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

VCCA-2011

Autonomous Inspection with Multi-Link Robotic Fish
Gim st t ng vi robot c nhiu khu
1
Nguyen Truong-Thinh
thinhnt@hcmute.edu.vn
1
Nguyen Ngoc-Phuong
phuongnn@hcmute.edu.vn
1
Dang Minh-Nhat
dongminh0128@yahoo.com.vn
1
Department of Mechatronics, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education, Viet Nam


Abstract
This paper proposes a novel approach in the design,
construction and analysis of a robotic fish which is
able to operate autonomously under water. In contrast
to current systems, the robotic fish provides a design
that is both simple and robust and this robot operates
wireless, which significantly increases the range of
application areas. The mechanical design and the
control system must satisfy severe requirements for
reliability to allow autonomous operation even in
water environment. In the following, a multi-link
robot is described, which has the ability to swim to
avoid the obstacles in water and predetermined
trajectory. From that, the inspection process
underwater is carried out. The description is focused
on the design of the robot and its control hardware
and gives a brief overview of the integration into
robotic fish.

Tm tt
Trong bi bo ny mt hng nghin cu mi trong
thit k, kt cu v phn tch ca mt robot vi hnh
dng c hot ng hon ton t ng di nc c
cp. Khc vi cc h thng robot c hin nay,
robot c trong bi bo ny c kt cu n gin, c th
hot ng n nh di nc vi ch iu khin
khng dy cng nh t hnh, t c th cho thy
nhng lnh vc ng dng ca robot ny. Thit k c
kh v h thng iu khin ca robot cng phi tha
mn nhng yu cu l d dng hot ng t hnh
trong nc. Robot c trong bi bo ny vi kt cu
nhiu khu c m t, n c kh nng bi v trnh
vt cn trong nc v di chuyn theo qu o cho
trc. T qu trnh kim tra di nc c thc
hin. Nhng phn chnh trong bi bo s tp trung m
t vic thit k v phn cng iu khin, cng nh
a ra nhng nt chnh ca qu trnh tch hp trong
robot c.

1. Introduction
Biomimetics, a new research area involving in both
biology and robotics, has been receiving more and
more attention. Bio-mimicking systems provide
important insights into the theories and applications of
robotics. In recent years, there has been growing
interest in robotic research where robots have either
been used to address specific biological questions or
have been directly inspired by biological systems. In
the category of swimming robots, biomimetic robot
fish is modeled after real fish in nature having the
virtue of high speed, tremendous propulsive
efficiency and excellent maneuverability [14]. These
advantages are of great benefit to practical
applications in marine and military fields such as
undersea operation, military reconnaissance, leakage
detection, aquatic life-form observation and so on [4].
A variety of biomimetic robots ranging from flying,
swinging to swimming have been constructed, see for
an overview of bio robotics research. In the category
of swimming robots, biomimetic robot fish is
motivated by a desire to create Autonomous
Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) with the virtue of
efficiency, maneuverability and noise-free. Moreover,
it also provides essential insights into the mechanism
and control of fish swimming [2]. Underwater robots
are widely used in the fields of ocean development,
ocean investigation and marine environmental
protection [1]. Autonomous underwater robots are
planned, and several robots have been already
developed. On the other hand, it is well known that
several kinds of fish have a good ability of turning
and acceleration. If the underwater robot that can
simulate a fishlike locomotion is developed, it is
considered that the robot has dynamics performance
similar to fish[5].
As the request that the underwater operation should
be carried out more efficiently becomes strong,
autonomous underwater robots are planned, and
several robots have been already developed. They
need higher efficient of propulsive performance and
good dynamics performance. On the other hand, a
fishlike swimming mechanism is expected as a new
propulsive device for underwater robots, because it
has a possibility to get high-speed swimming and
efficient propulsion [6]. In this paper, robotic fish
moves, turns cruise using tail swing and uses the
visual inspection system to collect the data
underwater.
2. Mechanical construction
The main difficulty in constructing such a framework
is finding a concept, which fulfills the demands for
Biomimetics, low cost, reliability and easiness in use.
Most of the properties of the framework are
determined by the call for autonomous operation and
swimming in water. This means the system has to
carry its own power supply and must satisfy strong
safety aspects. The requirements of the robot are:
- Wireless operation,
- Swimming of curves and managing turns of 90 in
water,
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- Can be buoyancy and dive underwater.
The dimensions of the robot to be developed are
mainly influenced by the present state of the art in
technology. The drives, control, power supply and
sensors would have to be placed in an extremely small
space. From the technological point of view, only a
bigger system is possible. One solution to this
problem is the use of a multi-link, flexible system. Its
form is comparable to a fish and it is similar to the
systems, which are already used for lake or riverbed
inspection. As a consequence of the multi-link shape,
the control of the robot gets more difficult. To
guarantee the robots mobility, the flexible joints must
be driven actively. In the following, the concept for a
mobile robot which is suited for autonomous
underwater inspection is presented. Both,
technological aspects as well as application oriented
aspects are considered.
The concept for the underwater inspection robot
proposes a multilink, modular system. In principle,
the design looks like a fish, which consists of several
modules. It is essentially composed of driving
modules, sensing modules and power supply modules.
The propelling modules are responsible for the
movement. They contain the pump drive and the
drives for the joints. The sensing modules contain the
sensory elements, which are necessary for underwater
inspection. These modules can be equipped with
application specific sensors. The concept allows the
independent development of driving and sensor
modules. Thus, the robot can be easily customized
according to the task specifications. Different kinds of
sensor modules can be mixed to achieve better results
or power supply units can be added to the robot to
increase the range of operation. The robot must have a
suitable length to guarantee the ability of swimming
and should not be too long, otherwise the system gets
too difficult to control. Every joint is driven by its
own actuator. This provides easy construction in
combination with low cost and high reliability.


