Bio-Inspired Robotic Shoals

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Underwater robotic swarms offer a potential solution to environmental and infrastructure monitoring. Theyhave the advantage of being able to cover large areas and tackle complex tasks, while remaining robust toindividual failures using simple and cheap robots. When operating swarms numbering in the thousands,you need a controller that is simple and effective. To this end, we take inspiration from shoaling in nature,focussing on species that can robustly operate in challenging environments.In particular we look at the group of fish called cichlids (family Cichlidae), whom have been noted to haveexpanded lateral lines that are thought to aid in shoaling behaviours. Through this work we will study themorphology and resulting collective behaviour of these fish to develop a new underwater robot platformwith artificial lateral lines and more robust shoaling capabilities. We also expect this study to result in newinsight in biology.