Bioinspired Cross-Medium Aquatic Robots

Dear Colleagues,

In complex underwater environments, traditional underwater robots propelled by screw propellers are limited in operation, but scientists and engineers have been inspired by the movements and lives of aquatic animals. Through the research and imitation of aquatic animals, many bionic robots have been developed. Due to their characteristics of low noise, high maneuverability, and high biological affinity, these robots have broad development potential.

Although most aquatic animals can only survive in an underwater environment, some of them can still perform cross-medium activities, such as turtles, salamanders, flying fish, and so on. If this feature is imitated in robots through bionic technology, the scope of applications for aquatic robots will be greatly expanded. Because of its high value and great interest, this field has gradually become a research hotspot in recent years.

Even though scientists have made many breakthroughs in the field of bionic technology, given the long evolution of aquatic animals, the gaps between the performance of biomimetic aquatic robots and real animals are still very obvious, especially in the aspects of motion, perception, and decision-making. To improve the overall performance of biomimetic aquatic robots, more in-depth studies are needed in the fields of structure design, simulation evolution, motion control, sensor fusion,  path planning, and intelligence.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to gather the research progress of biomimetic aquatic robots in different laboratories. The focus is not limited to underwater biomimetic robots, but also includes those biomimetic robots that can move in different media, such as water–land and water–air.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Design and modeling of novel bionic aquatic robots;
• Amphibious robots;
• Intelligent control algorithms;
• Navigation and path planning strategies;
• Underwater and cross-medium (water–air) communication technology;
• Robot formation strategy and cluster control technology;
• Underwater sensor design and multi-sensor signal fusion;
• Experimental investigations on motion performance of bionic aquatic robots;
• Computational fluid dynamics simulation analysis of bionic aquatic robots.

Dr. Yong Zhong
Dr. Jialei Song
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• biomimetics
• multi-medium
• aquatic Robots
• soft robotics
• motion control
• multi-agent
• sensor fusion
• underwater communication
• computational fluid dynamics
• path planning
• hydrodynamic experiment