Abstract
Recently, development of underwater robot has actively been in progress in the world as ROV(Remotely Operator Vehicle) and AUV(Autonomous Unmmanded Vehicle) style. But KIOST(Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology), beginning in 2010, launched the R&D project to develop the robot, dubbed CRABSTER(Crab + (Lob)ster) in a bid to enhance the safety and efficiency of resource exploration. CRABSTER has been designed to be able to walk and swim with its own legs without screws. Among many research subjects regarding CRABSTER, optimal swimming patterns are handled in this paper. In previous studies, drag forces during one period with different values for angle of each joint were derived. However kinematics of real-robot and fluid-dynamics are not considered. We conducted simulations with an optimization algorithm for swimming by considering simplified fluid dynamics in this paper. Drag-coefficients applied to the simulation were approximated values calculated by CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics : Tecplot 360, ANSYS). In addition, optimized swimming patterns were applied to a real robot. The experiments with the real robot were conducted in circumstances in the water. As a result, when the experiments were carried out in the water, a regular pattern of drag force output came out depending on the movement of the robot. We confirmed the fact that the drag forces from the simulation and the experiment has a high similarity.
