VIDEO: SECRET AGENT FISH: A ROBOTIC-SPY AMONG THE FISHES

We already have a humanoid that has been granted citizenship, but we are still a long way from crossing the uncanny valley to where these humanoids will start to blend into our society. Apparently fish are easier to fool, a team from EPFL has successfully integrated a robotic impostor into schools of zebrafish, to a point where the robot could guide the group's behaviour. 

Fish have inspired robots for years, allowing scientists to measure the acidity or quality of water without disturbing the locals, and teaching them more about how fish move and sense their surroundings in murky waters. 

This new fish-robot is more of a social experiment, it was designed to be a "secret agent", integrating with schools of fish to see if it could learn to communicate and move like the real thing, as well as influence the group's behaviour. The research team at the EPFL robotics laboratory have managed to get robots to infiltrate cockroach communities in the past, but trying to do the same with fish... well, kettle of fish anyway, is more difficult. 

"Fish are much more complicated animals," says Frank Bonnet, an author of the study. "To integrate into an insect community, a robot simply has to emit certain kinds of pheromones. But integrating into a community of vertebrates seems to involve many more criteria, in terms of such things as appearance, movement and vibration."

The team tested the robot-fish with 10 different schools of four zebrafish in aquariums with mazes of rooms and corridors. The team recorded the movements of the school as a whole and individual fish within it, and how well the robot integrated with the animals. Schools with robot-fish were found to function essentially the same as entirely-natural ones. 

The results and more of the research can be seen in the video below: