The United States is a minor aquaculture producer, while it is the leading global importer of fish and fishery products. The aim of this project is to design and develop an autonomous, ocean-powered robotic system to support offshore fish farming, which opens new possibilities for advanced technology to aid the proliferation of domestic aquaculture. To operate sustainably far offshore, the system powers itself by harvesting energy from ocean waves. A small-scale autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) serves a dual purpose as both a base system and a wave energy converter (WEC). The ASV deploys an autonomous underwater robot embodied in a small-scale tethered, omnidirectional remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which is termed an AROV. The primary task of the AROV is the light-duty cleaning of fish pens since it operates 24/7.
An ASV and an AROV have been designed and built together with their perception and control techniques to validate the concept of the proposed the proposed robotic system. The AROV, the pose of which is poorly known, has been localized well by identifying its relative position to the fish pen when working on the fish pen and to the ASV when moving from one fish pen to another.