RoboNautilus: a cephalopod-inspired soft robotic siphon for underwater propulsion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Early nautiloids evolved siphon-like structures hundreds of millions of years ago as a propulsion mechanism for maneuvering in underwater environments. Over time, siphons became the cephalopod method for jetting locomotion, but few bio-mimetic soft robotic replicas have been developed. The principal challenge is the limited selection of solid-state, active soft materials that can replicate the function of the active mantle in a natural siphon. Here, we present a Nautilus-inspired propulsion system that employs multilayered solid-state dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) to produce an artificial siphon. The system features a soft robotic siphon, onboard sensors for semi-autnonomous operation, and a 3D-printed shell with an internal air pocket for buoyancy and self-righting ability. Through analytical modeling and empirical approaches, we develop a soft muscle for vortex ring formation and thrust output of 17 mN at 2 kV. These findings provide a framework for designing soft actuators that can be used as new propulsors to enable efficient (Cost of Transport = 2.51), low-noise, underwater locomotion for exploration and environmental monitoring applications.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".