Modeling and Experimental Validation of a Bionic Underwater Robot with Undulating and Flapping Composite Propulsion

As the demand for marine resource development escalates, underwater robots have gained prominence as a technological alternative to human participation in deep-sea exploration, resource assessments, and other intricate tasks, underscoring their academic and engineering importance. Traditional underwater robots, however, typically exhibit limited resilience to environmental disturbances and are readily obstructed or interfered with by aquatic vegetation, sediments, and other physical impediments. This paper examines the biological locomotion mechanisms of black ghostfish, which utilize undulatory fins and flapping wings, and presents a coupled undulatory-flapping propulsion strategy to facilitate rapid movement and precise posture adjustment in underwater robots. A multimodal undulatory-flapping bio-inspired underwater robotic platform is proposed, with a systematic explanation of its structure and motion principles. Additionally, kinematic and dynamic models for coordinated propulsion with multiple actuators are developed, and the robot’s performance under various driving modes is evaluated using computational fluid dynamics simulations. The simulation outcomes confirm the viability of the developed dynamic model. A prototype was constructed, and a PID-based control algorithm was developed to assess the robot’s performance in linear movement, turning, and other behaviors in both undulatory fin and flapping modes. Experimental findings indicate that the robot, functioning in undulatory fin propulsion mode at a frequency of 2.5 Hz, attains a velocity of 0.35 m/s, while maintaining attitude angle fluctuation errors within ±5°. In the flapping propulsion mode, precise posture modifications can be executed. These results validate the feasibility of the proposed multimodal bio-inspired underwater robot design and provide a new approach for the development of high-performance, autonomous bio-inspired underwater robots.