Lightweight robots are capable of repeated aquatic jump-gliding through high-powered jet propulsion with water-reactive fuel. Robotic vehicles that are capable of autonomously transitioning between various terrains and fluids have received notable attention in the past decade due to their potential to navigate previously unexplored and/or unpredictable environments. Specifically, aerial-aquatic mobility will enable robots to operate in cluttered aquatic environments and carry out a variety of sensing tasks. One of the principal challenges in the development of such vehicles is that the transition from water to flight is a power-intensive process. At a small scale, this is made more difficult by the limitations of electromechanical actuation and the unfavorable scaling of the physics involved. This paper investigates the use of solid reactants as a combustion gas source for consecutive aquatic jump-gliding sequences. We present an untethered robot that is capable of multiple launches from the water surface and of transitioning from jetting to a glide. The power required for aquatic jump-gliding is obtained by reacting calcium carbide powder with the available environmental water to produce combustible acetylene gas, allowing the robot to rapidly reach flight speed from water. The 160-gram robot could achieve a flight distance of 26 meters using 0.2 gram of calcium carbide. Here, the combustion process, jetting phase, and glide were modeled numerically and compared with experimental results. Combustion pressure and inertial measurements were collected on board during flight, and the vehicle trajectory and speed were analyzed using external tracking data. The proposed propulsion approach offers a promising solution for future high-power density aerial-aquatic propulsion in robotics.

中文翻译：

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与水反应性燃料的连续水上滑翔

轻型机器人能够通过使用水反应性燃料的大功率喷气推进器来重复进行水上跳跃滑行。在过去的十年中，能够在各种地形和流体之间自动过渡的机器人车辆因其在先前未开发和/或不可预测的环境中行驶的潜力而受到了广泛的关注。具体来说，水上机动性将使机器人能够在混乱的水生环境中运行并执行各种传感任务。这种车辆的发展中的主要挑战之一是从水到飞行的过渡是耗费功率的过程。在小规模上，由于机电致动的局限性和所涉及的物理的不利缩放，这变得更加困难。本文研究了使用固体反应物作为连续水上跳跃滑翔序列的燃烧气体源。我们提出了一种不受束缚的机器人，该机器人能够从水面多次发射，并且能够从喷射过渡到滑行。通过使碳化钙粉末与可用的环境水反应以产生可燃的乙炔气体，来获得水上跳跃滑行所需的动力，从而使机器人能够从水中迅速达到飞行速度。160克机器人使用0.2克电石可以实现26米的飞行距离。在此，对燃烧过程，喷射阶段和滑行进行了数值建模，并与实验结果进行了比较。燃烧压力和惯性测量是在飞行过程中在机上收集的，并使用外部跟踪数据分析了车辆的轨迹和速度。所提出的推进方法为未来的机器人技术中的高功率密度航空水上推进提供了有希望的解决方案。