The Need For Automation In Aquaculture

Automation is a kind of technology to maintain efficient production in many global industrial sectors with minimal intervention of humans. The execution of automation technology helps to improve the productivity, reliability, and efficiency of a process that was maintained and performed by humans. Like in many sectors, automation can bring huge profits and productivity to the sector of aquaculture by reducing catastrophic losses and improving product quality. Aquaculture is one of the significant components to hold up the food need and economic growth of many countries in the world. Hence, the best technology must be employed to make more progress in aquaculture through automation technologies like instrumentation, mechanization, computer-based control, automatic feedback system, In aquaculture, water quality plays a crucial role in the success of the cultivation of species. Unfortunately, the aquaculturist fails to maintain accurate water quality for the culturing due to a lack of frequent observation. The losses from this improper maintaining can be eliminated by the implementation of automation technologies. The four main water parameters to be maintained properly for profitable aquaculture cultivation are; dissolved oxygen (DO), the temperature of the water, salinity, and hydrogen potential (pH). The perfect content of these parameters varies with the type of aquaculture and the species to be cultured. The automated monitoring technique with wireless sensors allows the aquaculturist or the user to monitor the environmental conditions of the fish farm even with a mobile device. The data about the water parameters like DO, pH, etc are incorporated with the monitoring system. The wireless sensors implemented in the culture water help to bring the data to the central processing core and with the help of a wifi interface, the data from the sensors are transferred to the user terminal device. The whole fish farm environment can be controlled by the user with this terminal device. The core of the central and sensing terminal is a low-power MSP430 series MCU. The supply of electricity can be from a battery, standard supply, or the solar battery and the UPS can maintain the whole system secure with low cost, reduced energy consumption, and with an easy operating feature.

Nowadays the aquaculturists are interested in high-density culturing to increase profits but this leads to the rise of many diseases and pollution. Each step of fish farming needs to follow the best guidelines and practices. This could attain by the introduction of automation to the aquaculture system. The advancements in information technologies are making an impact in aspects and the growing need for fish protein emphasis the need for information technology in the field of aquaculture. It is very difficult for manually monitored aquaculture to become successful due to the labor struggle required to collect adequate data from the culture units. Automation can supports both indoor and outdoor aquaculture, at a controlled environment like RAS, advanced automation technologies like IOT (Internet of Things) are inevitable. Even if the investment cost for the implementation of these technologies is a little bit high, there won’t is any cost for maintaining the automated machines. Moreover, the profit from the automatically monitored system will be far more than the manual system.

• 

Conclusion

Automated aquaculture is an intelligent production mode for profitable and sustainable aquaculture. The production and management operations of automated aquaculture are carried out by technologies like IOT, cloud computing, robotics, big data, etc. The aquaculture sector can gain tremendous productivity and profitability through the implementation of these technologies. As the population and food need is increasing rapidly, there is a strong need to modify the usual process of aquaculture and it is for sure that automation can bring extreme success to the aquaculture sector.

Reference

1. Lee, Phillip G. “A review of automated control systems for aquaculture and design criteria for their implementation.” Aquacultural Engineering 14.3 (1995): 205-227.
2. Chen, Jui-Ho, Wen-Tsai Sung, and Guo-Yan Lin. “Automated monitoring system for the fish farm aquaculture environment.” 2015 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. IEEE, 2015.
3. Dzulqornain, Muhammad Iskandar, M. Udin Harun Al Rasyid, and Sritrusta Sukaridhoto. “Design and development of smart aquaculture system based on IFTTT
   model and cloud integration.” MATEC Web of Conferences. Vol. 164. EDP Sciences, 2018.
4. Balchen, Jens G. “Automation in fisheries and aquaculture technology.” Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), chapter Control Systems, Robotics and Automation,page 6.35.5 (2002).
5. Kumar, G. Hemanth, and DR Kumar Raja. “Automation of Aerators Based System on Water Quality Parameters in Aquaculture.” ICDSMLA 2019. Springer, Singapore,1896-1902.
6. AL-HUSSAINI, K. T. M., et al. “IoT Monitoring and Automation Data Acquisition for Recirculating Aquaculture System Using Fog Computing.” J. Comput. Hardw.
   Eng (2018).
7. El‐Gayar, Omar F. “The use of information technology in aquaculture management.” Aquaculture Economics & Management 1.1-2 (1997): 109-128.
8. Automation. Retrieved fromhttps://www.techopedia.com/definition/32099/automation On 17th November 2020
9. Aquaculture automation and optimization. . Retrieved from https://new.abb.com/control-systems/industry-specific-solutions/food-beverage/segments/aquaculture On 18th November 2020
10. .Intelligent aquaculture. . Retrieved fromhttps://www.was.org/article/Intelligent-aquaculture.aspx#.X7VRZGgzbIU On 18th November 2020