Follow the dummy: Measuring the influence of a biomimetic robotic fish-lure on the collective decisions of a zebrafish shoal inside a circular corridor

Abstract

Abstract-Robotic agents that are accepted by animals as conspecifics are very powerful tools in behavioral biology because of the ways they help in studying social interactions in gregarious animals. In recent years, we have developed a biomimetic robotic fish lure for the purpose of studying the behavior of the zebrafish Danio rerio. In this paper, we present a series of experiments that were designed to assess the impact of some features of the lure regarding its acceptance among the fish. We developed an experimental setup composed of a circular corridor and a motorized rotating system able to steer the lure inside the corridor with a tunable linear speed. We used the fish swimming direction and distance between the fish and the lure as a metric to characterize the level of acceptance of the lure, depending on various parameters. The methodology presented and the experimental results are promising for the field of animal-robot interaction studies.

Proactivity of fish and leadership of self-propelled robotic fish during interaction

“…At present, most studies choose collective parameters to analyze the interactive experimental results according to their experimental purpose. For example, the preference for robotic fish [11,20], time spent in robotic zone [14,17], probability of a collective avoidance and following [23], collective decision difference [2], the average angular distance used to characterize the different degree of individual distribution on the ring tank [9], and reaction time delay between robot and fish [22]. In this study, the collective parameters are put forward from two aspects: fish interaction proactivity and relative position relationship after interaction occurs.…”

“…Based on the passive-dragging model, a micromotor can be installed to drive the tail fin, enabling generating anti-Karman vortex streets when being dragged [18]. Bonnet et al [19,20] successfully biased the swimming direction of fish using a fish replica robot with a swinging caudal fin in a circular tank, indicated that the caudal fin's oscillating had a significant impact on the fish's attraction than replica's color. Chemtob et al interacted a robot with a zebrafish school and modulated the behavior of the schooling fish based on observed behaviors [21].…”