Porfiri's team is developing a prototype and testing it with small schools of fish in his lab. They are fine tuning the robot to mimic the actions of a leader, programming it to swim fast and erratically to gain attention. The goal - infiltrate the school and take it over.

Maurizio Porfiri, Polytechnic Institute, New York University, said, "So through mathematics we should be able to gain an understanding on how many robotic fish are needed to drive a group of fish of a certain size and also, we can coordinate these fish so we can have multiple robotic fish that interact with each other."

Porfiri says he wants to program his robot fish to work autonomously without human control. He envisions his robot fish acting like sheep dogs underwater, keeping schools of fish out of danger areas like the oil-polluted waters in the Gulf of Mexico, or protecting them from hydroelectric turbines.

Eventually Porfiri says he wants to upgrade his robot fish and fit them with processors and sensors, giving them the ability not just to lead the school, but to learn how it interacts with other creatures living underwater.

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