Feedback Control of Schooling Fish

Abstract The paper describes the principles suggested for a system for control of the movement of a school of fish in the ocean. A mathematical model using state space notation is developed, describing how the movement of a school is related to natural and artificial stimuli. Different kinds of natural and artificial stimuli are discussed and different ways of determination of direction in scalar and vector fields of stimuli are described. A mathematical expression is derived showing that the sensitivity of directional navigation of a large school is nearly proportional to the number of individuals in the school. A control structure is suggested using feed-back control stimuli from measured and estimated states of the school movement. The paper concludes with a survey of some practical applications of the techniques suggested in nerding of pelagic fish.