Bio-inspired Swimming Robot

In the lab, I built a robot to study how fixed-position bacteria move the fluid around them. We designed this robot using a bead system to analyze this phenomenon. The robot consists of three main parts: the body and two arms. The body and arms are connected by servos, allowing the arms to move radially.

I applied cosine signals to the servos, with one of the servos offset by a phase angle. When the phase angle was set to 0°, both servos moved in sync with the cosine signal, and we observed no movement in the beads. Similarly, at a phase angle of 180°, there was still no movement in the beads.

However, when I set the phase angle to 90°, I observed directional movement in the beads. Furthermore, when I set the phase angle to -90°, the beads moved in the opposite direction compared to the +90° phase angle.