Low-Cost Sensor Technologies for Underwater Vehicle Navigation in Aquaculture Net Pens

Abstract

This work presents a setup comprised of an underwater vehicle and various sensors that can be used for underwater navigation. The complete system is tested in an aquaculture fish farm, which features an environment that includes fish, deforming and flexible structures and highly variable environmental disturbances. The proposed approach integrates and provides software-based time-synchronization of data from external and on-board sensors to enable development and testing of multi-modal underwater navigation methods. All system components are low-cost, small-size and available of-the-shelf, motivated by the desire to collectively develop suitable underwater navigation methods that may be used in complex environments such as aquaculture fish farms, large tanks and underwater caves. Data captured through field trials in a fish farm show the potential of the proposed integrated system and the challenges related to underwater navigation in a complex underwater environment.