Force Optimization of Elongated Undulating Fin Robot Using Improved PSO-Based CPG

Biorobotic fishes have a huge impact on the development of underwater devices due to both fast swimming speed and great maneuverability. In this paper, an enhanced CPG model is investigated for locomotion control of an elongated undulating fin robot inspired by black knife fish. The proposed CPG network includes sixteen coupled Hopf oscillators for gait generation to mimic fishlike swimming. Furthermore, an enhanced particle swarm optimization (PSO), called differential particle swarm optimization (D-PSO), is introduced to find a set of optimal parameters of the modified CPG network. The proposed D-PSO-based CPG network is not only able to increase the thrust force in order to make the faster swimming speed but also avoid the local maxima for the enhanced propulsive performance of the undulating fin robot. Additionally, a comparison of D-PSO with the traditional PSO and genetic algorithm (GA) has been performed in tuning the parametric values of the CPG model to prove the superiority of the introduced method. The D-PSO-based optimization technique has been tested on the actual undulating fin robot with sixteen fin-rays. The obtained results show that the average propulsive force of the untested material is risen 5.92%, as compared to the straight CPG model.