Abstract - Aquatic Propulsion Laboratory PIs ? Jarek Rossignac, Georgia Institute of Technology / Eva Kanso, University of Southern California
The oceans are filled with creatures with a wondrous array of shapes and swimming styles, yet only a small number of these have been studied. The goal of the Aquatic Propulsion Laboratory is to create computer tools for reverse engineering and evaluating the aquatic locomotion strategies across species in order to advance our knowledge of the biology and mechanics of swimming. Moreover, some of these unexplored swimming styles may inspire the design of better artificial swimmers for use in aquatic exploration, engineering, and medicine. The created tools, data sets, animations, and digital models of swimming styles will be made available to other researchers, students, and educators.
Our research combines: 1) inventing geometric representations of deforming bodies for aquatic locomotion, and interactive tools for combining them, 2) employing analytic and numerical techniques for simulating the motion of these digital swimmers, and 3) developing control and optimization methods that allow us to find the most efficient motion strategies for a given body. For validation, we are comparing our synthetic motion to published results of tail-driven motion of thunniform and carangiform fish. This validation informs our study of other swimming styles, including the flapping of the wing-like pectoral fins of rays, the vertical tail motions of whales and dolphins, the traveling waves along the dorsal fins of electric eels and the mantles of cuttlefish, the paddle-driven motion of sea turtles, the tail kicks of lobsters and the rippling bells of jellyfish. For each swimming style, we are designing a geometric model and a set of parameterized behaviors that can be controlled to achieve coordinated motion and task-level goals. We are also conducting studies of the effectiveness of these swimming styles under different fluid conditions and goals.
