Abstract

This paper describes the design and development of a small low-cost man portable AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle). The AUV is developed towards a conceptual application within commercial fisheries to parameterize detected fish schools to efficiently and economically reduce the amount of by-catch and discards effectively maximizing the yield of commercial fishermen’s limited quotas when operating in EU waters. The AUV is designed as a small tube-shaped vehicle less than 1m long and weighting 9.8kg. It carries propulsion and sensing suite to autonomously perform a pre-configured mission to dive into a school of fish, gather and process data and return to the surface. Once re-emerged, the AUV delivers estimations of expected by-catch and discard rates based on the obtained samples from the fish school.

The fish-finding AUV leverages state-of-the-art on-board AI (artificial intelligence) to detect, locate and classify fish and fish species in real-time, to estimate expected by-catch and discard rates for the fishermen. Using the current configuration, the AUV has a maximum operational depth of 30m and can exceed mission times of more than 2.5h. The AUV is interfaced entirely from a tablet with software designed to easily configure missions, perform manual maneuvering, data offloading and visualization of mission results. The AUV system has been successfully tested at multiple sea-trials in both Oresund, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. It has been launched and recovered from both the shoreline as well as smaller boats and larger fishing vessels. The entire process from launch to recovery can be carried out by a single operator.

Keywords: Autonomous Underwater Vehicle; Conceptual; Boats; Fisheries; Exploitation