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Therefore, designing a continuum flexible body is significantly important for the development of a robotic fish. However, it is still challenging to replicate these functions of a biological body due to the limitations of actuation and material. In this paper, based on a tensegrity structure, we propose a bionic design scheme for a continuum robotic fish body with a property of stiffness variation. Its detailed structures and actuation principles are also presented. A mathematical model was established to analyze the bending characteristics of the tensegrity structure, which demonstrates the feasibility of mimicking the fish-like oscillation propulsion. Additionally, the stiffness variation mechanism is also exhibited experimentally to validate the effectiveness of the designed tensegrity fish body. Finally, a novel bionic robotic fish design scheme is proposed, integrating an electronic module-equipped fish head, a tensegrity body, and a flexible tail with a caudal fin. Subsequently, a prototype was developed. Extensive experiments were conducted to explore how control parameters and stiffness variation influence swimming velocity and turning performance. The obtained results reveal that the oscillation amplitude, frequency, and stiffness variation of the tensegrity robotic fish play crucial roles in swimming motions. With the stiffness variation, the developed tensegrity robotic fish achieves a maximum swimming velocity of 295 mm\/s (0.84 body length per second, BL\/s). Moreover, the bionic tensegrity robotic fish also performs a steering motion with a minimum turning radius of 230 mm (0.68 BL) and an angular velocity of 46.6\u00b0\/s. The conducted studies will shed light on the novel design of a continuum robotic fish equipped with stiffness variation mechanisms.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/biomimetics9010019","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,2]],"date-time":"2024-01-02T03:33:33Z","timestamp":1704166413000},"page":"19","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":21,"title":["Design and Analysis of a Novel Bionic Tensegrity Robotic Fish with a Continuum Body"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"Di","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Bo","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yan","family":"Xiong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2178-0558","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jie","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-1849-6108","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ru","family":"Tong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Laboratory of Cognitive and Decision Intelligence for Complex System, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yan","family":"Meng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6347-572X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Junzhi","family":"Yu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China"},{"name":"Science and Technology on Integrated Information System Laboratory, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"37","DOI":"10.4031\/MTSJ.47.5.2","article-title":"Advantages of natural propulsive systems","volume":"47","author":"Fish","year":"2013","journal-title":"Mar. 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