FishSense Scout - Autonomous eyes for large-scale ocean monitoring

FishSense Scout is the newest addition to the FishSense family and is currently under active development. Scout serves as the basis for an automated sensing platform intended for applications such as large-scale ocean monitoring, aquaculture, and other environments where a computer-controlled camera system can support repeatable data collection over extended periods.

Scout is being developed as a flexible research platform, allowing us to explore how onboard compute, automated capture, and standardized workflows can support future monitoring efforts.

Development version of FishSense Scout.

Current focus

Development of FishSense Scout is focused on understanding practical constraints and design tradeoffs for autonomous and semi-autonomous deployments.

• Evaluating computer-controlled imaging for repeatable data collection

• Exploring onboard processing to reduce data volume and support triage

• Investigating deployment constraints, including power, mounting, and bandwidth

• Designing data outputs suitable for downstream analysis and review

Ongoing work and partnerships

We are actively developing and testing FishSense Scout in collaboration with partners, including NWIC Pacific, to evaluate use cases and requirements relevant to real-world deployments. These efforts are informing both hardware and software design decisions as the platform evolves.

Status

FishSense Scout is a research and development platform. Capabilities, configurations, and deployment models are evolving as testing continues.

If you’d like to learn more or get involved, please contact Christopher Crutchfield (ccrutchf@ucsd.edu).