Introduction of a Flexible Adaptive AUV-Capture Device Based on bio-inspired hydraulic Soft Robot

Abstract

To capture the non-cooperative and cross-scale underwater objects, an underwater soft bionic robot is proposed according to task function analysis and bionics inspiration. The device was mainly composed of a soft bionic arm and a soft body. It has the abilities of long-distance reachability, end pose adjustment, cross-scale capture, target measurement and recognition. The soft bionic arm is driven by water filling, which has the characteristics of light weight and large shrinkage ratio. It consists of several serially arranged modular soft actuators with diverse functions which can be designed for deep-sea object retrieving. The soft modules are connected by quick-shift joints, which make it possible to adjust the arm configuration specific to the task requirement in situ. The method to test the performance of each functional module is also introduced.