Hi ngh ton quc v iu khin v T ng ho - VCCA-2011

VCCA-2011
Study of Artificial Fish Bladder System for Robot Fish
Nghin cu h thng bong bng nhn to cho robot c
Le Minh-Thuan
thuan.min@gmail.com
Nguyen Truong Thinh
thinhnt@hcmute.edu.vn
Nguyen Ngoc-Phuong
phuongnn@hcmute.edu.vn
Department of Mechatronics, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education
1 Vo Van Ngan street, Thu Duc district, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam

Abstract
The robot fish, with straight and turn movement is
undertaken by the waving of body combined with
caudal fins. In heaving motion, fish robot is propelled
and controlled by pectoral fins or a changing system
like the bladder in real fish. In this paper, the
adjusting gravitation method was chosen to change
the depth of sinking and make robot fish floating.
Using this method, the mechanical structure of robotic
fish is simple, easy to design a changing gravitation
system, especially that it can sink vertically in water
without any locomotion. A servomotor, a
transmission device and a piston with cylinder are
employed for a proposed design. The bladder system
is an apparatus that can realize diving and floating
control. It was inspired by biologic fishs bladder
principle, so it named artificial fish bladder system.
An analytic structure of fish bladder design were
established and based on kinematic and dynamic
analysis which affected to the gravity and buoyance
on robot fish were reported. In addition, the research
on the effect of bladder system for fish robot was
confirmed by experimental results.
Keywords-fish robot, biologic, gravity, artificial bladder.
Tm tt
Trong robot c, vic i thng v chuyn ng quo
c thc hin bi s kt hp chuyn ng vy ca
cc vy v vy ui. Trong chuyn ng ln, robot c
c kim sot bi cc vy ngc, hoc mt h thng
thay i trng lc, trng tm. Trong bi bo ny,
phng php thay i trng lc thng qua lc y
Archimedes c chn thay i su v lm
ni. Vi vic s dng phng php ny, cu trc c
hc ca c robot n gin, d dng thit k, c
bit l robot c c th chm theo chiu dc trong nc
m khng cn bt k s vn ng no, iu ny
khng p dng trong cc phng php khc. Thit b
bao gm mt ng c servo, c cu dn ng, mt
piston vi xi lanh. H thng bong bng c l mt h
thng c th kim sot ni v ln, c m phng
theo nguyn l trong bong bng sinh hc ca c, v
vy c gi l h thng bong bng c nhn to. M
hnh thit k bong bng c nhn to vi vic phn tch
ng hc v ng lc hc, s nh hng n trng
lc v kh nng ni s c trnh by. Ngoi ra, cc
th nghim v nh hng ca h thng bong bng c
cng c tin hnh.

I. INTRODUCTION
1th century, the dawn of new technologies in the
world, that is the strong development of Robotics,
Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Genetics, and
Nanotech. Robotics, which is undergoing a major
transformation in scope and dimension with positive or
negative influencing for human, has gradually played
an important role indispensably in the daily lives of
human. The ocean, the largest areas in the world, is
waiting for human exploring. People cannot dive many
kilometers under water to do this, so underwater robots
with the missions of replacing human to be present in
seabed, are becoming a attractive topic increasingly all
over the world. Underwater robots are widely used in
limited and critical environment; they need the
reservation energy to run continuously and usefully.
The animals' behavior and flexible ability made human
amazing and curious, then the scientists started to
discover the locomotion characteristics, simulate their
activity, analysis how they use optimally the energy
for motion mechanism, and found out good
achievements. Then Biological Principles in robotics,
the combination between Biological and Robotics, has
increasingly focused on the research and keeping on
developing in the near future. Another reason for
becoming a attracting research in this branch is the
non-stop increasing awareness of many people to
preserve the environment, the heavy pollution of water
in rivers and the bad influence in human existence.
With little contribution to present this state, the
research bio-mimetic underwater robot investigations
are interested, the robotic fish is an example. Natural
environment created the wonderful wild world. In
aquatic animals, the fish itself optimized for
hydrodynamics perfectly. Fish generate oscillatory
travelling wave motions in the direction of propulsion
to propel themselves in water. In robot fish, the
straight and turn movement is undertaken by the
waving of body combined with caudal fins. In
swimming, an indispensably function for most bionic
underwater robot, which is propelled and controlled by
pectoral fins, or changing the structure of robot.
Several primary methods are applied in these parts to
make a fish robot descending or ascending in the
water, for example, controlling fins, changing body
shape, changing barycenter, changing gravitation
[1]
. In
this paper, the adjusting gravitation method was
chosen to change the depth of sinking and make robot
fish floating. Therefore, recent interests about the
motion of fish have increased. Attempts to mimic the
working principle of fish to apply it to underwater
2
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vehicles and underwater robots have increased in the
field of oceanography or something.
So, how is a simple robot fish made? Two
problems have to solve. Firstly, the movement of the
fish, we have some swimming ways: Anguilliform,
Carangiform, Ostracliform
[2]
. Next, in heaving motion,
we need a system with its function similar fish
bladders. As describing of robotic fish on Fig. 1, it
shows the position of artificial fish bladder system for
robot fish in this study. With a four-links structure,
underwater robot for increasing the flexibility. Link 1,
link 2, link 3 and link 4 have connected by three joint
and three servo motors. Robot fish is controlled by
microcontroller or PC and included four electrical
primarily parts: Data-collection unit (sensors, camera),
control unit (microcontroller), actuators (servo motors,
fish bladder system) and communication unit (wireless
module). Recently, this robot used microcontroller as
automotive program or PC as manual controller.
Microcontroller and PC were connected by wireless
communication. The content of this paper includes
five sections. Section II shows the basic description,
the analysis of buoyance system. Section III gives an
affecting of gravity and buoyance on robot fish.
Section IV, an experimental set-up was built to
execute the closed-loop control in diving mode with
experimental result of robot fish.
Servo
motor
Servo
motor
Servo
motor
Wireless module
The artificial fish bladder system
Microcontroller
Joints
Caudal fin
Infrared sensors
Battery

