2019 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Consumer Technologies (ISCT)

Smart Aquaculture System:

A Remote Feeding System with Smartphones
Tetsuo Imai(Member, IEEE), Kenichi Arai, Toru Kobayashi
Graduate School of Engineering
Nagasaki University
Nagasaki, Japan
imai@nagasaki-u.ac.jp

Abstract—The problem of open water aquaculture using sub-
mersible fish cages is to reduce costs of labor and feed. In this
paper, we propose the Smart Aquaculture System to reduce labor
and feed costs by the labor saving of aquaculture, including auto-
mated feeding and continuous observation of cages, optimization
of a timing and an amount of feeding. As a part of the system, we
implemented the Remote Feeding System comprised of a feeding
device equipped inside the cage and a smartphone to control
the device remotely. We confirmed the proper operation through
field experiments including underwater.
Index Terms—Internet of Things, Remote sensing, Artificial
intelligence, Submersible cage, Aquaculture.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The technology developments of open water aquaculture
have been recently advanced, since aquaculture facilities in
coastal areas have faced problems: red or blue tides damages
caused by unstable water quality and difficulty of building
large scale facilities due to insufficient space [1]. Open water
aquaculture has advantages such as clear and stable water
quality and space for large-scale cages, as compared with
coastal aquaculture [2]. However, offshore cages require time
and effort in being towed and protected in case of high waves
caused by the monsoon or typhoon.
A submersible fish cage is a tool to avoid these problems.
This is a mooring system in which a cage is controlled to
float or sink by air control. In bad weather, it enables a cage
to be sunk deeply enough not to be affected by the waves.
Open water aquaculture using submersible fish cages has the
following advantages [3].
• Preservation of facilities, fish and shellfish from high
waves caused by the monsoon or typhoon
• Preventing death of fish and shellfish caused by red or
blue tides
• Algae reduction by ups and downs of cages
• Reducing the influence on fish and shellfish from lower-
ing the salt concentration and water surface temperature
caused by the rain or in the rivers
• Antitheft
• Avoidance oil pollution or river sewage
However, a challenge that aquaculture using submersible fish
cages faces is labor costs. As compared to coastal aquaculture,
open water aquaculture using submersible cages requires the
following tasks.
1) Observation/prediction of the hunger of fish in offshore
cages
2) Transportation of feed by ships to offshore
3) Floating cages
4) Throwing feed into cages
5) Sinking cages again
This process requires labor, which causes a cost increase.
Furthermore, the feed cost is an important issue among
aquaculture. For this reason,
6) Optimization of an amount and a timing of feeding
is important to breed fish efficiently with a smaller amount of
feed.
II. S MART AQUACULTURE S YSTEM
This paper suggests the Smart Aquaculture System using
IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) in
order to solve these problems(Fig. 1). This system has the
following functions and benefits.
Continuous observation of condition inside cages
By transmitting information of the fish inside cages
under water and the amount of leftovers by an
underwater camera or sensors to remote observation
devices, an aquaculturist is able to constantly check
the inside of the cages. This enables him/her to
determine the best timing and the optimum amount
of feeding, which saves labor about 1).
Optimizing the timing and amount of feeding
By storing the inside situation and the timing and
amount of feeding as electronic data, the optimal
timing and the amount of feeding by skilled aqua-
culturists is learnt by machine learning. This is an
automation of 6).
Remote feeding
Remote feeding makes it unnecessary to go to the
location by ships for feeding, which reduces the labor
cost of 4).
Reducing the frequency of feed supply to tanks in summer
The tanks of the existing feeding machines to store
the feed are placed on the surface of the water, which

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 Smartphone

Control buoy

Cage control
computer Air compressor
Tubes for compressed air supply,
feed supply, power cable,
communication cable, etc.

Feed Stop Underwater

feeding device

underwater
Sensors Camera drone
Aquaculturist can observe
inside submergible cages
and control feeding Submergible cages
device with a smartphone.

Fig. 1. Concept diagram of Smart Aquaculture System

makes the feed spoil quickly in hot weather. For this Control buoy
reason, it is difficult to store a large amount of feed. Smartphone Cloud server

By placing a feeding cage under water, this system Air compressor

reduces a problem of the spoiled feed. This lightens
labor burden of 2).
Reducing labor for floating and sinking cages
This system can constantly keep the cages under
water, which reduces labor costs to float or sink
cages. That realizes the omission of 3) and 5). More-
over, stress received by fish caused by environmental
change with floating/sinking cages can be reduced.
We propose and implement the Remote Feeding System,
which is composed of feeding machines inside the cage under
water and a function to remotely control by smartphones.
III. R EMOTE F EEDING S YSTEM WITH S MARTPHONES
Fig. 2 shows the outline of our developed Remote Feeding
System. This system consists of a smartphone for control, a
cloud server on internet, a cage control computer provided in
a control buoy, air valves, underwater cameras and sensors
inside the underwater cages and under water feeding devices.
The control smartphone is a device so that aquaculturists
can grasp the situation or control to feed fish. A trigger button
for feeding as an interface is implemented in the form of
the web application operated on the smartphone. By tapping
“Feed”/“Stop” buttons on the screen of the smartphone, it
makes it possible for them to give an instruction to start or
stop feeding and check the information of sensors, which is
described later. Fig. 3 shows a screen image of our developed
web application on the control smartphone.
Feed
Text file Air valve
Write
Feed
Read
Stop
Stop
Cage control
computer Sensors
Underwater
feeding device
Fig. 2. System architecture of a remote feeding system
The cloud server on internet receives opening/closing con-
trol signals of feeding tanks and stores them as text files. By
periodically reading these text files, the cage control computer,
mentioned later, detects operations controlled by the smart-
phone. This leads to carry out the control of opening/closing
the feeding tanks.
The cage control computer is implemented by Raspberry
Pi, which is set inside the control buoy. It collects the data of
underwater sensors, exchanges data with the cloud server and
controls the air valves for the underwater feeding devices.
The air valves connected to an air compressor and the under-
water feeding devices are for controlling of opening/closeing
the feeding tanks inside the underwater feeding devices. These
valves have 3 states, opening feeding tanks, closing feeding
tanks and neutral, controlled by the cage control computer.

