Robotic swarm swims like a school of fish

Schools of fish exhibit complex, synchronized behaviors that help them find food, migrate, and evade predators. No one fish or sub-group of fish coordinates these movements, nor do fish communicate with each other about what to do next. Rather, these collective behaviors emerge from so-called implicit coordination -- individual fish making decisions based on what they see their neighbors doing. This type of decentralized, autonomous self-organization and coordination has long fascinated scientists, especially in the field of robotics. Now, a team of researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed fish-inspired robots that can synchronize their movements like a real school of fish, without any external control.