Fishing for Robots

Abstract

This chapter reviews various research efforts to study animal group behaviors to boost bioengineering. The chapter also shows that understanding how a school of fish moves as one provides insights into controlling teams of autonomous robots. Unpowered robotic gliders can use simple rules to maintain their formation, even in choppy waters. Researchers have tried to use dynamical systems analysis to understand how the group makes the right decisions, how it uses feedback to correct poor decisions, and whether such rules would work with robots. Using analytic methods, teams looked at how the two informed groups of fish battled it out to lead the naive fish, which made up the vast majority of the school. Research has shown how sensitive group patterns can be to who is sensing whom. As soon as everyone starts sensing everyone else, the only stable solution is the whole group moving in a straight-line direction.