The ability to perform remote forensics in situ is an important application of autonomous undersea vehicles (AUVs). Forensics objectives may include remediation of mines and/or unexploded ordnance, as well as monitoring of seafloor infrastructure. At JHU/APL, digital holography is being explored for the potential application to underwater imaging and integration with an AUV. In previous work, a feature-based approach was developed for processing the holographic imagery and performing object recognition. In this work, the results of the image processing method were incorporated into a Bayesian framework for autonomous path planning referred to as information surfing. The framework was derived assuming that the location of the object of interest is known a priori, but the type of object and its pose are unknown. The path-planning algorithm adaptively modifies the trajectory of the sensing platform based on historical performance of object and pose classification. The algorithm is called information surfing because the direction of motion is governed by the local information gradient. Simulation experiments were carried out using holographic imagery collected from submerged objects. The autonomous sensing algorithm was compared to a deterministic sensing CONOPS, and demonstrated improved accuracy and faster convergence in several cases.
The ability to autonomously sense and characterize underwater objects in situ is desirable in applications of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). In this work, underwater object recognition was explored using a digital holographic system. Two experiments were performed in which several objects of varying size, shape, and material were submerged in a 43,000 gallon test tank. Holograms were collected from each object at multiple distances and orientations, with the imager located either outside the tank (looking through a porthole) or submerged (looking downward). The resultant imagery from these holograms was preprocessed to improve dynamic range, mitigate speckle, and segment out the image of the object. A collection of feature descriptors were then extracted from the imagery to characterize various object properties (e.g., shape, reflectivity, texture). The features extracted from images of multiple objects, collected at different imaging geometries, were then used to train statistical models for object recognition tasks. The resulting classification models were used to perform object classification as well as estimation of various parameters of the imaging geometry. This information can then be used to inform the design of autonomous sensing algorithms for UUVs employing holographic imagers.
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