Pectoral fin
Ventral fin Anal fin
Caudal fin
2
nd
joint 1
st
joint
81
151
234
330
3
rd
joint
Caudal fin
Posterior portion Anterior portion

Fig.1. Pearl Arowana and designed modeling.
The robot is about 330 mm long, 70 mm wide and
110 mm high. Altogether, there are five modules and
four flexible joints. Five modules are necessary to
make the similar body to real fish. In Fig. 1 the robot
is presented in four modules.
- Head: the normal configuration in stretched position;
- Body: the configuration while moving on a 45
slope;
- Tail: the configuration while crossing a step of
maximal height.

3. Hardware Architecture
The hardware architecture is an important part of the
control architecture for the mobile robot as well as
robotic fish, since it is the link between the high-level
control strategies and the mechanical part of the robot.
It is composed of computational hardware and
communication links as well as sensor devices and
actuator drivers. Its purpose is to ensure that the
commands produced by the software become real
actions by driving actuators and to make the actual
state of the robot accessible by using sensors. Since
the computational hardware of the hardware
architecture executes the software, the performance of
the control architecture depends to a high degree on
the performance of the underlying hardware
architecture. The question arises which aspects have
to be considered to organize a hardware architecture
in such a way that it is able to provide a powerful base
for the robot control architecture.
The aspects which have to be taken into consideration
can be divided into three classes.
(i) First, there are the fundamental aspects which are
of general nature. They arise from the task that a
mobile robot is designed for. They influence almost
all components, which are used to control the mobile
robot. As a consequence they influence the design of
the hardware architecture, as well.
(ii) Second, the aim to develop a hardware
architecture, which can be used in a variety of ways
and is well suited for many applications leads to
conceptual aspects.
(iii) Third, there are implementation aspects, which
have to be considered when hardware architecture is
implemented. They are mainly caused by physical
facts.
A mobile robot has to be controlled. This implies that
there is a specific interaction between the
environment and the robot. This interaction is only
possible if there are adequate sensors and actuators
with which the state of the environment can be
perceived and changed. Depend on the actual
application field the number of sensors with a variety
of functions might be necessary. A similar statement
holds for the actuators (including the drive system).
They are selected depending on the requirements of
the environment. A complex and costly information
processing has to be done onboard the robot because
in almost all cases there is a great gap between the
data delivered from the sensors and the information
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needed to drive the actuators. As a whole, the sensors,
the information processing and the actuators form a
very complex system.
The robot has to be controlled under real-time aspects.
This point can get very critical, if the robot has to
react to fast changes in the environment or if the robot
or a part of it operate with high speed.
The power consumption of the hardware architecture
should be as low as possible. The energy storages on
the robot is limited and usually it is costly to recharge
the energy storage. Even the distribution to the
actuators should be done carefully. High efficient
drives are necessary.
The hardware architecture of the robot is organized in
shown in Fig.2. The description of the fish robot as a
hierarchically organized system seems to be suitable
to the structure of the mechanical system shown in
Fig. 3. The highest level describes in this paper is the
robotic fish as a system which is able to carry out
complex tasks in unknown and underwater
environments. The next level describes the robot as an
interacting system of high-level sensor systems. The
high-level sensors are composed of modules as
camera, compass, avoidance sensors, and acceleration
sensor. The lowest level of the drive system branch
describes joint actuators. The using of freely
programmable computer boards for the
implementation of the hardware architecture makes it
easy to implement different kinds of control
strategies. In this case, all calculations are done in the
highest hierarchy level. The modules of one hierarchy
level have to cooperate to solve a problem. Another
way to implement a control strategy is a dynamic
combination of the two mentioned approaches. The
highest level of system control is implemented on a
single board PC. It manages complex tasks like
navigation and planning and is the supervisor of the
robotic fish. The middle level contains the driven
wheels and the three DOF joints. The controllers are
built around a 16bit PIC microcontroller. The lowest
level is implemented with motor drivers.

