In this capstone ocean engineering course, my 6 classmates and I created a proof-of-concept vessel for simplifying the feeding of open ocean fish pens. We spoke with a Boston-based aquaculture company about their biggest pain points. They explained how cumbersome the current fish feeding process is: crew members have to drive boats out to the location of the farm, reach or dive into the water to attain the necessary connections and manually pull up the heavy feed hoses while they are fighting the currents and waves to pull them onto the boat to finish the hose connection process. Our team designed Aquabot, an autonomous surface vessel which automates docking, uses assisted autonomy for hose connection, and parallelizes the feed refill process.
I developed the autonomous docking, communications, and controls systems for this project. Watch Aquabot at work!
Kassidy Peterson and I presented our work on Aquabot at the OCEANS Conference in Hampton Roads, Virginia in 2022.