Robotic turtle could improve inspections for fish farmers

The so-called U-CAT ‘robotic turtle’ was developed at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia to investigate shipwrecks on the sea floor.

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Small and highly manoeuvrable, the robotic turtle could replace human divers and underwater vehicles tasked with inspecting sea cages used by fish farmers that can hold as many as 200,000 salmon.

As well as health monitoring and checking for breaches in the cage, the robotic turtle causes less stress to the farmed fish, according to a team from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU), SINTEF in Trondheim, Norway, and Tallinn University of Technology.

Their experiments show that the fish are only negligibly scared or stressed by the robotic turtle. They swim calmly and close to the robotic turtle, but avoided intruders in experiments with divers and thruster-driven underwater robots.

"The overall purpose of the experiments wasn't just to test the turtle robot, but also to investigate what characteristics robots being used in the aquaculture industry should have," said Maarja Kruusmaa, a professor at NTNU’s Department of Engineering Cybernetics and at Tallinn University of Technology.