Project Details

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Develop a mobile app controller for MUBot biomimetic fish

Company: PSU Mechanical Engineering 3

Major(s):
Primary: CMPSC
Secondary: EE
Optional: CMPEN, ME

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

This project will continue a previous effort in spring 2022 to design a STEM education platform to enable K-12 students to create and program their own robotic fishes for play, competition and learning. The students will be working primarily with Dr. Bo Cheng’s team in BioRob-InFL lab at Penn State, but will also interact with Dr. Matthew Lear’s team at Applied Research Lab, and Dr. Guha Manogharan’s team at Penn State. Dr. Lear is leading the effort to develop a modular, water-tight version of the MUBot biomimetic fish, and Dr. Manogharan is learning the effort to enable 3D printing and electronic packaging for fabrication of the MUBot biomimetic fish. Dr. Cheng’s team has developed prototypes of modular, magnetic, undulatory robots (MUBot), which is capable of swimming faster than 1.5 body length per second. MUBot can also be designed with different body segments/actuators, stiffness and shape as well as with different tail shape and stiffness. The students in this team are expected to transform the existing designs into a K-12 education platform. Specifically, this platform will allow K-12 students to 1) easily design and assembly their own robotic fish based on the modular design of MUBot, 2) program the swimming gaits of the robot using a custom computer or mobile phone software, 3) play and compete with each other in a mini swimming pool with multiple lanes, and 4) learn basics of robotics, fluid dynamics, control and fish biology in the above activities. The students in this team are also expected to consult and communicate with Discovery Space of Central Pennsylvania in the development. This capstone team will focus on the software aspect of this project, and to develop an app in smartphone for controlling MUBot biomimetic fish.