Using a robotic platform to study the influence of relative tailbeat phase on the energetic costs of side-by-side swimming in fish.

ABSTRACT: A potential benefit of swimming together in coordinated schools is to allow fish to extract energy from vortices shed by their neighbours, thus reducing the costs of locomotion. This hypothesis has been very hard to test in real fish schools, and it has proven very difficult to replicate the complex hydrodynamics at relevant Reynolds numbers using computational simulations. A complementary approach, and the one we adopt here, is to develop and analyse the performance of biomimetic autonomous robotic models that capture the salient kinematics of fish-like swimming, and also interact via hydrodynamic forces. We developed bio-inspired robotic fish which perform sub-carangiform locomotion, and measured the speed and power consumption of robots when swimming in isolation and when swimming side-

SUBMITTER: Li L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8300603 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature