Investigation of effective parameters in point to point control for two-link fish robot

In this paper dynamic model analysis, position control and locomotion generation of a 2-link robotic fish has been presented. For this purpose, the dynamic model of a 2-link robotic fish based on Lighthill hydrodynamic theory is employed. The effect of system inputs on robot linear velocity, radius curvature of path and hydrodynamic efficiency is investigated with a large amount of simulations. A position controller is designed to generate path by the point to point method. By defining target point and angle and distance errors, control design strategy is proposed to limit the angle error to the neighborhood of zero. It is shown that bounding angle error in a ten degree neighborhood of zero, makes the distance error tend to zero. Despite former methods in which, driving both angle and distance errors to zero simultaneously result in huge control effort, the proposed control strategy in addition to improve performance by spending less control effort, make the controller structure simpler and no need to velocity feedback. Finally by using the results of model analysis, it is shown that using minimum amplitude for the 2-link robot drives the average hydrodynamic efficiency of path close enough to its optimum value.