More than 100 million pounds of crawfish are harvested in Louisiana between March and June of every year. The unique flavor, non-demanding growing conditions and sustainability of crawfish caused the expansion of aquaculture across the country. The harvesting and sale of crawfish is now a multi-billion dollar industry which requires technological evolution to cope with the ever-increasing demand.
Spotting the need for new harvesting equipment, six engineering students worked together to build a robotic arm to automatically harvest crawfish from their traps.
The robotic arm prototype can be stationed on the side of the boat to grab the trap from the water, empty the crawfish onto the boat, re-bait the trap and place it back in the water.
“The arm is controlled remotely by a PlayStation controller,” engineering senior David Vercher said. “The operator must use the sticks on the controller to position the claw. Once positioned the operator hits the right trigger to close the claw and grip the trap, then the operator only needs to press triangle. Triangle triggers an automated sequence that lifts the trap out of the water, dumps the crawfish, re-baits the trap, and sets it back down into the water.”
The project was pitched and designed by LSU Professor Chandra Theegala, who said the idea was brought to his attention by J.B. Hanks, chairman of the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation’s Crawfish Advisory Committee. The harvesting and baiting of crawfish accounts for 50% of the total costs in the crawfish industry. This huge cost also accounts for the intensive labor and labor shortages within the industry.
“Unless we address the labor scenario, the crawfish industry couldn’t expand further,” said Theegala. “That is when I saw the similarities with the garbage trucks with side-loader arms and how they addressed a similar labor problem.”
This realization is how the idea of the robotic arm crawfish harvester was born.
“We were then tasked with making it happen,” Vercher said. “Each of us had individual attributes that were essential to the design and building of the robotic arm.”
With the successful invention of this mini prototype, the creators hope for the development of a field-ready robotic arm. The long-term goal is to make a fully autonomous harvesting boat, according to Theegala. If the plan is brought to fruition, the autonomous harvesting boat would revolutionize the crawfish industry.
“For this project, if we had not been limited by COVID-19, I think it could have been improved,” engineering senior Bryan Tassin said. “I believe that being online for the first semester of senior design really set us back and limited my group on what our finished product would be, but overall I’m happy with the outcome of the project and with how our team was able to come together through this tough time and create such an amazing product.”
