The modern high technologies are ready to take all the responsibility in many aspects of life, service vessels with several crew on board are used to carry out day-to-day tasks on fish farm facilities, for an instance. The fish farms can be unmanned soon because the robots can do everything, from fish welfare monitoring to facility inspections, control of feed rationing and lice counting.
An idea of full control around the clock is a good one, the fish industry is planning to locate facilities in more open waters where weather and sea conditions are harsher. That’s why the programmers and engineers are working to assemble a team of robots that can do these jobs, says Per Rundtop, a researcher at Sintef Ocean,
“There are many advantages to using so-called autonomous and remotely operated systems”, “They require less resources, inspections can be carried out around the clock, and the safety of personnel ceases to be a problem”,
a researcher noted.
The companies like Maritime Robotics, Argus Remote Systems and Lerow are currently working together to enable robotic systems to implement tasks currently carried out by people. Their joint project ARTIFEX aimed at the developing a great deal of new technology.
Eirik Evjen Hovstein, COO in Maritime Robotics, said:
“Everything from autonomous vessels, drones and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) that can carry out tasks such as inspections and underwater maintenance. The challenge is to get these technologies working well together.”
So far, the project ARTIFEX is the great challenge, early next year, the technology will be tested at Sintef ACE’s full-scale laboratory on the island of Frøya. The plan is to get an autonomous vessel to transport an ROV and a drone out to the facility. After the first tests, the developers will see how the current system can be improved.
