To fight the invasive fish, the international team, composed of biologists and engineers from Australia, the U.S., and Italy, turned to its natural predator -- the largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) -- for inspiration. They crafted a robotic fish that mimics the appearance and simulates the movements of the real predator. Aided by computer vision, the robot strikes when it spots the mosquitofish approaching tadpoles of an Australian species (Litoria moorei), which is threatened by mosquitofish in the wild. Scared and stressed, the mosquitofish showed fearful behaviors and experienced weight loss, changes in body shape, and a reduction in fertility, all of which impair their survival and reproduction. "Mosquitofish is one of the 100 world's worst invasive species, and current methods to eradicate it are too expensive and time-consuming to effectively contrast its spread," says first author Giovanni Polverino (@GioPolverino) of the University of Western Australia.

The dream of robots and intelligent machines that can perform a wide array of tasks has been around in the common visions and fantasies of people for centuries. Machines that can do the work of people without having the failings of people is one of those long-sought visions of the future. Originally envisioned as physical systems, the term robot is now used to describe any sort of software or hardware-based automation, whether intelligent or not, that can perform a task that would otherwise require human labor or brainpower. Since the term robot was first coined in 1920, robots have become an increasing part of our lives. Companies looking to increasingly automate and enable greater portions of their business that require physical human labor currently look to robots to help or fully replace humans with many tasks.