Section: Application Domains

Robotic swimmers

Some companies aim at building biomimetic robots that can swim in an aquarium, as toys but also for medical purposes. An objective of Sphinx is to model and to analyze several models of these robotic swimmers. For the moment, we focus in the motion of a nanorobot. In that case, the size of the swimmers leads to neglect the inertia forces and to only consider the viscosity effects. Such nanorobots could be used for medical purposes to introduce some medicine or perform small surgical operations. In order to get a better understanding of such robotic swimmers, we have obtained control results via shape changes and we have developed simulation tools (see [71], [70], [101], [98]). Among all the important issues, we aim to consider the following ones:

1. Solve the control problem by limiting the set of admissible deformations.

2. Find the “best” location of the actuators, in the sense of being the closest to the exact optimal control.

The main tools for this investigation are the 3D codes that we have developed for simulation of fish in a viscous incompressible fluid (SUSHI3D) or in a inviscid incompressible fluid (SOLEIL).