Evaluation of an efficient approach for target tracking from acoustic imagery for the perception system of an autonomous underwater vehicle

SEBASTIAN VILLAR; GERARDO G. ACOSTA; ANDRE L. SOUSA; ALEJANDRO ROZENFELD

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ROBOTIC SYSTEMS

IN-TEH

Año: 2014

1729-8806

This article describes the core algorithms of the perception system to be included within an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). This perception system is based on the acoustic data acquired from side scan sonar (SSS). These data should be processed in an efficient time, so that the perception system is able to detect and recognize a predefined target. This detection and recognition outcome is therefore an important piece of knowledge for the AUVs dynamic mission planner (DMP). Effectively, the DMP should propose different trajectories, navigation depths and other parameters that will change the robot?s behaviour according to the perception system output. Hence, the time in which to make a decision is critical in order to assure safe robot operation and to acquire good quality data; consequently, the efficiency of the on-line image processing from acoustic data is a key issue.