Academic Report：Wire-Driven Mechanism and Highly Efficient Propulsion in Water: A Methodology for Robot Fish Design
Speaker：Prof. R. Du
Time：2015.6.18 3:00PM
Location：Conference Room, 4th Floor, Hydraulic Old Building, Yuquan Campus
Abstract:
How fish swim is a wonder of nature: elegant, fast, quiet, and with high efficiency. It is known that the fish’s propulsion efficiency is about 90%. In addition, the speed of a sailfish can exceed 110 km/h and the acceleration of a pike can reach 249 m/s2. In comparison, the efficiency of the vastly adopted rotary propeller is less than 45%, and the performance of a typical ship, in terms of speed, acceleration, turning, noise, etc., is far worse than that of the fish. This motivates researchers around the world to study fish swimming and to build robot fish.
We have been working on robot fishes for several years, and designed and built a unique wire-driven robot fish by mimicking not only the skeleton structure but also the muscle arrangement of the fish. As a result, it can best mimic the fish flapping. Comparing to other robot fishes (single joint design, multi-joint design, and smart material design), our design is simple, easy to control and more importantly, highly efficient. Based on experiments, it reaches efficiency about 70% in various conditions. As an example, with just a pack of 4 AAA size batteries, our robot fish will be able to swim for three hours at the speed by 3.6 km / hour, that is crossing the Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong.
Brief Bio:
Dr. R. Du was born in China in 1955. He received his Master’s degree from the South China University of Technology in 1983 and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1989. He has taught in the University of Windsor, in Windsor, Ontario and University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Florida. Currently, he is a professor in the Dept. of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is also the director the Institute of Precision Engineering of CUHK and the director of the Guangzhou Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Advanced Technology. His area of research include: design and manufacturing (metal forming, machining, plastic injection molding and etc.), as well as energy and materials. He has published over 400 papers in various academic journals and international conferences, as well as several books. He is the associate editor / the members of editorial board of six international journals. He is a Fellow of SME, ASME and HKIE. He has being happily married for 30 years and has two children, Jin and Ann. He enjoys Chinese poetry and tennis.