Demo: Project Hektor – Korkyra
For millennia, agriculture and aquaculture have been a component of human society. Aquaculture, as well as its component relating to sea water known as mariculture, did not begin to expand exponentially until the 20th century. Globally, mariculture is the fastest growing part of food industry. In the EU 20% of the fish stock comes from aquaculture and this industry branch accounts for around 80.000 employments. Mariculture is heavily reliant on human labor, with workers generally doing arduous, repetitive, sometimes even dangerous tasks for long periods of time. Currently, divers must monitor fish farming cages for lengthy periods of time in all weather situations, even the most extreme. HEKTOR (Heterogeneous Autonomous Robotic System in Viticulture and Mariculture) project is looking for a solution to these issues. The objective of the HEKTOR project in mariculture is to try for the first time in Croatia to include robotic systems (aerial, marine surface and underwater) in the process of cage fish farming for automated monitoring of fish cages. HEKTOR project proposes a heterogeneous robotic system consisting of an ROV, an ASV and a UAV for autonomous fish cage inspection missions. Based on the data fusion of the individually obtained information, the data from all three robots will be utilized for the final assessment of the fish cages. The objective of this demo is to showcase the Blueye ROV acquired in the scope of the HEKTOR project and its integration with ROS2. Moreover, a catamaran-shaped autonomous surface vehicle named Korkyra, developed in-house in the scope of the HEKTOR project, will be presented together with all its subsystems.