Switzerland: The future of automated fish farming

In the aquaculture industry, net integrity, water quality, fish health and feeding regimes need to be regularly monitored to prevent product loss and reduce the negative environmental impact of fish escaping from damaged nets. This typically involves manual labour with limited automation, which is an even more complex, expensive and hazardous task in the open seas.

In response to this challenge, made more pressing as fish farms move further offshore, partners in the Eureka project REDRA developed a sustainable, autonomous system for 24/7 real time monitoring and net inspection. This combination of cutting-edge robotics and clean technology has the potential to make fish farming more sustainable. The system features a compact resident underwater drone with sensors and a charging station. With no human intervention required, the drone can continuously monitor net integrity and track environmental and fish health parameters, like water quality and temperature, oxygen and chlorophyl levels, fish size, mortality rates and the prevalence of lice.

Eureka enabled us to bring breakthrough subsea technology from concept to real-world validation. The REDRA project proves how international collaboration accelerates innovation, helping us address aquaculture’s biggest challenges whilst opening new markets for sustainable marine operations.

Igor Martin – Chief Executive Officer at Hydromea

The REDRA project was a cooperation between Swiss and Norwegian companies, Hydromea and Unplugged. Hydromea adapted its tetherless inspection drone, EXRAY, originally designed for submerged spaces, by integrating an Unplugged induction module for wireless charging and visual data recording, collection and transfer. In parallel, Unplugged developed a topside junction box with a communication gateway. The docking station has 4G and 5G connectivity, so captured video and other inspection data can be uploaded directly to the cloud.

The partners combined expertise to produce an underwater docking station with unique homing features, including visual recognition, acoustic localisation and navigation. Aligning the underwater drone with the charging port within a one-centimetre error margin demanded precision engineering. Now, it can reach its designated base even in reduced visibility and unfavourable weather conditions.

The system was tested in pools, lakes and on aquaculture sites. Recalling the first freezing cold trial in Norway, Igor Martin, Chief Executive Officer at Hydromea, explains, “our lead engineer messaged, ‘shoes soaked wet in 9.58 seconds, like Usain Bolt in Berlin in 2009’, adding ‘Honolulu, baby’. It was windy and ice cold; a stark reminder that the real-world environment is very different from a lab and further reinforcing the value of remote monitoring to keep people in the comfort of their offices on land.”

The partners leveraged complementary expertise in autonomous underwater robotics and subsea inductive charging thanks to Eureka and Swiss funding agency, Innosuisse. Eureka facilitated trust-building and helped de-risk the ambitious research and development. Igor Martin notes, “referring to Eureka gave us more credibility and legitimacy with industry players, enabled access to aquaculture farmers and accelerated technology validation in field trials, which were an integral part of the project”.

REDRA advanced the drone system from technology readiness level four to six. Moving forward, Hydromea intends to finalise the prototype and commercialise at a price of 6,000 euro per month for each installed system. This strategy could generate up to 400 jobs in the aquaculture industry and 32 million euro in revenue five years after commercialisation.

Deploying the underwater drone system can help the aquaculture industry in three key areas: reducing carbon dioxide emissions and fish mortality rates caused by boat trips to inspect fish pens; lowering the risk of farmed fish escaping and causing irreversible changes to wild fish populations; and improving fish quality and stock for greater economic gain. Autonomous monitoring in fish farms marks a significant step in protecting marine ecosystems and improving the sustainability of the aquaculture industry.