IoT Goes Fishing

Aquabyte, a fish-farm monitoring startup, has developed a smart camera system and web dashboard. The solution consists of a smart camera system and web dashboard that utilizes computer vision technology. The camera is installed on a fish farmer’s net pen, and real-time farm metrics can be accessed via the web dashboard. Underwater 3D cameras and gauge parameters of temperature and oxygen help track the critical data. Typical metrics that Aquabyte’s cameras and machine learning algorithms will track include lice count, biomass estimation, appetite detection, and feed calculations.

„The development of computer vision over the past couple years along with the advent of deep learning has opened up dramatic opportunities to build new vision-related products that can solve very practical, real world problems,“ said Bryton Shang, Founder and CEO of Aquabyte. „The same computer-vision models I worked on for tissue cancer diagnosis are applicable in a way that can transform the fish farming industry and the future of protein consumption around the world.“

Fish farming is the fastest growing sector of food production in the world with more fish being farmed than beef, representing nearly $160B in yearly production. The industry is rapidly expanding, with experts anticipating that protein consumption will increase world-wide by at least 50 percent by 2050. One of the largest challenges in filling the gap between current supply and projected demand is driving down the cost of feed, which currently represents 50 percent of the cost of fish farming.