Aquaculture Robotics

Autonomous Robotic Systems in Aquaculture: Research Challenges and Industry Needs

A half-day workshop to be held as part of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024)

Place: Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Date: 14th of October 2024, 14:00-18:00, Room 6

Robotic Systems for Autonomous Inspection, Monitoring and Intervention in Aquaculture Domain

The primary goals of this workshop are:

to identify the needs and demands of the fast-growing aquaculture industry and risks of current practices,
to present the current achievements and approaches on utilizing robotic solutions for autonomous operations in the aquaculture domain with the overall goal to improve efficiency, reduce risks and costs, increase production and sustainability,
to discuss and understand how automation and robotic solutions can be adapted for variety of operations in dynamically changing environments such as the ones faced in aquaculture settings,
to discuss how aquaculture dedicated robotic systems should operate in a way that takes the needs of the fish into account to reach solutions optimized towards biology technology interaction,
to define key focus areas and directions for future research and innovations needed to be investigated and developed to realize autonomous robotics solutions operating in complex and dynamically changing environments.

We will focus on the following points to achieve the set goals of the workshop:

Identify the risks of current solutions and the needs and priorities of the industry to transition from subjective and experience-based decisions and assessments, and intensive manual labor, to optimal and sustainable solutions of the future,
Define the current and future needs and priorities for research and industry to reach the development and deployment of autonomous robotic systems in different sectors of aquaculture domain,
Presentation of novel methods and concepts for risk management and safety, modeling, control and navigation, localization, mapping, communication, motion planning, sensor fusion, monitoring, inspection and intervention, animal-robot interaction, digital twin and decision support systems developed for robotic systems operating in the aquaculture domain,
Presentation of novel aquaculture-dedicated prototypes and innovation from research and industry and demonstrated autonomous capabilities of robotics systems in complex and dynamically changing environments,
Presentations demonstrating how robotic systems need to be able to adapt their actions by interacting with animals, deformable flexible structures and unpredictable environmental disturbances,
Communicate and disseminate the outcomes and lessons learned from the demonstrations of autonomous capabilities of robotic systems in industrial scale aquaculture facilities from research communities and industry actors.