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 Log data of water quality sensors Cage control Underwater
inside the underwater cages Smartphone Cloud Server computer Air valve feeding device
Tapping
“Feed”/”Stop”
button Write
“Feed”/”Stop”
2 seconds Periodical polling

Current state indicator Screen reload

Write Start electric
“Neutral” conduction
Start venting
“Feed” button “Stop” button 2 seconds Start
Stop electric Opening/Closing
conduction a feed tank
Stop venting
Periodical polling Stop
Log data of control history Opening/Closing
2 seconds a feed tank
Periodical polling

Fig. 3. A screen image of a Web application on control smartphone.

Fig. 5. Sequence diagram of Remote Feeding System

Fig. 6. Field experiment for operation verification

the following two purposes. First, it ensures air space in

Fig. 4. A prototype of underwater feeding device
Sensors for water quality meter are equipped inside the
underwater cages. They measure a water temperature, a salin-
ity concentration, an amount of dissolved oxygen and pH in
real time. The web application on the smartphone displays
the values of sensors so that an aquaculturist can check these
numeric data. For future work, we aim that aquaculturists can
monitor fish’s behavior inside cages on a web application by
using an underwater drone or an observation camera fixed in
a cage.
Under the control smartphone and the cage control com-
puter, the underwater feeding device is for feeding fish inside
the cages. Fig. 4 shows the appearance of this device devel-
oped in this system. It has a cylindrical external shape and
the same shaped feeding tank is provided inside the body.
Tubes are connected to the body to inject the compressed air
from the air compressor in the control buoy, which realizes
the feeding tanks. By providing the compressed air from the
compressor following the water depth, it prevents the tanks
from sinking under water even in the locations where the
depth of water is deep and the water pressure is high. The air
providing is automatically controlled by detecting the floats
equipped inside the underwater feeding devices. That is, the
float is buoyed when the external water pressure increases and
the water level at the lower part of the body elevates. When the
position of the float is raised above a certain level, the air valve
is released to provide the compressed air. Another purpose is
to control of opening/closing the feeding tanks. The air valves
by the cage control computer control of opening/closing the
tanks.
Fig. 5 shows the sequence of this system. “Feed” button on
the screen of the smartphone is tapped, which is transmitted
to the cloud server. Two seconds after “Feed” is recorded in
the text file that stores states of buttons, the file is rewritten
automatically to “Neutral”. The cage control computer (Rasp-
berry Pi) periodically reads the text file in the cloud server.
When it confirms the state is “Feed”, the feeding tanks in the
underwater feeding devices are opened through the air valves.
The state of the valves automatically returns back to neutral
in two seconds. When “Stop” is tapped, the tanks are closed
in the same sequence.

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 IV. F IELD E XPERIMENT
The field experiment is carried out at Mie Fishing Port,
Nagasaki city, for the test operation of this system (Fig.6). The
underwater feeding device was lowered from the ship down
to a depth of 15 meters. We confirmed that the air spaces
were kept and the opening/closing of the feeding tank was
appropriately controlled. While the opening/closing of the tank
is directly controlled by the valve of the air compressor in this
experiment, the further experiment on the ground proved that
the air valve was properly controlled by the control smartphone
and the cage control computer.
V. C ONCLUSION
This paper describes about the implement of the Remote
Feeding System with smartphones as a part of the Smart
Aquaculture System by AI and IoT. The proper operation is
confirmed through the field experiments. Our future work is to
implement the functions to observe the activity of fish inside
the cages or the amount of the leftovers by using the under-
water cameras or sensors to realize the Smart Aquaculture
System. This enables aquaculturists to check the situation of
the cages. Furthermore, our goal is to develop the functions
to automatically estimate the fish’s activity and the leftovers
using the information of the underwater cameras and sensors
and automate the optimization of the timing and the amount
of feeding by machine learning. Implementation of these
functions saves the labor costs and determines the economic
optimum amount of feeding, which leads to maximize the
profit by the aquaculture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge Mr. Fukahori, Kasutani
Fishing Net MFG, for his useful advice for this research.
This research was supported by the commissioned project for
R&D of marine science and technology of Nagasaki Industrial
Promotion Foundation.
R EFERENCES
[1] Fisheries Agency of Japan, http://www.jfa.maff.go.jp/j/kikaku/wpaper/
h25 h/trend/1/t1 1 4 2.html (in Japanese).
[2] K. Komeyama, M. Kadota, S. Torisawa, K. Suzuki, Y. Tsuda, and
T. Takagi, “Measuring the swimming behaviour of a reared pacific bluefin
tuna in a submerged aquaculture net cage,” Aquat. Living Resour., vol. 24,
no. 2, pp. 99–105, 2011.
[3] Kasutani Fishing Net MFG. Co, LTD, http://www.kasutani.com/fishery
relation/yousyoku keiryu/yousyoku keiryu.html (in Japanese).

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