Knauss legislative fellowships in Congress help build careers — and they're fun and educational. See our video and fact sheet for details.
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.
Program Announcements
News and Blogs
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
Interstate Blue Crab Transportation and the Risk of Iintroducing Novel Viruses into the Chesapeake Bay Crab Fishery
Callinectes sapidus supports the most valuable commercial fishery in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Nationally, the average total dockside value of blue crab fisheries in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Texas approaches $200 million. Interstate live blue crab transport has increased due to seasonal cycles of crab landings in the Chesapeake regions and changes in allocation of immigration permits for guest workers.
