Flow dynamics generated by a soft-robotic coral.

Xeniid corals display intriguing behavior characterized by the pulsing of their tentacles. Unlike most animals, these corals exhibit active motion for purposes other than locomotion. Inspired by these animals, we fabricate a soft-robotic coral that mimics the behavior of the corals. We conduct 3D mesurements on the active flows generated by the pulsing of the tentacles of the robot. A novel high-speed two-color scanning volumetric laser-induced fluorescence (H2C-SVLIF) imaging technique is employed to collect particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) data. The collected PTV data is utilized to reconsctruct essential flow quantities such as the velocity field and vorticity field.