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The speed-up of robotic fish is hoped to aim at practical use. It is therefore important to develop methods for making such robots swim faster, and computer simulations are invaluable. In this study, a computational simulation model was developed for three-dimensional fluid-structure interaction analysis. The flow around the caudal fin can be analyzed by treating the fin as an elastic body. Experiments were also carried out and good agreement was found between the experimental results and those of the numerical analysis. Moreover, the effects of the flexibility of caudal fin on the robot's propulsive performance were investigated using computational simulations.

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It is necessary for a small aqua robot to search for a target in order to investigate creatures such as fishes in a river or lake. However, control signals by electric wave from outside do not reach a robot easily in water. Therefore, aqua robots must search the target autonomously without signals from outside. It is important for a robot to gaze forward and recognize the target in water. In this study, we have used a fish robot named FOCUS which can swim in water by using the tail fin. This robot has some micro CMOS cameras and a FPGA circuit board for data processing. A red object is detected with the CMOS camera. In addition, FPGA calculates where the red object is located in the image. This robot controls the tail fin mechanism and submersible system in order to decide the course of the robot in response to the calculated positional coordinates. We have confirmed that this robot can recognize a color target and follow the target in water.

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