**ABSTRACT NOT FOR CITATION WITHOUT AUTHOR PERMISSION. The title, authors, and abstract for this completion report are provided below.  For a copy of the full completion report, please contact the author via e-mail at xbtan@egr.msu.edu or via telephone at 517-432-5671. Questions? Contact the GLFC via email at frp@glfc.org or via telephone at 734-662-3209.**

A GLIDING ROBOTIC FISH-BASED MOBILE RECEIVER PLATFORM

FOR ACOUSTIC TELEMETRY IN FISHERY RESEARCH

Xiaobo Tan¹, Christopher Holbrook², Darryl Hondorp³, Charles Krueger⁴

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, 428 S. Shaw Lane, Rm. 2120 Engineering Bldg., East Lansing, MI 48824

²Hammond Bay Biological Station, United States Geological Survey, 11188 Ray Rd., Millersburg, MI 49759

³Great Lakes Science Center, United States Geological Survey, 1451 Green Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

⁴Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University,1405 South Harrison Rd., 115 Manly Miles Bldg., East Lansing, MI 48823

May 2017

ABSTRACT:

Telemetry promises to address many critical uncertainties in Great Lakes ecosystems, including the response of fish communities to ecological changes; identifying, preserving, and protecting essential habitat for ecologically and economically important fishes; and mapping the spread of invasive species. Although the Great Lakes region will continue to benefit from the Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System (GLATOS), the scope of future research will be limited by exclusive reliance on stationary receivers to collect data. We aim to significantly advance mobile acoustic telemetry for fishery research through the development and use of a cost-effective and novel type of underwater robots, gliding robotic fish. As an initial step, this project focused on understanding whether the gliding robotic fish can serve as a competent receiver platform that meets the basic needs of projects using acoustic telemetry for fishery research. A second-generation gliding robotic fish (Grace 2.0) was developed. The robot was integrated with a suite of environmental sensors (dissolved oxygen, photosynthetically active radiation, temperature, chlorophyll, harmful algae) and equipped with a VEMCO acoustic receiver (VR2Tx; 69 kHz). Three field trials were conducted in Higgins Lake, Michigan, to evaluate both autonomous operation algorithms for the robot and the tag detection performance during locomotion of the robot. It was found that the estimated efficiency of detecting a stationary transmitter (VEMCO model V8-4H) for the receiver attached to the robot was similar to stationary receivers at 300 m (0.78 for stationary receivers; 0.76 for mobile receiver), but decreased faster than stationary receivers as the distance was increased farther. The results demonstrated the feasibility of using gliding robotic fish as an autonomous mobile platform for acoustic telemetry and offered insight into future directions for advancing this technology.