Bio-Inspired Robotic Shoals

水下机器人群为环境和基础设施监测提供了一个潜在的解决方案。它们的优势在于能够覆盖大面积并处理复杂任务，同时使用简单廉价的机器人对单个故障保持稳健。当操作数以千计的蜂群时，您需要一个简单而有效的控制器。为此，我们从自然界的浅滩中汲取灵感，专注于能够在具有挑战性的环境中强大运作的物种。我们特别研究了一种叫做慈鲷的鱼类（慈鲷科），人们注意到它们有扩大的侧线，这被认为有助于鱼群行为。通过这项工作，我们将研究这些鱼的形态和由此产生的集体行为，以开发一种新的水下机器人平台，该平台具有人工侧线和更强大的浅滩能力。我们也希望这项研究能给生物学带来新的见解。

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.