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The mechanics of moving together
How fish coordinate their tailbeats to exploit the vortices produced by their neighbors.
This paper identified a schooling strategy where fish synchronize their tailbeats to exploit hydrodynamic advantages, matching behavior previously seen in bio-inspired robots.
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When swimming together saves energy
Robotic fish let us measure swimming power directly. The energetic benefit depends on both spacing and tailbeat timing: the follower can move with the flow induced by its neighbor’s vortices, or work against it.
Figure 2 · Li et al., Nature Communications (2020) · CC BY 4.0. Cropped from the published figure.
My contribution
I contributed to the analysis pipeline, applying deep learning–based pose estimation to track fish movement and test predictions from robotic models. The findings showed that real fish use similar vortex-phase matching strategies to gain energetic benefits during coordinated swimming.