Fig. 1 The position of artificial fish bladder system In Robot
Fish

II. ARTIFICIAL FISH BLADDERS UNIT
ANALYSIS
The fish bladder system of robot fish, shown in
Fig. 2, has three parts, a servo motor, the transmission
actuator, and the piston with cylinder. Servo motor
with gearbox makes a pure rotation movement. The
transmission actuator is a lead screw system, converts
pure rotation with torque to pure translation with force.
The lead screw receives the force, pulls or pushes the
piston move forward or reserve in cylinder. At the
head of the cylinder, it has a small hole connect the
space in the cylinder with the outside. When the servo
motor move with clockwise rotation, the piston start
moving from the bottom to top , the pressure in
cylinder increases, because of the differential pressure
inside and outside, the water move out the cylinder
and it ends when the piston touch the surface at the
head of cylinder-the min position of artificial bladder.
In reverse rotation of servo motor, the piston moves
from top to bottom, the water move from outside to
robot fish, it ends at somewhere-the max position,
depends on the structure of the buoyancy system. One
typical example of the bubble fish is shown in Fig.1
and the some specification is given in Table 1. The
proposed buoyance system, fish bladder unit, adjusts
the water volume inside cylinder through changing the
rotational direction and the number of round in servo
motor. Fig.3 described the kinematic analysis, the
reference frame. The equation below shows the
relationship between the numbers of round in servo
motor with the water volume in cylinder.
2
. . . N p R
v
r
t
=

(1)
Where: v is the volume of water (mm
3
), N is the
number of round in servo motor, r is ratio of gearbox,
p is screw pitch (lead screw system) and R is the radius
of cylinder. From the kinematic analysis, we can
calculate the volume of water, adjust the position of
piston.
Table 1: The specification of artificial fish bladder
system
Part Specification
Total height 31 mm
Total length 134 mm
Total wide 55 mm
Total weight 150 g
Piston stroke 20 mm
Capacity of cylinder 12 ml
Max torque 8.6 kg.cm


Fig. 2 The fish bladder system
Next, in dynamic analysis, it help the fish bladder
system can run normally, avoid some troubles from
running process, such as the change of depth, the
increasing pressure of water, the frictional resistance
force so heavy etc. , the system can be jammed, the
motor is damaged. Let see in Fig.3, the servo motor
rotates, transmits and multiplies the driving torque T
through gearbox. The nut of lead screw system glues
with a gear of gearbox, with the clockwise rotation of
the nut, the lead screw move forward from right to left
with driving force Fd. In this case, the frictional
resistance has the fixed magnitude and opposite
direction with driving force, the water force Fw which
caused by the pressure of the water has magnitude
depending on the depth in water, and the opposing
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direction with driving force. In reverse rotation servo
motor, the piston moves from right to left, the
frictional resistance till opposing direction with Fd,
but the direction of Fw is same with Fd. Therefore,
with the forward movement of piston, the requisite
driving torque T of servo motor is more than the
reverse movement. This is useful for choosing the
value of reaction torque against the max driving torque
of servo motor, for example, when robot fish dives in
deep water, the pressure of water increases until the
max driving force affecting on piston cannot push the
water out of robot fish, which is the max deep sinking
ability of robot fish.
Driving torque T in forward direction:
[3]
1
( ).
2 .
f
Fa Fw Ph
T
t q
+
=

(2)

Where q
1
is forward efficiency of feed screw, q
2
is
reverse efficiency of feed screw and driving torque T
in reverse direction:

2
( ).
2 .
Fa Fw Ph
T
t q

=

(3)

T: Driving torque
Servo
motor
Gear
box
Fw
Fa: Frictional resistance
Cylinder surface
Fd: Driving force (forward)
Lead screw
Nut
L
p
0
x

Fig.3 Schematic of artifical bladder.

