Micro-robotics at low Reynolds number has been a growing area of research over the past decade. We propose and study a generalized 3-link robotic swimmer inspired by the planar Purcell's swimmer at low Reynolds number. By incorporating out-of-plane motion of the outer limbs, this mechanism generalizes the planar Purcell's swimmer, which has been widely studied in the literature. Such an evolution of the limbs' motion results in the swimmer's base link to evolve in a 3 dimensional space. This swimmer's configuration space admits a trivial principal fiber bundle structure, which along with the slender body theory at the low Reynolds number regime, facilitates obtaining a kinematic form of the equations. A coordinate-free expression for the local form of the kinematic connection is then derived, followed by a local parametrization for simulation purpose. We then present a local controllability analysis of the swimmer at the low Reynolds number regime using weak controllability results of the planar Purcell's swimmer.
['Sudin Kadam', 'Ravi N. Banavar']
Geometry of locomotion of the generalized Purcell's swimmer : Modelling and controllability