4. Underwater inspection system
In the literature about underwater inspection, the main
sensing devices can be used is sonar. In general, this
strategy require robotic fish larger and more powerful
than is needed because of the very size of the devices
and due to the need of including extra batteries in the
vehicle [5].
Robotic fish
Camera Compass Advoidance sensor Acceleration sensor
Joint 1 Joint 2 Joint 3
Potentiometer Motor driver
...
...

Fig.2. Controlling architecture.

Servo
motor
Micro-
controller
Wireless
module
Servo
motor Pump
Camera
Battery Joint Joint Joint
Caudal fin

Fig. 3. Layout of electrical and controlling devices,
In this case, the system collecting visual information
is designed and combined in robotic fish. The system
includes the wireless camera and the receiver, the
collected data is sent to the computer for the image
processing.
Above the mechanics and computer architecture of
the robotic fish system, which should run as an
autonomous vehicle, were presented. Another part of
our study concerns with the automatic discovery and
detection of defects on the sluice and lakebed.
Therefore, a video-based inspection system was
implemented. The idea of the robotic fish is to
transform the sequence of video images to master
control panel. Based on this 2D representation further
image processing steps are performed to detect
anomalies.
The experiment of the inspection algorithms was done
by processing video sequences. This sequence was
recorded by robotic fish in swimming.
To navigate the robot through the lakes or aquariums,
to store detected defects, or to communicate between
operator and robot powerful information system was
implemented. This system should exchange
information with the robot via wireless
communication. This information will be used by the
control algorithm of the robot. On the other hand,
defects which are detected by the robot have to be
transferred to the information system. It can be a
description of the state of the pipe or the video image
of a defect. Another task which is also handled by the
information system is the monitoring of the robot. It
should be possible that the operator can monitor the
state of the inspection robot as well as its situation in
the pipe. Therefore, the information system serves as
a user interface for the operator who monitors the
robot and determines the next inspection tasks.

5. Swimming Control Algorithm
The swimming movement of body and caudal fin
are depended on the categorized types, basically
according to the wavelength and the amplitude
envelope of the propulsive wave underlying fishs
behavior. Based on this observation, there are some
alternative ways to design a robot fish. Recent studies
on the robot fish, with a synthetically consideration of
theoretic exploration and mechatronic
implementation, primarily concentrate on the
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anguilliform swimming mode and the carangiform
swimming mode. During the anguilliform locomotion,
the whole body participates in large amplitude
undulations, which is common in eel and lamprey. In
the carangiform locomotion, the bodys undulations
are entirely confined to the last 1/3 part of the body,
and thrust is produced by means of a rather stiff
caudal fin. Compared to anguilliform swimmers,
carangiform swimmers are generally faster, but with
less agility due to the relative rigidity of their bodies.
In this paper, only carangiform swimming is chosen
as the model of robot fish. Based on the biological
information of carangoid, a physical model of the
carangiform motion can be divided into two parts:
flexible body and oscillatory lunate caudal fin, where
the flexible body is represented by a series of
oscillatory hinge joints and the caudal fin by an
oscillating foil. Besides, there are several methods to
descend or ascend for fish robot; these methods are
different from the mechanical structure complexity
and performance.
Undulatory swimming of robotic fish is controlled
by connected servo motors. Like a real fish, a
propulsive body wave of robot is initiated by
coordinated, sequential oscillation of servo motors
toward both sides of robot, transmitting bending
moments to connected links to robotic fishs body that
result in characteristic waves of lateral displacement,
which travel with increasing amplitude from anterior
portion to caudal fin with four links. Based kinematics
and dynamics, the combination of spatial and
temporal coordination of actuators activation and
angular rotation generate the propulsive wave of
bending toward lateral side that likewise travels along
the body from head to tail. That is the passage of a
wave underlies fishs propulsive structure, and the
propulsive wave traverses the fish body in a direction
opposite to the overall movement and at a speed
greater than the overall swimming. A swimming
model for fish robot was presented in this paper,
which consists of two basic components: the fish
robot body is represented by a planar spline curve and
its caudal fin by an oscillating foil. The spline curve
starts from fishs center of inertia to the caudal joint,
which is assumed to take the form of a traveling
wave.
( ) ( ) { }
1,3,5
( , ) cos sin
body j j
j
y x t a x j t b x j t e e
=
+

