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A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. Fins are also used to increase surface areas for heat transfer purposes, or simply as ornamentation.
Manta rays are large rays belonging to the genus Mobula. The larger species, M. birostris, reaches 7 m (23 ft) in width, while the smaller, M. alfredi, reaches 5.5 m (18 ft). Both have triangular pectoral fins, horn-shaped cephalic fins and large, forward-facing mouths. They are classified among the Myliobatiformes and are placed in the family Myliobatidae. They have the largest brains and brain to body ratio of all fish, and can pass the mirror test.
Syntactic foams are composite materials synthesized by filling a metal, polymer, cementitious or ceramic matrix with hollow spheres called microballoons or cenospheres or non-hollow spheres as aggregates. In this context, "syntactic" means "put together." The presence of hollow particles results in lower density, higher specific strength, lower coefficient of thermal expansion, and, in some cases, radar or sonar transparency.
Michael Triantafyllou is Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Director of the Center for Ocean Engineering, Head of the Area of Ocean Science and Engineering, and Director of the Testing Tank and Propeller Tunnel Facilities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is best known for his work on underwater robots, based upon and emulating the performance of fish, including the six-foot laboratory robot the RoboTuna, the free-swimming RoboPike (1998), and the RoboTurtle (2005).
The University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), is the undergraduate and graduate engineering school of the University of Virginia. Established in 1836, the school is the oldest university-affiliated engineering school in United States, and oldest engineering school in the Southern United States.
Naomi Ehrich Leonard is the Edwin S. Wilsey Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. She is the director of the Princeton Council on Science and Technology and an associated faculty member in the Program in Applied & Computational Mathematics, Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and the Program in Quantitative and Computational Biology. She is the founding editor of the Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems.
Bio-inspired robotic locomotion is a fairly new subcategory of bio-inspired design. It is about learning concepts from nature and applying them to the design of real-world engineered systems. More specifically, this field is about making robots that are inspired by biological systems, including Biomimicry. Biomimicry is copying from nature while bio-inspired design is learning from nature and making a mechanism that is simpler and more effective than the system observed in nature. Biomimicry has led to the development of a different branch of robotics called soft robotics. The biological systems have been optimized for specific tasks according to their habitat. However, they are multifunctional and are not designed for only one specific functionality. Bio-inspired robotics is about studying biological systems, and looking for the mechanisms that may solve a problem in the engineering field. The designer should then try to simplify and enhance that mechanism for the specific task of interest. Bio-inspired roboticists are usually interested in biosensors, bioactuators, or biomaterials. Most of the robots have some type of locomotion system. Thus, in this article different modes of animal locomotion and few examples of the corresponding bio-inspired robots are introduced.
Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of Actinopterygii, Dipnomorpha, Actinistia and Chondrichthyes fishes. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as seen in sharks. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the spine and are supported only by muscles. Their principal function is to help the fish swim.
The marine wildlife of Baa Atoll consists of marine species living in a circular archipelago in the Maldives, inside the administrative division of Baa Atoll, which is the southern part of Maalhosmadulu Atoll. Baa Atoll was named a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 2011.
Radhika Nagpal is an Indian-American computer scientist and researcher in the fields of self-organising computer systems, biologically-inspired robotics, and biological multi-agent systems. She is the Augustine Professor in Engineering in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at Princeton University. Formerly, she was the Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In 2017, Nagpal co-founded a robotics company under the name of Root Robotics. This educational company works to create many different opportunities for those unable to code to learn how.
Leah Grace Smith is an American competition swimmer who specializes in freestyle events. Smith is a member of the 2016 US Women's Olympic Swimming team, and won a bronze medal in the 400 m freestyle and a gold medal in the 4 × 200 m relay at those games.
Maurizio Porfiri is an engineering professor, mostly noted for his work with robotic fish and aquatic research. His research revolves around modeling and control of complex systems, with applications from mechanics to behavior, public health, and robotics. He is an Institute Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. He is also part of the core faculty of New York University's Center for Urban Science and Progress. In 2022, he was appointed the director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress.
A robot fish is a type of bionic robot that has the shape and locomotion of a living fish. Most robot fish are designed to emulate living fish which use body-caudal fin (BCF) propulsion, and can be divided into three categories: single joint (SJ), multi-joint (MJ) and smart material-based "soft-body" design.
Naira Hovakimyan is an Armenian control theorist who holds the W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins professorship of the Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the director of AVIATE Center of flying cars at UIUC, funded through a NASA University Leadership Initiative. She was the inaugural director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory during 2015–2017, associated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Aquanauts is a 1980 Soviet science fiction film directed by Igor Vosnesensky, based on the story of the same name by Sergei Pavlov.
Batoids are a superorder of cartilaginous fish consisting of skates, rays and other fish all characterized by dorsoventrally flattened bodies and large pectoral fins fused to the head. This distinctive morphology has resulted in several unique forms of locomotion. Most Batoids exhibit median paired fin swimming, utilizing their enlarged pectoral fins. Batoids that exhibit median paired fin swimming fall somewhere along a spectrum of swimming modes from mobuliform to rajiform based on the number of waves present on their fin at once. Of the four orders of Batoidae this holds truest for the Myliobatiformes (rays) and the Rajiformes (skates). The two other orders: Rhinopristiformes and Torpediniformes exhibit a greater degree of body caudal fin swimming.
Silvia Ferrari is an Italian-American aerospace engineer. She is John Brancaccio Professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University and also the director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Control (LISC) at the same university.
Chiara Daraio is an Italian-American materials scientist and acoustical engineer. She is the G. Bradford Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology.
Elizabeth Jane Opila is an American materials scientist who is the Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia. Her research considers the development of materials for extreme environments. She was elected Fellow of the Electrochemical Society in 2013 and the American Ceramic Society in 2014.
Suzanne Weaver Smith is an American mechanical and aerospace engineer whose research involves the structural analysis of large flexible truss structures, damage detection in intelligent structures, and the use of drones to direct emergency responses. She is a professor of mechanical engineering, the former Donald and Gertrude Lester Professor in Mechanical Engineering and director of the Unmanned Systems Consortium at the University of Kentucky.
References
- ↑ "Hilary Bart-Smith, Professor", Faculty, University of Virginia Engineering, retrieved 2021-02-19
- 1 2 Curriculum vitae (PDF), July 2009, retrieved 2021-02-19
- ↑ Hilary Bart-Smith at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ↑ Dye, Lee (14 August 2012), "The Amazing Mechanical Manta Ray: Engineers Copy Nature", ABC News
- ↑ Samarrai, Fariss (28 March 2008), "Manta ray-inspired undersea vehicle concept wins Hilary Bart-Smith a $6.5 million award from US Office of Naval Research", UVA Today, University of Virginia
- ↑ "The robot tuna outbeating swimmers", Digital Planet, BBC, 16 October 2019
- ↑ Crane, Leah (18 September 2019), "Fast swimming fish robot could perform underwater surveillance", New Scientist
- ↑ Kettlewell, Caroline (Winter 2019), "Researchers try to outswim a tuna", Virginia Magazine, University of Virginia
- ↑ Newman, Caroline (13 January 2016), "From refugee shelters to batteries, new grants advance promising research", UVA Today, University of Virginia
