MIT Sea Grant college students discover the intersection of expertise and offshore aquaculture in Norway | MIT Information

Norway is the world’s largest producer of farmed Atlantic salmon and a prime exporter of seafood, whereas america stays the most important importer of those merchandise, based on the Meals and Agriculture Group. Two MIT college students lately traveled to Trondheim, Norway to discover the cutting-edge applied sciences being developed and deployed in offshore aquaculture. 

Beckett Devoe, a senior in synthetic intelligence and decision-making, and Tony Tang, a junior in mechanical engineering, first labored with MIT Sea Grant by means of the Undergraduate Analysis Alternatives Program (UROP). They contributed to initiatives specializing in wave generator design and machine studying functions for analyzing oyster larvae well being in hatcheries. Whereas near-shore aquaculture is a well-established trade throughout Massachusetts and america, open-ocean farming continues to be a nascent discipline right here, going through distinctive and complicated challenges. 

To assist higher perceive this rising trade, MIT Sea Grant created a collaborative initiative, AquaCulture Shock, with funding from an Aquaculture Applied sciences and Training Journey Grant by means of the Nationwide Sea Grant Faculty Program. Collaborating with the MIT-Scandinavia MISTI (MIT Worldwide Science and Know-how Initiatives) program, MIT Sea Grant matched Devoe and Tang with aquaculture-related summer season internships at SINTEF Ocean, one of many largest analysis institutes in Europe. 

“The chance to work on this hands-on aquaculture venture, beneath a world-renowned analysis establishment, in an space of the world identified for its innovation in marine expertise — that is what MISTI is all about,” says Madeline Smith, managing director for MIT-Scandinavia. “Not solely are college students gaining useful expertise of their fields of examine, however they’re growing cultural understanding and expertise that equip them to be future international leaders.” Each college students labored inside SINTEF Ocean’s Aquaculture Robotics and Autonomous Techniques Laboratory (ACE-Robotic Lab), a facility designed to develop and check new aquaculture applied sciences. 

“Norway has this distinctive geography the place it has all of those fjords,” says Sveinung Ohrem, analysis supervisor for the Aquaculture Robotics and Automation Group at SINTEF Ocean. “So you’ve lots of sheltered waters, which makes it superb to do sea-based aquaculture.” He estimates that there are a couple of thousand fish farms alongside Norway’s coast, and walks by means of a number of the instruments getting used within the trade: decision-making methods to assemble and visualize information for the farmers and operators; robots for inspection and cleansing; environmental sensors to measure oxygen, temperature, and currents; echosounders that ship out acoustic alerts to trace the place the fish are; and cameras to assist estimate biomass and fine-tune feeding. “Feeding is a large problem,” he notes. “Feed is the most important value, by far, so optimizing feeding results in a really vital lower in your value.”

Throughout the internship, Devoe targeted on a venture that makes use of AI for fish feeding optimization. “I attempt to have a look at the totally different options of the farm — so possibly how large the fish are, or how chilly the water is … and use that to attempt to give the farmers an optimum feeding quantity for the perfect outcomes, whereas additionally saving cash on feed,” he explains. “It was good to be taught some extra machine studying strategies and simply get higher at that on a real-world venture.” 

In the identical lab, Tang labored on the simulation of an underwater vehicle-manipulator system to navigate farms and restore injury on cage nets with a robotic arm. Ohrem says there are millions of aquaculture robots working in Norway at the moment. “The dimensions is big,” he says. “You possibly can’t have 8,000 individuals controlling 8,000 robots — that’s not economically or virtually possible. So the extent of autonomy in all of those robots must be elevated.”

The collaboration between MIT and SINTEF Ocean started in 2023 when MIT Sea Grant hosted Eleni Kelasidi, a visiting analysis scientist from the ACE-Robotic Lab. Kelasidi collaborated with MIT Sea Grant director Michael Triantafyllou and professor of mechanical engineering Themistoklis Sapsis growing controllers, fashions, and underwater autos for aquaculture, whereas additionally investigating fish-machine interactions. 

“We’ve got had an extended and fruitful collaboration with the Norwegian College of Science and Know-how (NTNU) and SINTEF, which continues with essential efforts such because the aquaculture venture with Dr. Kelasidi,” Triantafyllou says. “Norway is on the forefront of offshore aquaculture and MIT Sea Grant is investing on this discipline, so we anticipate nice outcomes from the collaboration.”

Kelasidi, who’s now a professor at NTNU, additionally leads the Discipline Robotics Lab, specializing in growing resilient robotic methods to function in very complicated and harsh environments. “Aquaculture is likely one of the most difficult discipline domains we are able to show any autonomous options, as a result of every part is transferring,” she says. Kelasidi describes aquaculture as a deeply interdisciplinary discipline, requiring extra college students with backgrounds each in biology and expertise. “We can’t develop applied sciences which might be utilized for industries the place we don’t have organic parts,” she explains, “after which apply them someplace the place now we have a stay fish or different stay organisms.” 

Ohrem affirms that sustaining fish welfare is the first driver for researchers and corporations working in aquaculture, particularly because the trade continues to develop. “So the large query is,” he says, “how can you make sure that?” SINTEF Ocean has 4 analysis licenses for farming fish, which they function by means of a collaboration with SalMar, the second-largest salmon farmer on this planet. The scholars had the chance to go to one of many industrial-scale farms, Singsholmen, on the island of Hitra. The farm has 10 massive, spherical internet pens about 50 meters throughout that reach deep under the floor, every holding as much as 200,000 salmon. “I received to bodily contact the nets and see how the [robotic] arm would possibly be capable to repair the web,” says Tang. 

Kelasidi emphasizes that the data gained within the discipline can’t be realized from the workplace or lab. “That opens up and makes you understand, what’s the scale of the challenges, or the dimensions of the services,” she says. She additionally highlights the significance of worldwide and institutional collaboration to advance this discipline of analysis and develop extra resilient robotic methods. “We have to attempt to goal that downside, and let’s resolve it collectively.”

MIT Sea Grant and the MIT-Scandinavia MISTI program are presently recruiting a brand new cohort of 4 MIT college students to intern in Norway this summer season with institutes advancing offshore farming applied sciences, together with NTNU’s Discipline Robotics Lab in Trondheim. College students fascinated by autonomy, deep studying, simulation modeling, underwater robotic methods, and different aquaculture-related areas are inspired to succeed in out to Lily Keyes at MIT Sea Grant.