Uploaded March 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
The body stiffness of fish is so finely tuned for efficient swimming that even a dead fish will passively swim upstream in response to a vortex wake.
A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Germany, from Seoul National University in Korea, and from Harvard University in the US has developed a soft robot that emulates the performance-enhancing body dynamics of real fish. Their work "Modeling and Control of a Soft Robotic Fish with Integrated Soft Sensing" was published in Wiley’s Advanced Intelligent Systems journal, in a special issue on "Energy Storage and Delivery in Robotic Systems".
The robot is made entirely of soft, flexible materials including a liquid metal stretch sensor that detects bending in real-time.
The team’s data-driven model of the robot (black line) allows the scientists to accurately simulate the motion of the soft fish robot (blue line).
The simulation is also able to capture the stiffness changing effect of the pneumatic actuators as they inflate and deflate.
The model uses a genetic algorithm to match experimental data, and can also predict the robot’s response to hydrodynamic forces.
This has allowed us to design and tune control algorithms for efficient swimming, using feedback from soft strain sensors.
Find out more here: bio.is.mpg.de or is.mpg.de/news
The body stiffness of fish is so finely tuned for efficient swimming that even a dead fish will passively swim upstream in response to a vortex wake.
A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Germany, from Seoul National University in Korea, and from Harvard University in the US has developed a soft robot that emulates the performance-enhancing body dynamics of real fish. Their work "Modeling and Control of a Soft Robotic Fish with Integrated Soft Sensing" was published in Wiley’s Advanced Intelligent Systems journal, in a special issue on "Energy Storage and Delivery in Robotic Systems".
The robot is made entirely of soft, flexible materials including a liquid metal stretch sensor that detects bending in real-time.
The team’s data-driven model of the robot (black line) allows the scientists to accurately simulate the motion of the soft fish robot (blue line).
The simulation is also able to capture the stiffness changing effect of the pneumatic actuators as they inflate and deflate.
The model uses a genetic algorithm to match experimental data, and can also predict the robot’s response to hydrodynamic forces.
This has allowed us to design and tune control algorithms for efficient swimming, using feedback from soft strain sensors.
Find out more here: bio.is.mpg.de or is.mpg.de/news
