Coordination of Multiple Robotic Fish With Applications to Underwater Robot Competition

This paper is concerned with the coordination control of multiple biomimetic robotic fish in highly dynamic aquatic environments by building a hybrid centralized system. With the aid of the results of biorobotics and control techniques, a radio-controlled multijoint robotic fish and its locomotion control are developed. To enable a closed control loop, a visual subsystem that is responsible for tracking of multiple moving objects is constructed and implemented in real time. Furthermore, a behavior-based hierarchical architecture in conjunction with fuzzy reinforcement learning is proposed to accomplish effective coordination among multiple swimming robots. Finally, experiments on 2vs2 water polo game are carried out to verify the proposed coordination control scheme. Over the past eight years, this multirobot platform has been successfully applied to international underwater robot competitions to promote innovative research and education in underwater robotics.