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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):
- Blue Crabs
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.Funding Start Year
2019
Funding End Year
2020
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Featured Fellow
Nina Santos
Nina Santos is a Ph.D. student at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. For her dissertation, she is focused on small shrimp-like crustaceans called mysids – an understudied yet important part of many estuarine and coastal food webs.
Featured Research Project
Developing a habitat model for mysids, an important link in Chesapeake Bay food webs
Mysids are important mesozooplankton prey for many species of fish in Chesapeake Bay and are an important link in transferring energy from lower to upper trophic levels. Mysids also serve as biological vectors for benthic-pelagic coupling due to their diel vertical migration and omnivorous prey-switching behavior, which makes mysids important regulators of food web architecture. Despite their central role in coastal food webs, surprisingly little is known about mysid ecology and dynamics in Chesapeake Bay.
