A Novel Sea Farm Inspection Platform for Norwegian Aquaculture Application

This paper presents the development of a novel floating mobile platform for inspection and monitoring of aquaculture installations at sea. The application is to provide first-hand information on the integrity of the fish cages, both the structures, the nets and the moorings. The whole system, called “Sea Farm Inspector includes a low cost ROV and a USV. The USV is an active self-stabilising autonomous carrier. The low cost ROV will be carried by the USV to the operation location. A winch on the USV platform will lift the ROV down into the water column and follow the ROV during the operation. The winch will lift the ROV out of water automatically after operation is completed and the “Sea Farm Inspector” will relocate to the next operation site. In the order to make the operation stable and safe, the USV will provide dynamic position control function, autopilot and manual manoeuvring functions. The whole system design and realisations will be presented in detail. A serial of tests both in tank and at sea has been made to verify the concept.