ENGINEERINGNET.EU -- Chung Changhyun and Motomu Nakashima at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) developed the half-scale swimming robot by carefully analyzing the bodies of swimmers.
The ‘swumanoid’ incorporates 20 water proof motors, which are computer controlled to mimic the action of actual human swimmers.
To-date research on swimming has relied on monitoring the actual human swimmers, which leads to fundamental problems related to reproducibility of swimming movements.
In contrast the ‘swumanoid’ enables the control of precise movements and driving forces of the robot-swimmer.
The researchers say that, “in the future, we want to develop methods for producing much faster ‘swumanoids’ and analyze their movements for the development of high speed swim wear.”
These results will be presented in Taipei at “The Fifth International Symposium on Aero Aqua Bio-Mechanisms” , 25–28 August 2012.
(GL)
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