Votrex surf 1 (VIDEO)

PNAS Nexus

Caption

Example trajectory of CARL surfing a vortex ring for propulsion. In response to sensed acceleration, CARL autonomously executed a short burst maneuver to become entrained into the material boundary of a vortex ring. Afterwards, CARL advected passively across the tank with the vortex ring. The trajectory of CARL is indicated by the white line, with the short maneuver highlighted in red. Velocity vectors and vorticity from PIV measurements are overlaid to indicate the vortex ring.

Credit

John O. Dabiri and Peter Gunnarson

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