Fish can save energy via proprioceptive sensing
Fish have evolved diverse and robust locomotive strategies to swim efficiently in complex fluid
environments. However, we know little, if anything, about how these strategies can be achieved.
Although most studies suggest that fish rely on the lateral line system to sense local flow and
optimise body undulation, recent work has shown that fish are still able to gain benefits from the
local flow even with the lateral line impaired. In this paper, we hypothesise that fish can save
energy by extracting vortices shed from their neighbours using only simple proprioceptive sensing
with the caudal fin. We tested this hypothesis on both computational and robotic fish by
synthesising a central pattern generator (CPG) with feedback, proprioceptive sensing, and
reinforcement learning. The CPG controller adjusts the body undulation after receiving feedback from
the proprioceptive sensing signal, decoded via reinforcement learning. In our study, we consider
potential proprioceptive sensing i...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - Category: Science Authors: Liang Li, Danshi Liu, Jian Deng, Matthew J Lutz and Guangming Xie Source Type: research
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