Summary: Robotic Fish Study

Paper 1 and Paper 2 Summary
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Paper 1 Summary
Brief Summary
A robotic fish caudal fin with six movable fin rays was designed based on the bluegill sunfish. There were previous fish robotic designs that resembled the caudal fins. However, these never incorporated the vital aspects like fin rays, which can be controlled to generate complex tail conformations and motions as those observed in the locomotor repertoire of live fishes. The robotic caudal fin was used to test how the stiffness of the fin ray, frequency, and motion of the program affected the thrust generation and lift forces (Esposito et al., 2012).
Summary of Results
It is important to note that the robotic caudal fin was created to allow the production of various forms of motions. These motions had been previously observed in studies involving the bluegill sunfish caudal fin, particularly during its movement. There were five different sets of constructed fish, with variations of stiffness ranging between 150 to 2000. The five caudal fin motion programs were noted based on the kinematic features of swimming (Esposito et al., 2012).
The movement's main types included "flat movement of the entire fin, cupping of the fin, W-shaped fin motion, fin undulation and rolling movements" (Esposito et al., 2012). Similarly, the robotic fin was also flapped at a frequency range between 0.5-2.4 Hz. The outcome was that all the fins produced a specific thrust force (Esposito et al., 2012). Moreover, the cupping motion was also noted to be having the highest thrust in all situations. The undulatory motion produced a lift force of the same magnitude as that of the thrust. The forces and wake flow produced by the motions were related. However, there were start differences, but very con...