Miniature underwater glider: Design, modeling, and experimental results

The concept of gliding robotic fish combines gliding and fin-actuation mechanisms to realize energy-efficient locomotion and high maneuverability, and holds strong promise for mobile sensing in versatile aquatic environments. In this paper we present the modeling and design of a miniature fish-like glider, a key enabling component for gliding robotic fish. The full dynamics of the glider is first derived and then reduced to the sagittal plane, where the lift, drag, and pitch moment coefficients are obtained as linear or quadratic functions of the attack angle based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. The model is used to design the glider by accommodating stringent constraints on dimensions yet meeting the desired specification on speed. A fully untethered prototype of underwater glider is developed, with a weight of 4 kg and length of 40 cm. With a net buoyancy of 20 g, it realizes a steady gliding speed of 20 cm/s. The volume and net buoyancy of this glider are less than 10% and 5%, respectively, of those of reported gliders in the literature, and its speed per unit net buoyancy is over 9 times of those other vehicles. Experimental results have shown that the model is able to capture well both the steady glide behavior under different control inputs, and the dynamics during transients.