The robofish testbed brings live fish together with autonomously controlled robotic fish in a shallow water tank. The purpose is to study the mechanisms of schooling behavior by creating a controlled setting in which the robotic fish follow prescribed responsive behaviors. The robotic fish can be programmed with different behaviors, for example, those representative of a predator or those of an informed conspecific. An overhead camera system and real-time tracking software provide measurements from which the state of the live and robotic school can be estimated. These estimates are fed back continuously to a computer that implements a motion control algorithm for the robotic fish. In this way each robotic fish can control its own behavior in response to its environment.

This second video shows details of the tracking:

Publications

D. T. Swain, I. D. Couzin, and N. E. Leonard, Real-time feedback-controlled robotic fish for behavioral experiments with fish schools, Proceedings of the IEEE, 2012.