(1)
Where y
body
represents the transverse displacement of
the fish body, x denotes the displacement along the
main axis, aj and bj denote the Fourier coefficients
derived from the digitized data. From references [7],
the body wave of motion of robotic fish is like as:
( ) ( )
2
1 2
( , ) sin
body
y x t c x c x k x t e ' + +
(2)
From above equation, it is seen that the speed control
based on oscillating frequency f. Where k indicates
the body wave number (k=2/ ), is the body
wavelength, c1 is the linear wave amplitude envelope,
c
2
is the quadratic wave amplitude envelope, and is
the body wave frequency ( = 2f = 2/T). As a
general tendency, the swimming speed increases with
the oscillating f, and f will approximate a constant
when the desired speed is achieved. Then the motion
of robotic fish in straight cruise[9] is described as:
( ) ( ) ( ) sin 2
i i i i i
A t K Am ft t t u = +A
(3)
Where A
i
is angle of i-th body motor, K
i
is amplitude
factor, A
mi
is amplitude, f is frequency of caudal fin,
u
i
is phase delay of i-th motors, and A
i
is deflection
angle. When a fish is at cruise in turning, the motion
of its tail is similar to that in straight cruise except for
a deflected angle to control the angular speed. The
angle A
i
, which increase or decrease for changing the
moving direction, should be changed smoothly to
imitate the real fish. The velocity is depended on
frequency, amplitude, and length of oscillating tail of
fish. The graph shows the oscillation angles of joints
actuators in straight cruise is shown in Fig.4.
It is very important to determine algorithms for quick-
turn or fast-start swimming of robotic fish; they are
based on researches of many biologists and mainly
focused on kinematics and dynamics of robotic fish
framework. When robotic fish changes the direction
in turning, the motion of its tail is similar to in straight
swimming except adding a deflection angle to control
the angular speed. When the deflection angle to be
changed is small, the robotic fish turns slowly,
conversely, angle is large then robot turns quickly.
The slow turn is performed by increasing or
decreasing A
i
(t) with Eq (3). However, the robotic fish
change the direction in quick turn, the equation is for
turning to change direction of robotic fish like as:
( )
( )
sin 2 ;
;
;
i q q
i i q
r
i r
r
Am t T t T
A t Am T t T
t T
Am T t T
T T
e
e
e
t

= s s


s s




Fig. 4. Graph of rotation angles of servo motor in straight
cruise case.
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water
water
D
escending
A
s
c
e
n
d
in
g
Straight
(a)

(b)
Fig. 5. The descending and ascending methods for fish
robot(a) using pump(b),

Where A
mi
is maximum amplitude, T
q
is first haft
swing time, T
e
is waiting time to keep angle change
and T
r
is returning time for end of turn.
In Fig. 5 a method is shown for going up and down.
This method is specified based on changing
gravitation. A pump is used to change the water
amount in the tank to change the center of body mass.
A changing method is changing the buoyancy by a
piston, which can alter the volume. Both of them
make the difference between the buoyancy and
gravitation. The fish robot can move up and down
vertically by using this method, and the diving depth
of the robot fish may be controlled accurately. But the
response time is slow, and the tank or the piston may
make the robot fish bigger. This method is expected to
be quick response and high dynamic performance.
However, the fish robot needs a higher swimming
speed, because it utilizes the lift force of the fins.
Changing the barycenter, the fish robot moves up and
down by changing a pitching direction, which is
realized by moving the inside weight. The mechanism
is only set inside of the body, so the motion of the
mechanism is not affected by the water flow [7]. The
turning of the robot is shown in Figs. 6 and 7. Two
neighboring joints are bent at 45. This situation is
easy to handle. In most cases, the turning can be
supported by the oscillation frequency.

6. Experiment and discussion
The experiment took place in Ho Chi Minh City
University of Technical Education to verify the
feasibility and reliability of the proposal design, a
prototyping of robotic fish is developed and
controlled by radio wave and combined by multi-
links. The robotic fish is fabricated with POM plastic,

R
e
l
1
l
2
u
Fig. 6. Turning mode in circle experiment

(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 7. Change the direction in turn right and rotate of
Robotic fish a) Initial time for rotation at 0 sec; b) Turning
after 0,5 sec; and c) rotating 180 degree after 3,5 sec.

