This paper describes the design concept of a bio-inspired legged underwater and estimating its performance by implementing simulations. Especially the leg structure of an underwater organism, diving beetles, is fully adopted to our designing to employ its efficiency for swimming. To make it possible for the robot to both walk and swim, the transformable kinematic model according to applications of the leg is proposed. To aid in the robot development and estimate swimming performance of the robot in advance, an underwater simulator has been constructed and an approximated model based on the developing robot was set up in the simulation. Furthermore, previous work that we have done, the swimming locomotion produced by a swimming patten generator based on the control parameters, is briefly mentioned in the paper and adopted to the simulation for extensive studies such as path planning and control techniques. Through the results, we established the strategy of leg joints which make the robot swim in the three dimensional space to reach effective controls.

• 김희중(Mechatronics Engineering, Chungnam National University) | Kim Hee-Joong
• 전봉환(Ocean System Engineering Research Department, MOERI, KORDI) | Jun Bong-Huan
• 이지홍(Mechatronics Engineering, Chungnam National University) | Lee Jihong Corresponding author