001 Design future underwater vechile - 电鱼仿生学设计.pdfVIP

IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 29, NO. 3, JULY 2004 651 Designing Future Underwater Vehicles: Principles and Mechanisms of the Weakly Electric Fish Malcolm A. MacIver, Ebraheem Fontaine, and Joel W. Burdick Abstract—Future underwater vehicles will be increasingly called upon to work in cluttered environments and to interact with their surroundings. These vehicles will need sensors that work ef?ciently at short range and be highly maneuverable at low speed. To ob- tain insights into principles and mechanisms of low-speed oper- ation in cluttered environments, we examine a ?sh that excels in this regime, the black ghost knife?sh Apteronotus albifrons. This ?sh hunts in dark or turbid water using a short-range self-gen- erated electric ?eld to sense its surroundings. Coupled with this unique mode of sensing is an unusual ribbon ?n propulsion system that confers high multidirectional maneuverability at low speeds. To better understand the relationship between body morphology and common maneuvers of this ?sh, we utilized an idealized el- lipsoidal body model, Kirchhoff’s equations, and an optimal con- trol algorithm for generating trajectories. We present evidence that common ?sh trajectories are optimal, and that these trajectories complement the sensory abilities of the ?sh. We also discuss pro- totypes of the sensing and propulsion systems of the ?sh with a view to providing alternative approaches for underwater vehicle design where high maneuverability in geometrically complex envi- ronments is needed. Index Terms—Active sensing, autonomous underwater vehicles, backward swimming, biologically inspired robotics, biorobotics, Fig. 1. Hypothesized (see [11]) thrust vectors around Apteronotus albifrons electric ?sh, electrosensory, gymnotiform, knife?sh, locomotion, for two swimming directions and a roll maneuver. p is force normal to line maneuverability, remotely operated