Abstract
The optimizing simulation for swimming motion of an octopus-inspired propulsion mechanism was conducted in the present study. The body geometry of mimic octopus was put into the model. Based on the actual video of a swimming mimic octopus, the joint angles of the arms were determined. From the determined results, A-shaped and reverse N-shaped motions were extracted as two base motions. The magnitudes of these two motions were used as the design variables for the optimization. The swimming speed was used as the objective function. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) was used as the optimizing algorithm. From the results of optimization, it was found that the tips of the arms pointed forward in the recovery stroke when the range of motion was increased. This motion was considered to contribute increase in the thrust. It was also found that the arms were spread largely when the maximum joint torque was increased.
