Is low-cost automation for fish farming possible? This was the challenge proposed by a team of Embrapa Digital Agriculture to undergraduate students at Insper, who replied creating Aquameter, a prototype of equipment that remotely monitors water quality in fish ponds. Despite being a growing market, aquaculture is low technified in Brazil. According to Luciana Romani, a researcher at Embrapa Digital Agriculture, there is a lack of low-cost equipment on the national market, which justifies the proposed challenge. “Having a multiparameter meter installed in each fish pond is very expensive and it makes the production cost higher”, Romani says. Embrapa Digital Agriculture supports professional training, which connected perfectly with the final project of the engineering school. Vinícius Licks, a mechatronics professor, said this was a great opportunity for the engineering students to work with a real technological challenge, presented by a partner institution. He advised Maria Victoria Cavalieri, Luiz Ricardo Paranhos, and Wilgner Lopes in the Aquameter project. The final project is carried out in groups of three to five students of mechanical engineering, mechatronics, and computing, who work together to solve a problem for one semester. The Embrapa team proposed them to create Aquameter, a device prototype that measures relevant parameters to tilapia production, such as pond temperature, amount of oxygen in the water, and pH, Licks informs. Romani explains that the device sends data to a remote application programming interface (API), which centralizes and monitors this information that is important for decision making. “The idea is that the information is sent on a specific period to be stored on the company’s platform”, Romani adds. Together with the researcher, Ariovaldo Luchiari Jr and Silvio Evangelista also followed the study. Robots The institutions concluded that the objective of Aquameter project was achieved, but it did not include the presentation of the prototype to the market. However, the open innovation involving other companies might be discussed in the future. “The partnership results were so great that new projects are being planned for 2024”, Licks assures. This semester, the research team of Embrapa Digital Agriculture is working with professors and students to develop other two robots. One of them to count and monitor fruit in orchards by capturing georeferenced images. The other one is the robot fish, or underwater robot, endowed with mobility, which might increase the accuracy of collected data in tilapia ponds. About Insper: a non-profit institution dedicated to education and research, which offers graduation and post-graduation lato and stricto sensu courses, as well as executive and custom education programs. Insper seeks to accelerate high economic and social value through applied knowledge. Source: https://www.insper.edu.br/quem-somos/ )