Free Swimming Soft Robotic Jellyfish with Adaptive Depth Control

This thesis is encompasses the design, construction, control and testing of an improvement upon the novel soft robotic Jennifish platform. The advancement of this platform includes the addition of light and depth sensors as well increasing the separation of tentacle groups from two to three sets. The final vehicle model consists nine PneuNetstyle actuators divided into three groups of three, molded around a machined Delrin pressure vessel. With a 12V submersible impellor pump connected to each actuator grouping, propulsion is created by the filling and emptying of these tentacles with surrounding ambient water. The Jellyfish2.0 is capable of omnidirectional lateral movement as well as upward driven motion. The vehicle also has a temperature sensor and IMU as did the previous of this platform. Qualitative free-swimming testing was conducted, recorded and analyzed as well as quantitative inline load cell testing, to create a benchmark for comparison with other jellyfish like robots.