Design of a human powered bionic boat


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Creator/Artist: Abhijeet Kumar

Category: Product Design

Document: Special Project

Batch: 2002-2004

Source: India,   IDC IIT Bombay

Period:  1999-2008

Medium: Presentation pdf

Supervisor: Prof. Vijay P. Bapat


Detailed Description

The project aimed at utilising the propelling and manoeuvring qualities of fish to conceptualise a human-powered boat. Similar projects have been studied deeply under the discipline of bionics; however, what was needed was the conceptualization of the principle into a feasible product, which was ultimately the aim of the project. The initial task was to come to terms with the existing studies in this area and outline guidelines that had to be followed. As I understood from the data on scale models, I have been solely devoted to perfecting the motion of fish. Little effort has been made to put the principle into product form. In our effort to conceptualise a product, a scale model of the mechanism was made and experimented upon. Useful observations were taken from our experiments with the model; however, given the constraint of time in this project; the data generated is mostly qualitative. Although this project was with me for only a few months, it was undertaken under Prof. V.P. Bapat, IDC, who is an authority in the field of bionics. Given his special interest in this area, the project is under development under his guidance.