Fig. 8. The body of robotic fish without skin.
They are processed by CNC tool machine with sizes
shown in Fig.1. The prototype of robotic fish was
developed like as Fig.8. All mechanical and electrical
devices of robotic fish were waterproofed by silicon,
adhesive and flexible rubber. The motors were
combined together to build the body of robot. The
control devices and instruments, which are
responsible for sampling data from sensors,
processing data from acquire, making decisions and
sending out signals to control servo motors, are
contained in the plastic box like as body. Autonomous
robotic fish was tested a pressure sensor and three
infrared distance sensors. Based on the sensors
location information was acquired in under water in
the time.
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Communication
Module
RF module
` Aquarium

Fig. 9. The experiment setup.

Fig. 10. Collected underwater data.
Relationship between fish robot and surrounding
environment is difficult to keep predefined path
without noise because the robot has not feedback of
its position. The swimming speed of robotic fish is
controlled by modulating oscillating frequency and
amplitude of body, and the steering is controlled by
deflection of the joints. In our current phase of
development, the prototype of our robotic fish has
been completed. The system has been designed to be
compact and light-in-weight, while retaining similar
size and proportion of an average Pearl Arowana. The
final system will be 330 cm in length and 0.5 kg in
weight. An aquarium for experiments in this paper
was conducted in a static rectangle aquarium tank
3000 mm1500 mm1000 mm with outdoor. The set
up experiment is shown in Fig.9. The collected data is
sent back to the computer. The data is analyzed and
the obstacle is detected. The underwater vision is
reduced by the color of water seaweed or the
disturbance of the radio connection, the Fig.10 shown
the result of the underwater data. The crevice is
zoomed.

7. Conclusion
A robotic fish was presented, which is able to operate
in unknown and underwater systems for monitoring
and acquiring the data. The description was focused
on the mechanical design and the control hardware of
the robot. It gives an overview how the robot is
integrated in the information system, which is used as
user interface as well as for monitoring and control of
the robot. The mechanical design allows the robot to
operate autonomously underwater. The robot is able
to dive to 1000 mm of depth. The hardware of the
control architecture is flexible enough to serve for
many different control approaches. The last point will
become very important when the control strategy is
implemented on the robot. A mixture between a full
dynamic control and kinematic control is expected to
be suitable. It will take several tests on the robot to
find the best approach in the water environment. The
presented robot has an increased mobility compared
to current systems and will enlarge the range of tasks
which can be carried out in lake, aquarium (e.g.
tracking of defects).

8. Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported Viet Nam
Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) (no.
B2010-22-54).

REFERENCES

[1] George A. Bekey, Autonomous robots from
Biological Inspiration to Implementation and
Control, The MIT press, London, 2005.
[2] Junzhi Yu and Long Wang, Parameter
Optimization of Simplified Propulsive Model
for Biomimetic Robot Fish, Proceedings of the
2005 IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, Spain, 2005, pp.
3306-3311.
[3] Promode R. Bandyopadhyay, Trends in
Biorobotic Autonomous Undersea Vehicles,
IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, VOL. 30,
NO. 1, JANUARY 2005, pp. 109-139.
[4] M. Sfakiotakis, D. M. Lane, and J. B. C. Davies,
Review of fish swimming modes for aquatic
locomotion, IEEE Journal of Oceanic
Engineering, vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 237252, 1999.
[5] Koichi Hirata, Takimoto and Kenkichi Tamura,
Koichi Hirata, Tadanori Takimoto and Kenkichi
Tamura, Study on turning performance of fish
robot, isamec 2000.
[6] Chao Zhou, Zhiqiang Cao, Shuo Wang and Min
Tan, The Posture Control and 3-D Locomotion
Implementation of Biomimetic Robot Fish,
International Conference on Intelligent Robots
and Systems, 2006, pp. 5406-5411,
[7] M. J. Lighthill, Novel on the swimming of
slender fish, Journal of fluid Mechanics, vol. 9,
1996, pp. 305-317,
[8] Junzhi Yu, Shuo Wang and Min Tan, Basic
Motion Control of a Free-swimming
Biomimetic Robot Fish, IEEE Conference on
Decision and Control, 2003, pp. 1268-1273,





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Minh Nhat is a senior in Ho
Chi Minh city University of
Technical Education at
Faculty of Mechanical
Engineering - Department
of Mechatronics in 2011.
His research interests include autonomous
mobile humanoid robots, underwater robots ,
mobile robots
He has published a number of paers in these
ereas. He is a student member of IEEE.

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.


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,

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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