味着没有哪个僵硬度能够在所有游泳条件下实现效率最大化。 软游泳机器人的软游泳速度将增加具有弹性推进器的高效游泳速度,使水下车辆的驾驶能够形成软控制表面。 我们提出并演示了一种方法,用可塑胶软机器人的僵硬度使用可塑胶胶管,通过压力和地区变化的第二个瞬间使硅胶硬化。 我们实现了系统有效硬度的两倍,使输入压力的变化从0到0.8巴和2J的能量输入。 我们实现了5至7倍的投入振幅的共振幅增益,高增频幅度增加了两倍,与固定僵硬的泡沫相比。这些结果显示,改变的第二个区域时刻是一种有效方法,可以有效改变不耐受力机器人。