Evolution of the Hybrid Aerial Underwater Robotic System (HAUCS) for Aquaculture: Sensor Payload and Extension Development

Abstract

While robotics have been widely used in many agricultural practices such as harvesting, seeding, cattle monitoring, etc., aquaculture farming is an important, fast-growing sector of agriculture that has not seen significant adoption of advanced technologies such as robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, dissolved oxygen (DO) monitoring, a practice in pond aquaculture essential to the health of the fish crops, remains labor-intensive and time-consuming. The Hybrid Aerial Underwater robotiCs System (HAUCS) is an IoT framework that aims to bring transformative changes to pond aquaculture. This paper focuses on the latest development in the HAUCS mobile sensing platform and field deployment. To address some shortcomings with the current implementation, the development of a novel rigid Kirigami-based robotic extension subsystem that can expand the functionality of the HAUCS platform is also being discussed.