Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary audience targeted in the first year was the project's Industry Advisory Board (IAB) that consists of industry partners including InnovaSea, BlueOcean Mariculture, OpenBlue, Ocean Era, E-Wave Technologies, and NEC Corporation. These are the companies that are most known and working most intensively in the field of automated aquaculture. Therefore, it is most important that these companies remain as the IAB members, and wehost annual meetings with them. The second audience targeted in the third year was the other aquaculture community and the robotics community. Our technologies are being developed for the aquaculture industry, so we should have the IAB open to the other aquaculture-related companies and explore more opportunities to advance automated aquaculture technology. For the robotics community, aquaculture is relatively an untouched area. Making the community aware of the importance of automated aquaculture is one of our missions, so the robotics community is included in our targeted audience. Changes/Problems:There are no major changes/problems in approach. The only minor change made for the UVA team is that the UVA team is that the UVA team is conducting experimentation independently after developing an integrated ASV-AROV system. However, the team will integrate its estimation and control system soon for the AROV at SIT and the WEC system at UM when all the systems are ready for integration. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The UVA team consists of not only graduate students but also undergraduate research students and senior students forming a capstone project. For all the undergraduate students, an opportunity to learn Robot Operating System and its packages, which allow the robot software development with minimum efforts, was provided. In addition, I provided MAE4260 Robotic Autonomy and MAE4270 Experimental Robotics courses to undergraduate research students who are participating in the project to develop autonomy for the ASV-AROV system. Senior students in the capstone team have opportunities to communicate with the project team to identify customer needs. Graduate students and undergraduate research students have opportunities to participate in the monthly meetings of the project team and the bi-annual meetings where the Industry Advisory Board members participate. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have an Industry Advisory Board (IAB) that consists of industry partners including InnovaSea, BlueOcean Mariculture, OpenBlue, Ocean Era, E-Wave Technologies, and NEC Corporation. Since we have annual meetings with them, we first disseminate our results to these companies. IAB is open to other companies. We are continuously finding opportunities to communicate with other companies, and on November 25, 2024, Mitsubishi Corporation visited UVA with strong interest in our project. As a team, we made a few plans to disseminate our project externally. One is Aquaculture America, which is to be held on March 6-10, 2025 in New Orleans. The other was IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) where we are planning to propose a workshop on Marine Robotics. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?After receiving the one-year no-cost extension, the team is planning to integrate their systems so that the planned goal can be achieved. The base system will be the University of Virginia (UVA)'s ASV and AROV. University of Michigan's Wave Energy Converter (WEC) will be implemented into the ASV for energy harvesting. Stevens Institute of Technology's manipulator and localization and navigation algorithms will be implemented into the AROV. UVA will develop autonomous navigation to ASV and AROV for cooperative navigation. The integrated system will be finally demonstrated in an open water environment.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Furukawa has administered the project as the Lead PD and led the project successfully to complete the third year following the third year. Technically, the UVA team is in charge of the autonomous cooperation of an ASV and an AROV. In the third yea, the team enhanced the two hardware systems: An ASV with the maximum dimension less than 3 feet, which was fully custom-designed and developed by the UVA team and can be controlled wirelessly. The ASV is now equipped with a sonar and GPS such that it can be autonomously driven while localizing itself and the AROV An AROV with a BlueROV2 as a base platform, which has an end-effector for net cleaning. The AROV is now equipped with a camera so that it can localize itself with respect to the ASV. The team also developed a new ASV for general use, incorporates the architecture of the original ASV. In addition, the team worked on particularly on the cooperative localization of the ASV and AROV: The ASV and the AROV are each equipped with a sonar and a camera and cooperatively localizes the AROV. A simulator incorporates dynamics models of the ASV and AROV so that the localization can be achieved accurately.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Gilchrist Johnson and Tomonari Furukawa, Autonomous Platooning of General Connected Vehicles Using Bayesian Receding Horizon Control, Vehicular 2024, March 10-14, 2024, Athens, Greece, 2024
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2025
Citation:
Malori Oxford, Nathan Vu, Brendan Englot and Tomonari Furukawa, Cooperative Localization of Heterogeneous System of Marine Robots Using Hybrid EKF and Grid-Based Method, 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 19-23, 2025, Atlanta, 2025
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2025
Citation:
Tomonari Furukawa, Long Wang, Brendan Englot and Lei Zuo, Light-duty Autonomous Underwater Robot for Offshore Aquaculture, Aquaculture America, March 6-10, 2025, New Orleans, 2025
