Robot Imitates Swimming Motion of Living Jellyfish

Nature continues to supply models for robots.  RobotNext found this article on robot jellyfish.  Many robot builders are modeling every type of motion nature provides.  Jellyfish use a unique swimming motion to achieve their flowing, pulsing motion. 

So now to the basic story.  Two Korean researchers have developed a robot that swims like a jellyfish.  Engineers Sung-Weon Yeom and Il-Kwon Oh from Chonnam National University in the Republic of Korea explain in an article at PhysOrg.com that "Jellyfish are one of the most awesome marine animals, doing a spectacular and psychedelic dance in water."  A special type of polymer that imitates muscle movement was used in the design of this jellyfish robot.  The article goes on to state that “advances in electro-active polymers (EAP) enabled them to achieve this biomimetic swimming behavior in a robot.”

 

Image Credit: Yeom and Oh. (PhysOrg.com)

(Left) A living jellyfish and (right) a jellyfish robot made of electro-active polymer artificial muscle. Both jellyfish move by contracting the bell to generate a pulsating motion.  -- "Jellyfish are one of the most ...

Sung-Weon Yeom and Il-Kwon Oh. “A biomimetic jellyfish robot based on ionic polymer metal composite actuators.” Smart Mater. Struct. 18 (2009) 085002 (10pp).

Jellyfish Robot Swims Like its Biological Counterpart - PhysOrg
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Comments

[shaheen]

hi, is the movement of the jellyfish called peristatic ?

[RobotNext]

Shaheen:

In my search for peristatic movement in jellyfish, I found this link http://www.jellyfishfacts.net/jellyfish-movement.html, but nothing directly on the term peristatic.

Thanks for the comment.