An Autonomous Subgram SMA-Based Swimmer
Conor K. Trygstad, Francisco M. F. R. Gonçalves, Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia · arXiv · 2026
Swima is a bioinspired subgram microswimmer using onboard-powered SMA-wire actuators and computation to achieve autonomous swimming with measured speed, turning, and trajectory tracking.
Plain English summary
Why this matters
Key findings
- Bioinspired 900-mg swimmer propelled by two 10-mg high-work-density SMA-wire actuators
- Onboard power and computation enable autonomous swimming for over 18 minutes
- Maximum reported speed: 22.4 mm/s (0.56 Bl/s)
- Maximum reported turning rate: 14°/s
- Trajectory tracking: ~6.5° RMS error for 0-degree heading reference across multiple tests
Limitations
The abstract does not specify experimental setup details, environmental conditions, power/actuation efficiency, long-term durability, or how performance scales beyond the reported tests.
Publication
- Publisher
- arXiv
- Publication date
- June 12, 2026
- Research type
- Preprint
- arXiv
- 2606.15028
- Access
- open
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