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R/E-24H
Automated Crabmeat Picking Technology - Enhancing the Research Outcome through In-lab and In-field Studies
Principal Investigator:
Yang TaoStart/End Year:
2019 - 2020Institution:
University of Maryland, College ParkCo-Principal Investigator:
Dongyi Wang, University of Maryland College Park (UMCP)Topic(s):
Strategic focus area:
Sustainable fisheries and aquacultureDescription:
Blue Crabs and their meat are an iconic cultural export for the Chesapeake area, and make a huge economic contribution to local fishing industry. Compared to unprocessed crabs, processed crab meat can promote the added value of blue crabs. However, currently, commercial meat is still hand-picked, which is an arduous and dangerous process. The shortage of skilled labor further impedes the healthy development of the crab industry. Targeting to these problems, an undergoing project in the lab is to design an automated crab meat processing machine integrating advanced machine vision and automation techniques to minimize the potential injury risk of human pickers, alleviate the labor force shortage, maximize the market value of blue crabs, and promote the development of crab industry. This research aims to conduct in lab/field experiment for system evaluation function by function, outreach to stakeholders for system developments / improvements, give presentations, onsite or invited demos to enlarge the influence of this technology.
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Featured Fellow
Shivish Bhandari is a graduate student in the Bioenvironmental Science Ph.D. program at Morgan State University studying environment-genome interaction in Eastern oysters. Outside of his studies, Shivish enjoys traveling, bird watching, and photography.
Featured Research Project
Controlling Fouling and Pests Associated with Water Column Oyster Aquaculture
This project has demonstrated the effectiveness of environmentally benign methods for biofouling control. There are many methods of biofouling control which have been suggested, with varying degrees of effectiveness and commercial applicability. Some may be highly species-specific, while others may target a range of species. In order for a biofouling management technique to be widely adopted, it must have the potential to be applied commercially without adding unreasonable labor demands, and it must be effective in controlling biofouling with disrupting the crop of interest, the oysters.
