System Design and Operation: Smart Materials for Aquaculture Drone Extension Design
Project Lead: Bing Ouyang, Ph.D.
Affiliated Home Campus: Harbor Branch
Affiliated Department: Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute
REU Scholar: Rachel Yang
REU Scholar Home Institution: Smith College
PROJECT
Aquaculture plays the important role of helping diminish the prevalence of fishing in natural habitats, alleviating food insecurity, and providing a more economically accessible source of protein. Commercial fish farms can consist of a large network of individual ponds, each of which must be monitored for oxygen levels to sustain stock. One appealing option for this maintenance is drones, which can use extensions to lower and retract sensors into the pond. This project investigated the use of smart materials (materials which chemically and physically respond to an environmental stimulus in a controllable way) to construct hinges for these drone extensions and provide motion. The study focused on 3D-printable smart materials which responded to electric field with a change in stiffness or shape.