What do fish and humans have in common? Both can swim. What do bees and human have in common? Both work. What do birds and human in common? Can they fly? No, humans cannot fly, however humans found solutions to let them fly. What made humans able to find these solutions? Was it their intellectual thinking? Do animals have intelligence as well? Yes, in fact each individual can do basic work but every single animalalone is weak. But comparing the individual intelligence of a human with that of an single animal is not appropriate. A phenomenon that can be observed is the collaboration within a group of animals and if they work together suddenly there is no weakness anymore. Recent researches on the collaboration and social behavior of animals used new experimental approaches. For instance robotic technologies are applied in current research and those approaches coined the notion of biorobotics. In particular two systems are preferred: biomimetic and bioinspired systems.

Based on the previous work in [20] and its related researches in [21] and [22], this master thesis presents the development of an improved biomimetic "Robofish" system, which uses an omni-directional mobile robot enabling biologists to conduct research on collective behaviour in fish shoals. A major achievements accomplished within the thesis is the prototyping of the hardware platform as well the implementation of the software to facilitate the experimentation.

Key words: robotics, biomimetics, swarm intelligence, social behavior.

[20] Romain O. Clément et al. A novel method for investigating the collective behaviour of fish: introducing ’robofish’. Behav Ecol Sociobiol, May 2010.

[21] Krause S Hemelrijk CK Rubenstein DI Krause J, Hoare D. Leadership in fish shoals. Fish Fish 1:82-89, 2000.

[22] Ruxton GD Krause J. Living in groups. 1st edn. Oxford University, 2002.