Effect of body stiffness distribution on larval fish-like efficient undulatory swimming.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33952525.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abf7364 and PMC identifier 8099186.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Energy-efficient propulsion is a critical design target for robotic swimmers. Although previous studies have pointed out the importance of nonuniform body bending stiffness distribution (<i>k</i>) in improving the undulatory swimming efficiency of adult fish-like robots in the inertial flow regime, whether such an elastic mechanism is beneficial in the intermediate flow regime remains elusive. Hence, we develop a class of untethered soft milliswimmers consisting of a magnetic composite head and a passive elastic body with different <i>k</i> These robots realize larval zebrafish-like undulatory swimming at the same scale. Investigations reveal that uniform <i>k</i> and high swimming frequency (60 to 100 Hz) are favorable to improve their efficiency. A shape memory polymer-based milliswimmer with tunable <i>k</i> on the fly confirms such findings. Such acquired knowledge can guide the design of energy-efficient leading edge-driven soft undulatory milliswimmers for future environmental and biomedical applications in the same flow regime.