Fig. 4 The relationship between the number of round in
servo motor and the volume of water.
Comeback to the relationship between the numbers
of round in servo motor with the water volume in
cylinder, equation 1 explains a linear output system,
that was shown in Fig. 4. The next part is the
relationship between the affecting of gravity and the
depth, this is a non-linear output system, the result
experiments was presented in section
III. AFFECTING OF GRAVITY AND
BUOYANCE
When an object is embedded in a uid (liquid or
gas) under the effect in space of force (such as gravity
or inertial force), two more forces have to be
considered: the gravitational force and the buoyancy
force (Archimedes principle
[4]
). The buoyancy force
(B) has the same magnitude and opposite direction of
the total gravity force (W) of object. The different
magnitude between B and W decided the movement
tendency of robot. If W is more than B, the W force
causes propulsive force, pushes robot fish sink into the
water, and now was described in Fig. 5.
Let dene as g is the acceleration of gravity, V the
volume of the robot fish and m is its mass. The
embedded weight of the robot fish is defined as:
[5]
W mg =
(4)
While its buoyance ,with the density of water , is
given by:
B Vg =
(5)
The gravity force, acting in the center of mass
B
C
r is represented in robot fishs body-fixed frame by:
( )
0
0
B B
G I I
f R R
W
(
(
=
(
(



(6)
While the buoyance force acting in the center of
buoyance
B
B
r is represented in body-fixed frame by:
( )
0
0
B B
B I I
f R R
B
(
(
=
(
(



(7)
The (6x1) vector of force (moment) due to gravity
and buoyance in body-fixed frame, included in the left
hand-side of the equations of motion, is represented
by:
( )
( ) ( )
( ) ( )
B B
G I B I
B
RB I
B B B B
G G I B G I
f R f R
g R
r f R r f R
(
+
(
=
(
+


(8)


In the following, the symbol
B
G
r (with
B B
G C
r r = ) will
be used for the center of gravity. The expression of g
RB

in term of Euler angles is represented by:

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( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
2
( )
( )
( )
RB
G B G B
G B G B
G B G B
W B s
W B c s
W B c c
g
y W y B c c z W z B c s
z W z B s x W x B c c
x W x B c s y W y B s
|
u
u
u |
u | u
u u
u |
q
|
|
|
(
(

(
(

(
=
+ (
(
+
(
(


(
9)

It can be recognized that the difference between
gravity and buoyance (W-B) only affects the linear
force acting on the robot fish; it is also clear that the
restoring linear force is constant in the earth-fixed
frame. On the other hand, the two vectors of the first
moment of inertia affect the moment acting on the
robot fish and are constant in the robot fish-fixed
frame.
In this study, we change the volume of water in
piston, so it makes the buoyance force increasing or
reducing, while the gravity force is a constant. The
different force induces an up and down motion on
robot fish (on z-axis), with the dynamic equation of
acceleration is:
(1 )
V
a g
m

=
(10)

water
water
S
i
n
k
i
n
g
A
s
c
e
n
d
i
n
g
Floating
water
B
W
B
B
B
W
W
W
B>W
B<W
B=W
B=W
Afloat
z
x
y

Fig. 5 The effecting of fish bladder system in robot fish
TABLE 2 : The specification of robot fish
Part Specification
Total
height
31 mm
Total
length
134 mm
Part Specification
Total wide 55 mm
Total
weight
2.3kg
Total
volume
1.25l
Max
velocity
0.1m/s

By adjusting the center of two forces, they were
nearly coincidence and caused negligible torque
(ignore x and y-axis). Time to change the volume is
long enough to be seen as evenly changing motion. Let
define the initial velocity, the initial depth and the
depth in present (after t second) of the robot are v
0
, d
0

and d respectively, we have:
2
0 0
1
2
d at v t d = + +

(10)
IV. EXPERIENCE ON ROBOT FISH
To verify the feasibility and reliability of the
proposal fish bladder unit, an experimental set-up was
built to execute the closed-loop control of the robotic
fish. An aquarium for experiments in this paper with
3000 mm1500 mm1000 mm and the specifications
of robot fish is show in Table 2. The system for
experiments as shown in Fig.6 consist four
subsystems: the subsystem-fish bladder, the
controlling subsystem, the vision subsystem and the
communication subsystem. The servo motor is
controlled by the PWM signal output from a
microcontroller. Through wireless communication
module, the feedback data and control signal of servo
motor communicating with microcontroller was
transmitted to PC. A camera combining a schematic
diagram for image processing is used to collect picture
and measure the depth in diving of robotic fish. This
position measurement of robot fish is fed into PC for
the user interface. These four subsystems make a
closed loop. With the vision-based tracking system to
provide real-time position feedback of the robot fishes,
we test with the different volume of water and adding
weight.
`
Camera
Communication
Module
Data
Aquarium
Control and feedback signal

Fig. 6 An experimental set-up aquarium
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Fig. 7 The response time with the depth for changing
volume.

