European Projects 2009

For more details, please contact the laboratories or the project coordinator.

The aim of the ANGELS project is to design and build a prototype of a reconfigurable Anguilliform swimming robot able to split into smaller agents (and vice-versa), each equipped with a bio-inspired "electric sense" used both for recognition of objects and communication between agents. This mode of active perception, present in some fish, is based on the polarisation of certain regions of their body, so generating an electric field flowing through an electroreceptive skin.
ANGELS will explore the range of abilities conferred by different mechanical and electric morphologies, from the shaping of the common electric body shared by the agents navigating in formation, to design of behavioural cooperative rules inspired by fish for improving multi-agent perception through emergent collective behaviours.
Thus the intelligence encoded in the animals' morphology will be applied to the design of a new generation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles able to adapt to their environment and suited to a wide spectrum of uses, in particular in situations where vision cannot be used. To achieve these goals, the ANGELS will form a multidisciplinary team combining the complementary expertise of biologists, roboticians, image-processing specialists and nuclear physicists specialised in the design of particle detectors.