As someone who has spent more swimming hrs in the water than 1000 average people combined I found this a poor use of everything. No wonder Japan is falling far behind.
Next the human form and especially this unit is about the worst you can get for propulsion movement in the water as can exert little force with a very large amount of drag.
I hunt fish. etc for food underwater, no scuba, just snorkeling to 50' down and even with fins I'm almost the slowest fish down there except the poison ones. Only by tactics is one able to get the fish one wants to eat like sneaking around a coral head, etc and surprising them.
I think the point of optimized swimwear is to not slow down the competitive swimmer. Any clothing does so: it introduces drag. Regarding arm movements, it's important to remember that this hardware is a first effort, although the simulation software is not, and the researchers point out that getting the shoulder movement down was the hardest part, as it's the most complex. It's a WIP.
I think it would be a good idea under certain conditions like a bad weather where it's almost impossible to send someone to rescue, but I think the legs in water are inefficient and for that a propeller for lower body is much better in many aspects. The upper body with limbs is a good idea if you are trying to grab someone or something from the water. Nice work though!
This is a great start. Agree with Beth that its movements are quite choppy. I also noticed that it has the advantage (or disadvantage for good human swimming simulation) of not having to raise its head above water to take a breath. We all could swim a bit better if breathing was unnecessary. Seems like simulating taking a breath and seeing where you are going must be a part of this at some point.
Beth. I agreee with you. When I first saw the video, the first thing that I noticed was that the movement was choppy. Why they didn't put sensors on a swimmer to provide a model is beyond me.
The other thing that I noticed was that the arm movement was wrong. You have to do two things at the same time which the robot seems to not be able to do. You pull down one arm at the same time you move the second arm up. It appears that they move the one arm up AND THEN move the other arm down and back.
I would bet that if they put it in water that it would sink which is why the video doesn't show the robot actually swimming.
Using the robot to enable competitive swimwear--that's likely to open up the can worms of too much reliance on technology and not enough on performance of the human body. Nevertheless, as Ann points out, the fact that they put all this energy into developing the full swimmer's body model is exciting and an effort that could have applicability in numerous places.
Rescue robots are currently being developed mostly for use on land. Based on some other nautical robot designs, I'd guess that rescue robots developed for use in the water would not replicate the details of human anatomy or swimming movements, as the swumanoid does, since human swimming movements aren't the most efficient way to move through water. The swumanoid has been optimized for those last two functions, but rescue robots are optimized for speed and strength, such as lifting or pulling heavy objects. For example, the Hawkes Remotes T-Series is small, compact and provides enough torque to lift 220 lbs: http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&itc=dn_analysis_element&doc_id=246206&image_number=11
This kind of a robot could be great for rescue missions in storms, becuase if it could be made it so that it could get itself back upright you could then send that out to rescue people.
Thanks, gsmith120. That's an interesting idea, to combine these swimming abilities with some of the abilities of the robots shown in the nautical robot slideshow. The team stated that its next steps are to develop faster robots to better emulate competitive swimmer's movements and also to come up with swimwear optimized for high-speed swimming.
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