Artificial Feather Stars: A Multi-functional, Multi-agent and Hyper-redundant Approach for Soft Underwater Robotics
Abstract
Underwater soft robotics is receiving growing popularity within the scientific community, thanks to its prospective capability of tackling challenges that are hardly dealt with by traditional rigid technologies, especially when a strong interacting with a partially unknown and dynamic environment is required. In this project, we propose a novel underwater soft robot inspired by feather stars,a swimming specimen of the Crinoidea family, composed of multiple, branching soft modules that surround the main body of the animalas well as its robotics counterpart. Exploiting its elongated structure and natural compliance, each module will combine propulsionand manipulation skills in order to obtain a highly redundant system able to adapt to different tasks. Each soft appendage will also be dynamically flow-responsive and highly deformable, providing distributed sensing capabilities. The proposed design has the potential to unveil an effective solution for a broad range of underwater operations currently unsolved, such as the non-invasive monitoring of water quality and marine habitats, easing the mapping of the species and their distribution. It also allows performing safe,robust, and gentle manipulation and intervention in human-made underwater structures such as oil and gas pipelines.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 05, 2021
- Source ID
- N629092112033
Entities
People
- Federico Renda
Organizations
- Khalifa University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy