Manta ray inspires record breaking butterfly bots

The butterfly bots, whose swimming motion resembles the way a person’s arms move when they are swimming the butterfly stroke, have been developed at North Carolina State University.

“To date, swimming soft robots have not been able to swim faster than one body length per second, but marine animals – such as manta rays – are able to swim much faster, and much more efficiently,” said Jie Yin, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State. “We wanted to draw on the biomechanics of these animals to see if we could develop faster, more energy-efficient soft robots. The prototypes we’ve developed work exceptionally well.”

The researchers developed two types of butterfly bots, one built for speed and able to reach average speeds of 3.74 body lengths per second, and a second designed to be highly manoeuvrable and capable of making sharp left or right turns. This manoeuvrable prototype was able to reach speeds of 1.7 body lengths per second, the team said.