It was used to solve the customer’s problem “to employ an unmanned helicopter that can arrive and depart conveniently from a small purse seine fishing vessel for the purpose of locating fish.”

System configuration: ULC narrowband video transmission system
Operation implementation: Contrails Co., Ltd. (https://contrails.tech/)
Delivery destination: Fisheries Research and Education Agency, National Research and Development Corporation

Large overseas purse seine fishing vessels have heliports on the bridge, and have achieved results by searching for fish using onboard manned helicopters.

On the other hand, fishing vessels of less than 400 tonnes, which occupy the main force of Japan’s overseas purse seine fleet, cannot carry manned helicopters because the space on board is limited.

If it becomes possible to apply an unmanned helicopter that can arrive and depart from a relatively small purse seine vessel for locating fish, the search efficiency of purse seine fishing vessels of less than 400 tonnes will dramatically improve, leading to the strengthening of international competitiveness.

In the commissioned research conducted in 2018, we succeeded in taking off and landing the first unmanned helicopter from a fishing boat in a coastal area application.

On the other hand, it became clear that it was necessary to expand the departure and arrival platform and modify the hull for safer and more reliable takeoff and landing.

In addition, there was a high possibility that the image quality of the video transmitted from the unmanned helicopter to the ship by satellite was insufficient to identify the fish accurately.
In contrast the quality of video transmission by terrestrial based communication was relatively high, however the flight distance was insufficient for practical usage by the fleet.

The adoption of (ULC narrowband video transmission system), which has high performance in satellite communications, enabled good video transmission for the accurately determining the location and species of fish when searching via an unmanned helicopter. Using birds reflected on the seabird radar, it is able to fly to the position and send images taken by the built-in camera back to the fishing boat so that crew can assess and estimate the presence and size of the fish shoal. Demonstrations and experiments were conducted to assess the positive impact on remote decision making.