Aquaculture is a very important contributor to the production of seafood for human consumption on a global scale. The industry is facing major challenges related to HSE, securing fish welfare during operations, preventing fish escape , parasite and disease control, mortality, feed spill and nu trients release , structure and environment monitoring and maintenance, biofouling mitigation, and more . To address these challenges , reach the demand for food production and increase fish farming production efficiency , novel technological solutions need to be developed and/or adapted for use in aquaculture fish farms. These solutions rely on new tools, sensors, machines, algorithms, and methodologies . Furthermore, there is a trend of moving fish farms from traditional sheltered farming sites to more exposed areas, increasing the requirements of the technological solutions as well as introducing new challenges.
One potential solution to address some of these challenges is ada pting the use of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). UUVs such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have become an important part of the operations conducted in the aquaculture industry. Typical operations are inspection of nets and mooring systems, net cleaning, and biomass inspection. However, the potential of ROVs is not fully exploited and several operations are still conducted manually, either by divers or using ROVs . The ROV is equipped with a camera and is controlled by a human operator, but controlling the ROV in a fish cage while inspecting the live video stream is challenging. The environment is dynamically changing due to ocean waves, currents, flexible structures and living fish, and it is critical to avoid damaging and/or influencing these. The challenges can be mitigated by increasing the autonomy level of the UUVs and properly instrumenting such vehicles with sensors required for autonomous operations . Together with research and industry partners, SINTEF has developed novel methods for autonomous UUVs in net pens through projects such as, e.g., CageReporter, Artifex, Netclean 24/7, CHANGE, ResiFarm, SFI Exposed. We will present some of the works targeting autonomous navigation concepts, advanced motion planning and resilient perception for UUVs operating in fish farms. Through field demonstrations in our SINTEF ACE facilities, the group of SINTEF ACE Robotic Lab aims to realize new methods and robotic solutions, thus contributing to increased efficiency and objectivity during current and future fish farm operations with the overall goal to increase sustainability and healthy production of fish.