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2025
Citation:
Tomonari Furukawa, Malori Oxford and Nathan Vu, Cooperative Localization and Navigation of Unmanned Underwater and Surface Vehicles for Open Ocean Aquaculture, Aquaculture America, March 6-10, 2025, New Orleans, 2025
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Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary audience targeted in the first year was the project's Industry Advisory Board (IAB) that consists of industry partners including InnovaSea, BlueOcean Mariculture, OpenBlue, Ocean Era, E-Wave Technologies, and NEC Corporation. These are the companies that are most known and working most intensively in the field of automated aquaculture. Therefore, it is most important that these companies remain as the IAB members. For this reason, we began to host bi-annual meetings with them. The second audience targeted in the first year was the other aquaculture community and the robotics community. Our technologies are being developed for the aquaculture industry, so we should have the IAB open to the other aquaculture-related companies and explore more opportunities to advance automated aquaculture technology. For the robotics community, aquaculture is relatively an untouched area. Making the community aware of the importance of automated aquaculture is one of our missions, so the robotics community is included in our targeted audience. Changes/Problems:There are no major changes/problems in approach. The only minor change made for the UVA team is that the UVA team is that the UVA team is conducting experimentation independently after developing an integrated ASV-AROV system. However, the team will integrate its estimation and control system soon for the AROV at SIT and the WEC system at UM when all the systems are ready for integration. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The UVA team consists of not only graduate students but also undergraduate research students and senior students forming a capstone project. For all the undergraduate students, an opportunity to learn Robot Operating System and its packages, which allow the robot software development with minimum efforts, was provided. In addition, I provided MAE4260 Robotic Autonomy and MAE4270 Experimental Robotics courses to undergraduate research students who are participating in the project to develop autonomy for the ASV-AROV system. Senior students in the capstone team have opportunities to communicate with the project team to identify customer needs. Graduate students and undergraduate research students have opportunities to participate in the monthly meetings of the project team and the bi-annual meetings where the Industry Advisory Board members participate. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have an Industry Advisory Board (IAB) that consists of industry partners including InnovaSea, BlueOcean Mariculture, OpenBlue, Ocean Era, E-Wave Technologies, and NEC Corporation. Since we have bi-annual meetings with them, we first disseminate our results to these companies. IAB is open to other companies. We are continuously finding opportunities to communicate with other companies. As a team, we made a few plans to disseminate our project externally. One is Aquaculture America, which is to be held on February 23-26, 2023 in New Orleans. I gave an invited talk at the conference as the Lead PD and try to interact with the audience. The other was IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) where we proposed a workshop on Marine Robotics. Unfortunately our proposal was rejected, but we are finding another opportunity to disseminate our results to both the aquaculture and the robotics communities. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?As planned in the proposal, we plan to develop technologies that allow the fish net cleaning and the dead fish removal processes by the ASV-AROV system. Since a prototype ASV-AROV system and a simulator were developed in the second year, the UVA team will focus on completing and demonstrating an autonomous navigation strategy to move from one fish pen to another. In addition, the team will design and develop other essentials for the ASV that have not been completed in the pastyears. These include the development of a gripper which locks the ASV to the fish pen since the aim of the ASV is to harvest energy through the Wave Energy Converter (WEC) and minimize energy usage for itself. Close collaboration with Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) for the ASV-AROV system and that with University of Michigan (UM) for the integration of ASV and WEC will be performed continuously. SIT works on the AROV whereas UM works on WEC. Collaboration with them is essential for the completion of the project.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Furukawa has administered the project as the Lead PD and led the project successfully to complete the second year following the first year. Technically, the UVA team is in charge of the autonomous cooperation of an ASV and an AROV. The team developed the following two hardware systems: A prototype ASV with the maximum dimension less than 3 feet, which was fully custom-designed and developed by the UVA team and can be controlled wirelessly A prototype AROV with a BlueROV2 as a base platform, which has an end-effector for net cleaning In addition, the team worked on estimation, control and software: A set of possible estimation and control approaches that allow an ASV and an AROV to move from one fish pen to another A simulator that validates the autonomous behavior of an ASV and an AROV in an offshore fish farm environment including fish pens and fish
Publications
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Kristen Babel, Alvaro Crisanto, Brian Richard, Peter Stauffer and Charlie Tilney-Volk, Design of a Co-Navigational Aquaculture Vehicle System, University of Virginia, 2023.
