Efficient, Highly Maneuverable Artificial Fish for Stealthy Surveillance

For maximum effectiveness and applicability, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) should be affordable and expendable, have the capability to be launched on-demand from any submarine or surface ship, stealthy, and able to carry out its mission with minimal possibility of detection. An effective AUV system must also have a high degree of autonomy, reliability, and robustness and should be efficient to minimize size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements. A promising direction in which to seek innovative designs for AUVs with the aforementioned desirable characteristics is biology and the examination of the mechanisms used in natural swimmers. The study of fish swimming mechanisms provides a large set of potential design ideas. Selecting an appropriate model from this set depends critically on matching the engineering design inputs to the species that most closely embodies the desired solution. In the proposed effort, an artificial fish design based on the biological model of the electric ray will be developed to meet the desired characteristics. The important advantages of the proposed biologically inspired AUV system are energy efficiency, range of low and medium speeds, flexible fins and body leading to high maneuverability, stealth, and fully autonomous operation.