W-03

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Viability of Indoor Robotic Air Aquariums

Lazaro Herrera, Francisco Peleato, Jong-Hoon Kim Discovery Lab, School of Computing and Information Science Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, Florida 33199 lherr012@fiu.edu, fpele001@fiu.edu, kimj@cis.fiu.edu

ABSTRACT Zoos and aquariums are visited by 700 million people every year; they are popular tourist locations all around the world and generate billions of dollars of revenue yearly. More than nine million people in the US own a small household fish tank, which indicates a desire to bring some of the aquarium features into their homes. We considered the viability of real-life indoor aquariums. We found that the deficiencies that lead to the problem are closely related to costs of operation (maintenance), spacing (for housing) and personnel (for upkeep). In this paper, we analyze the problem, provide our current solution to the issue, and discuss future uses of the solution developed in order to tackle this problem. Our solution is to bring smart robotics and smart algorithms in the form of autonomous robotic fish aquariums into the every-day home in order to deliver awe- inspiring simulated aquariums. The solution tackles the cost of spacing (by moving the aquarium into the air), the personnel (by removing the humans and replacing the fish with robots) and the costs of operation (by requiring just air space and helium). For this solution, we created environment-aware fish simulators that were capable of replicating basic fish functions (such as swimming) along with full usage of avoidance maneuvering, ultrasonic sensing systems, and Bluetooth wireless networking. A key part of our solution is attempting to improve the existing user interaction between the current generation of robotics and humans from our current rudimentary simple button control to more sophisticated algorithms such as Fast Fourier Transform for voice.