Abstract
A humanoid robot has been studied for several decades but few studies have been conducted to use a humanoid robot in the water. In order to extend application area of a humanoid robot, we aim to develop a swimming humanoid robot and realize free swimming by the robot. In this study, we remodeled the upper body of a swimming humanoid robot, which has been developed by authors, to fit free swimming test and the robot performed the crawl stroke in the swimming pool. In the experiment, the standard crawl stroke was tested at several stroke cycles. The swimming movement was filmed and rolling angular velocity was measured by a gyro sensor. From the experiment, the robot could perform the crawl stroke at 2.4 s cycles and went forward at about 0.25 m/s speed. The roll angle displacement during the crawl stroke was calculated about ±55 degrees and it is almost coincident with the result of actual swimmers.
