Underwater Reflex Navigation in Confined Environment Based on Electric Sense

This paper shows how a sensor inspired by an electric fish could be used to help navigate in confined environments. Exploiting the morphology of the sensor, the physics of electric interactions, as well as taking inspiration from passive electrolocation in real fish, a set of reactive control laws encoding simple behaviors, such as avoiding any electrically contrasted object, or seeking a set of objects while avoiding others according to their electric properties, is proposed. These reflex behaviors are illustrated on simulations and experiments carried out on a setup dedicated to the study of electric sense. The approach does not require a model of the environment and is quite cheap to implement.