1P1-F07 Swimming Robot with Active Flexible Nozzle driven by a Water Jet Pump(Flexible Robot/Mechanism and its Control)

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a swimming robot driven by a water jet pump with an active exible nozzle for steering. The proposed robot is of 220[mm] in length and consists of a slim body for entering a narrow space. Experimental results using a prototype of the proposed swimming robot show that the robot not only can swim forward at the average velocity of 0.44[m/s] corresponding about 2[BL/s](body length per second), but also can turn underwater at the average angular velocity of 156[deg/s] with a small turning radius of 160[mm].