Development of multiple robotic fish cooperation platform

Abstract

This article presents the development of a multiple robotic fish cooperation platform, which is established by employing a group of radio-controlled, multi-link fish-like robots. This work is inspired by the observation from nature that the capability of one single fish is limited, as in order to survive the atrocious circumstances in the sea, fish often swim in schools. The analogical situations occur in the robotic fish case. In engineering applications, most missions are so complex that they must be accomplished by effective cooperation of multiple fish robots. The platform presented in this article, as a novel test bed for multiple robotic fish cooperation, can be applied to different types of complex tasks. More importantly, it provides a good platform to test and verify all kinds of algorithms and strategies for cooperation of multiple underwater mobile robots. We use two cooperative tasks as examples to heuristically demonstrate the performance of this platform.