Bio-inspired Jellyfish Robots based on Ionic-type Artificial Muscles

As 3D printing technology and soft polymer manufacturing systems have been developing rapidly, soft robots become a hot issue as practically engineered systems. More specifically, electro-active artificial muscles have been considered as a strong candidate to be a biomimetic locomotive actuator in soft robots. In this study, ionic polymer-metal composite actuators were used to fabricate a bio-inspired jelly fish robot with a realistic pulse and recovery actuation mode. The vertical floating motions of the bio-inspired jellyfish robot under various input signals were carefully investigated. Present results indicate that the bio-inspired electrical input signal with pulse-recovery process can induce much higher locomotive velocity of the bio-inspired jellyfish robot in comparison with pure sinusoidal excitations. Key-Words: biomimetic, fish robot, ionic polymer-metal composite, actuator, artificial muscle, locomotion