Can robotic fish help zebrafish learn to open doors?

Yanpeng Yang; Brandon LeMay; Rana El Khoury; Romain J. G. Clément; Stefano Ghirlanda; Maurizio Porfiri

doi:10.1117/12.2514289

13 March 2019 Can robotic fish help zebrafish learn to open doors?

Yanpeng Yang, Brandon LeMay, Rana El Khoury, Romain J. G. Clément, Stefano Ghirlanda, Maurizio Porfiri

Proceedings Volume 10965, Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication IX; 109650B (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2514289
Event: SPIE Smart Structures + Nondestructive Evaluation, 2019, Denver, Colorado, United States

Abstract

Zebrafish is a widely used animal model in behavioral neuroscience. However, zebrafish learning capabilities are not completely understood. Technological advancements in robotics promise fine behavioral control of artificial conspecifics to study complex aspects of social behavior. In this work, we developed a training system aimed at investigating individual and social learning of zebrafish. The system consists of a shallow water tank, a 2- dimensional robotic platform, and a real-time tracking software. In the tank, a focal individual is separated from a shoal of conspecifics by a one-way glass and a transparent partition, allowing the focal fish to see the shoal. In the transparent partition are two doors, one that automatically opens when the focal individual spends a predetermined amount of time in front of it and another that remains closed regardless of the fish behavior. We tested the system by training one na¨ıve fish in individual learning and one fish in social learning over 20 sessions. Test results show that the fish can learn to open the door and also validated the effectiveness of the developed system applying on individual and social learning.

Citation Download Citation

Yanpeng Yang, Brandon LeMay, Rana El Khoury, Romain J. G. Clément, Stefano Ghirlanda, and Maurizio Porfiri "Can robotic fish help zebrafish learn to open doors?", Proc. SPIE 10965, Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication IX, 109650B (13 March 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2514289

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