Technology for grading and sorting of fish - focus on gutted salmon, herring and mackerel

The Norwegian fisheries and aquaculture industry presently faces a challenge in competing with countries with low labour cost and thus low production costs such as Chile and Poland. In order to create an economical robust business environment, the Norwegi an fish industry should focus on optimizing the cost efficiency in production through automation. Today farmed Norwegian Atlantic salmon is manually graded into quality classes in order to ensure a uniform and high quality. Pelagic fish is automatically weight-graded using mechanical grading systems, and quality grading is done by manual inspection. The accuracy of both the manual quality grading and mechanical weight grading has the potential to be improved, and completely automating these tasks will l ead to lower production costs, more accurate, objective and cost-effective grading/sorting, which will give stronger market positioning for the fish industry. From a wide range of potential sensor technologies, computer vision offers the most suitable te chnology for use in automation of sorting and grading of Atlantic salmon and pelagic fish. The main objective of the project is to strengthen the competence to develop and optimize processes and technology for automated quality grading and sorting of who le farmed Atlantic salmon and pelagic fish (herring and mackerel). In cooperation with APS Automasjon, Avanti Engineering, MMC-Tendos and FHL Pelagisk Forum, Sintef Fisheries and Aquaculture aims to: 1: Establish quantifiable grading criteria for whole At lantic salmon and pelagic fish. 2: Develop of sensor and measurement system concepts for sorting and grading. 3: Develop of mechanical design concepts for feeding and presenting the fish to the grading system 4: Develop and build of expertise with the fo cus on applicable results which can easily be transformed into industrial solutions.