Multi-Robot SALP System: Supplementary Movie S4

Yang, Zhiyuan; Zhang, Yipeng; Li, Jingshuo; Mulay, Neel; Hsieh, M. Ani; Sutherland, Kelly R.; Arratia, Paulo E.; Sung, Cynthia. "Coupled Jet Coordination and Physical Arrangement in Salp-Inspired Multi-Robot Swimming", in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, iss. RoboTwin, 2025.

Salps are underwater invertebrates considered to be among the world’s most energy-efficient examples of jet propulsion. They can swim as solitary individuals or as physically connected colonies, coordinating their jets to produce collective movement. Inspired by salps, we developed the SALP (Salp-inspired Approach to Low-energy Propulsion) system, where individual SALP robots can be physically connected into a multi-SALP group, and we investigate the coupled effects of physical arrangement and jet coordination on the swimming performance and energy efficiency of a two-SALP system.

The SALP system is a useful platform for exploring salp-inspired multi-jet locomotion strategies, enabling decoupling of physical and control parameters to expose underlying locomotion physics in ways that are difficult with the biological salp. These insights advance our understanding of multi-jet locomotion and support the development of more energy-efficient jet-propelled underwater robots in the future.

Full paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-3190/ae1396

Видео Multi-Robot SALP System: Supplementary Movie S4 канала Sung Robotics Group