Development of a Jellyfish Removal Device to Equip on Underwater Robot and Its Suction Performance Evaluation

In recent years, massive blooms of jellyfish have occurred due to the influence of rising water temperatures, causing damage to industries such as fisheries. To reduce the damage caused by jellyfish, fishermen conduct jellyfish removal work, however, it cannot be said to be efficient from a cost perspective. As one of the efficient methods, our research team is proposing an underwater robot-based jellyfish removal work. Our research team has developed a small-size underwater robot to test, and with the assistance of the fisheries workers, conducted jellyfish removal tests in the Seto Inland Sea in August 2022. Through this test, we confirmed that jellyfish removal using underwater robots is feasible, and based on the results of the test, we improved the jellyfish removal device. In this paper, we introduce the improved jellyfish removal devices, that we have developed, and then evaluate the performance of this device. In the results of the performance evaluation, compared to the test type device, the improved device showed a suction range that was 2.77 times wider, and the flow velocity increased by 2.28 times.