Stern Attitude Adjustment Device of a Robotic Sea Lion: Design and Experimentation

As a representative marine mammal with high flexibility and maneuverability, sea lions have a unique attitude adjustment mode, providing an excellent biomimetic reference for developing high-performance underwater vehicles. Inspired by the motion characteristics of sea lions and their hindflippers in different swimming modes, this study designs a stern attitude adjustment device that consists of a bionic pelvis unit and a bionic hindflippers unit. The bionic pelvis unit can swing in the horizontal plane, and the bionic hindflippers unit can adjust its surface area and the angle between the two hindflippers. The stern attitude adjustment device was mounted on a robotic sea lion, which was put into a tank experiment to verify the attitude adjustment performance.