It's an aquatic version of follow the leader. Dr.Manrizio Porfiri of NYU's Polytechnic Institute has combined his love for mathematics and animals to invent a robot that he says would one day be able to lead schools of fish away from danger.
这是水下版本的“追随领导者”。纽约大学理工学院的Manrizio Porfiri博士把他对机械的热情全部投入到了动物身上，并发明了一款机器，将来能领导鱼群远离危险。
Porfiri says the hardest part of his research has been to find out what the qualities of a leader are through the eyes of fish. But he thinks as is the case with most animals, it basically comes down to sex.
Porfiri表示这项发明最难的地方是如何找出鱼类眼中的领导者特质。他联想到了其他动物，大多是通过性别来吸引其他个体的。
"If you take out a propeller and you put it into the water, it may remain as fast as the fish but the fish may not like it. If you can make something that swim like a fish, the fish may perceive it as a mate even if it looks different. "
“如果把螺旋桨放入水中，虽然它能和鱼类跑得一样快，但鱼类不会喜欢它。如果你能发明一种机器游起来像鱼一样，虽然长相不同，但鱼群能够接纳它。”
Porfiri's team is developing a prototype and testing it out 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.
Porfiri的研究小组正在实验室中用发明的机器原型和小群鱼群做测试。他们操纵机器模仿鱼群领导者的样子，游得更快，不时转弯，吸引鱼群注意力，融入鱼群并最终成为鱼群领导者。
"So through mathematics we should be able to gain an understanding of how many robotic fish are needed for drive a group of fish over certain size, and knows them, we can coordinate these fish, so we can have these multi-robotic fish that interact with each other. "
“除了计算数据，我们还要了解鱼群的大小，以决定由多少机器鱼引导鱼群，这样才能整合鱼群，使机器鱼和鱼群互相影响。”
Porfiri says he wants to programme his robot fish to work autonomously without human control. He envisions his robot fish acting like sheep-dogs under water, keeping schools of fish out of danger areas like the oil polluted waters of the Gulf of Mexico, or protecting them from hydro-electric turbines.
Porfiri表示，希望机器鱼最终能够无人驾驶，自动引导鱼群。他想象这些机器鱼能变成水下牧羊犬，管理鱼群远离危险区域，如墨西哥湾石油污染区，或是躲避水电涡轮机。
"Guide a group of fish from a region which is risky, there is a pollutant you want to drive them somewhere else. There is a migration that you don't like to be somewhere because it's in a 3M bad area, drive them somewhere else. There is power plant and you want to bypass the power plant, it could be risky, the fish may die sucking to the turbines, so how about making a guiding system, a bypass system that uses these robots."
“鱼群要远离危险区域，污染区域。也要离开其他鱼群栖息地。还有发电厂，鱼群也要远离发电厂，因为那附近很危险，鱼有可能被吸入涡轮机，为什么不建立一个引导机制，于是就有了机器鱼引导机制。”
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 to interact with other creatures underwater.
最后，Porfiri表示，他们想将处理器和传感器安装到机器鱼上，使机器鱼不仅能领导鱼群，并且能学会如何与水下的其他生物和平共处。
Ben Gruber Reuters.
Ben Gruber报道，路透社消息。aquatic adj. 水生的，水栖的erratically adv. 不定地，不规律地evision v. 想象；预想注：本篇文章英文来自普特论坛，译文属秀哈英语原创，未经允许，请勿转载。
