NOVEL AQUACULTURAL APPLICATIONS FOR INDIVIDUAL AND FLEETS OF AUTONOMOUS SURFACE VEHICLES

Steven G. Hall1, Daniel Smith2
 Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering
 North Carolina State University
 210 Weaver Admin. Building
 Raleigh NC 27695
 shall5@ncsu.edu
 Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering
 Louisiana State University
 Baton Rouge LA dsmi113@lsu.edu
 

Autonomous vehicles and fleets of such vehicles have been developed over the last several years.  These devices can be programmed for many applications and can be especially useful for jobs difficult for humans to perform, and also to enhance human knowledge and capabilities. Such tasks have been done by single vehicles or small groups; more recently, fleets of coordinating vehicles have been proven effective in tasks such as reducing predatory birds from aquacultural ponds, measuring depth, and tracking temperature and chemical gradients. A fleet of autonomous vehicles may complete these jobs more efficiently than a single boat by covering more area and communicating so that the areas that need the boats can be found more easily.

This fleet was designed so that each boat would be identical. Remote measurements of water quality parameters including salinity, temperature, acidity and nutrients could be useful in extensive aquaculture (e.g. oyster, clam or other extensive applications.  Site specific environmental monitoring could be applied to aquatic culture and restoration sites.  Pollutant and/or toxin gradient tracking could be done by coordinated boats.  Aquatic biomass could be collected by coordinated boats, possibly using less energy resources.  Automated water sample collection could be useful in large tanks, ponds and reservoirs, as well as in open lakes or coastal areas.  The ability to tap into location via GPS, and capture physical samples or water quality data, as well as photographic or video could be useful in a variety of applications.  Discussion of work to date and plans for future work is of interest.