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Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary audience targeted in the first year was the project's Industry Advisory Board (IAB) that consists of industry partners including InnovaSea, BlueOcean Mariculture, OpenBlue, Ocean Era, E-Wave Technologies, and NEC Corporation. These are the companies that are most known and working most intensively in the field of automated aquaculture. Therefore, it is most important that these companies remain as the IAB members. For this reason, we began to host bi-annual meetings with them. The second audience targeted in the first year was the other aquaculture community and the robotics community. Our technologies are being developed for the aquaculture industry, so we should have the IAB open to the other aquaculture-related companies and explore more opportunities to advance automated aquaculture technology. For the robotics community, aquaculture is relatively an untouched area. Making the community aware of the importance of automated aquaculture is one of our missions, so the robotics community is included in our targeted audience. Changes/Problems:There are no major changes/problems in approach. The only minor change made for the UVA team is that the UVA team is now developing its own prototype ASV-AROV system. The WEC system is developed at UM whereas the AROV is developed at SIT. In order that the UVA team can make a progress on ASV-AROV collaboration, the team has decided to develop a prototype system in addition to creating simulation environments. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The UVA team consists of not only graduate students but also undergraduate research students and senior students forming a capstone project. For all the undergraduate students, an opportunity to learn Robot Operating System and its packages, which allow the robot software development with minimum efforts, was provided. In addition, I provided MAE4260 Robotic Autonomy and MAE4270 Experimental Robotics course to undergraduate research students who are participating in the project to develop autonomy for the ASV-AROV system. Senior students in the capstone team have opportunities to communicate with the project team to identify customer needs. Graduate students and undergraduate research students have opportunities to participate in the monthly meetings of the project team and the bi-annual meetings where the Industry Advisory Board members participate. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have an Industry Advisory Board (IAB) that consists of industry partners including InnovaSea, BlueOcean Mariculture, OpenBlue, Ocean Era, E-Wave Technologies, and NEC Corporation. Since we have bi-annual meetings with them, we first disseminate our results to these companies. IAB is open to other companies. We are continuously finding opportunities to communicate with other companies. As a team, we have made a few plans to disseminate our project externally. One is Aquaculture America, which is to be held on February 23-26, 2023 in New Orleans. I will give an invited talk at the conference as the Lead PD and try to interact with the audience. The other is IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). We plan to host a workshop on Marine Robotics in this robotics conference and present a few papers from our team. We plan to disseminate our results to both the aquaculture and the robotics communities. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?As planned in the proposal, we plan to develop technologies that allow the fish net cleaning and the dead fish removal processes by the ASV-AROV system. For the purpose, the UVA team will focus on completing the prototype ASV-AROV system and its autonomous navigation strategy to move from one fish pen to another. In addition, the team will design and develop any other essentials for the ASV. These include the development of a gripper which locks the ASV to the fish pen since the aim of the ASV is to harvest energy through the Wave Energy Converter (WEC) and minimize energy usage for itself. Collaboration with Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) for the ASV-AROV system and that with University of Michigan (UM) for the integration of ASV and WEC will be performed more intensively. SIT works on the AROV whereas UM works on WEC. Collaboration with them is essential for the completion of the project.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Furukawa has administered the project as the Lead PD and led the project successfully to complete the first year. Technically, the UVA team came up with the design of an ASV that has a similar size as the BlueROV2. By developing it and integrated with the BlueROV2,a prototype ASV-AROV system, which can be used for experimenting the autonomous navigation of the ASV-AROV system from one fish pen to another. In addition, the UVA team has developed a simulation environment with the components of ASV, AROV and fish pen. This allows the navigation capability of the ASV-AROV system to be tested without the actual experiments. Techniques for the ASV to track the AROV have also been explored.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Tomonari Furukawa, Ocean-Powered Robots for Autonomous Offshore Aquaculture, Aquaculture America 2023, February 23-26, 2023, New Orleans, Louisiana USA
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