Fig. 8 The response time with the depth for additional
weight.
Figs.7-9(a) show a set of experimental data obtained
by measuring the depth when changing the volume of
water. The artificial fish bladder for changing volume
of water is placed at the bottom of heads fish and
more description as Fig. 1. Let see in equation (10),
the acceleration of depth not only depended on volume
but also was affected by changing the weight of robot
fish. The additional weigh is placed at the center of
heads fish and puts inside for avoiding the changing
volume of robot when embedded in water. Figs. 8 &
9(b) show experimental data when adding weight for
robot fish. Let see the chart is presented as above, Fig.
8 explains the non-linear system description. Besides
that, the water permeability of buoy in robot fish was
considered as disturbance factor. For reducing the
error, we use the average data in each 5 experimental
time. The overall performances of each case depend on
both of additional weights and volume of water. But
the changing of water using the artificial fish bladder
system is easier than using additional weigh method to
make robot fish rising or sinking in the water.
We keep robot fish in a fixed body, when the
system starts, the fixed body releases and the vision-
based tracking system begin to collect data. The
velocity of diving can be calculated by the data
transmits to PC in real time. We capture some pictures
in every second and is shown in Fig. 10.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, analytic solution for a bladder system
for a robot fish has been investigated. Using equations
about fish robots kinematics and dynamics, affecting
to the gravity and buoyance on robot fish, was
reported, and the relation between diving parameters
was also derived. A proposed design of artificial
bladder for underwater robot includes a servo motor,
transmission device, and a couple of piston and
cylinder. The artificial bladder system can help the
robot to dive and float. It is inspired by biologic fishs
bladder principle. An analytic structure of fish bladder
design were established and based on kinematic and
dynamic analysis. Also, the research on the effect of
heaving motion system for fish robot was confirmed
by experimental results.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This study was financially supported Ho Chi Minh city
University of Technical Education, Viet Nam
(HCMUTE) (no. T2011-17TD).
REFERENCES
[1] Chao Zhou, Zhiqiang Cao, Shuo Wang , Min
Tan, The Posture Control and 3-D Locomotion
Implementation of Biomimetic Robot Fish, in
International Conference on Intelligent Robots
and Systems,2006, Beijing, China, page 5407
[2] J. Edward Colgate, Kevin M. Lynch, Mechanics
and Control of Swimming: A Review, in IEEE
JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL.
29, NO. 3, JULY 2004, p661
[3] Ball Screw, General Catalog, THK. (equation 2
& 3)
[4] Bouyance, www.en.wikipedia.org
[5] Gianluca Antonelli, Underwater Robots, Motion
and Force Control of Vehicle-Manipulator
Systems, Second edition,p31-32
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(a) (b)
Fig. 9 The response time changes due to the volume of water (a) and additional weight (b).


Fig. 10 The affecting on fish robot with 7ml.
Le Minh Thuan was born in Ho Chi Minh
city, Vietnam, in 1989. Since 2007, he has
been studying at Deparment of
Mechantronics, the Ho Chi Minh city
University of Technical Education
(HCMUTE), where he is currently a senior
student. His main research interests include
Biorobot, sensors with applications to
robot, smart control and other mechatronic systems.

Nguyen Truong-Thinh received his Ph.D.
in Mechanical Engineering from Chonnam
National University Korea in 2009. His
M.S. and B.S in Mechanical Engineering
from Ho Chi Minh city University of
Technology - Viet Nam in 1997 and 2000,
respectively. Since 1998, he has been
working with Ho Chi Minh city University
of Technical Education Viet Nam as
lecturer. His research interests include service robotics systems,
industrial robotics, intelligent control and design,

Nguyen Ngoc-Phuong received the B.S. degree and PhD degree
in Mechanical Engineering from the Brno University of
Technology Czech Republic in 1981 and 1985, respectively.
And he also get the M.Sc in Education in Dresden University of
Technology Germany in 1998. His main research interests
include automation in Industry, robotics, pneumatics and
hydraulics. He is dean of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
Ho Chi Minh city University of Technical Education Viet
Nam.

Address for Correspondence: Nguyen Truong-Thinh,
Department of Mechatronics, Ho Chi Minh city University of
Technical Education, 1 Vo Van Ngan street, Thu Duc district,
Ho Chi Minh city, Viet Nam.
E-mail: thinhnt@hcmute.edu.vn.


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