Vision System for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle with a Benthos Sampling Function

Abstract

We developed a vision system for an autonomous underwater robot with a benthos sampling function, specifically sampling-autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The sampling-AUV includes the following five modes: preparation mode (PM), observation mode (OM), return mode (RM), tracking mode (TM), and sampling mode (SM). To accomplish the mission objective, the proposed vision system comprises software modules for image acquisition, image enhancement, object detection, image selection, and object tracking. The camera in the proposed system acquires images in intervals of five seconds during OM and RM, and in intervals of one second during TM. The system completes all processing stages in the time required for image acquisition by employing high-speed algorithms. We verified the effective operation of the proposed system in a pool.