Maurizio Porfiri, an Assistant Professor of Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, is working on a robotic fish designed to lead schools of real fish away from dangers, such as oil spills or turbines.

The tricky part for Porfiri and his team has been discovering exactly what traits fish look for in a leader, so that their robot can successfully mimic these to gain the followers. Experimenting with small schools of fish, Porfiri has been fine tuning his robot to swim with the fast and erratic behaviors that fish would perceive a leader, or mate, to have.

The idea is to one day steer helpless creatures away from dangerous objects like turbines, but there’s still loads of work to do before then — presently, the robot can only swim in two dimensions, and requires a battery to operate. Porfiri’s team at NYU Poly is already researching ways to harvest energy from the water itself, though, and he expects to have his fish powered by waves before long. We will see how this technology will bring us more benefit.