Probabilistic Positioning of a Mooring Cable in Sonar Images for In-Situ Calibration of Marine Sensors

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2024

Authors

Oliveira, AJ (Author) Other; Bruno Ferreira (Author) FEUP; Nuno Cruz (Author) FEUP; Diamant, R (Author) Other

Journal

Title: IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing

Vol. 23

Pages: 8855-8868

ISSN: 1536-1233

Publisher: IEEE

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 1 Citation

Scopus - 0 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00Z-X8R

DOI: 10.1109/tmc.2024.3354126

Abstract (EN): The calibration of sensors stationed along a cable in marine observatories is a time-consuming and expensive operation that involves taking the mooring out of the water periodically. In this paper, we present a method that allows an underwater vehicle to approach a mooring, in order to take reference measurements along the cable for in-situ sensor calibration. We use the vehicle's Mechanically Scanned Imaging Sonar (MSIS) to identify the cable's reflection within the sonar image. After pre-processing the image to remove noise, enhance contour lines, and perform smoothing, we employ three detection steps: 1) selection of regions of interest that fit the cable's reflection pattern, 2) template matching, and 3) a track-before-detect scheme that utilized the vehicle's motion. The later involves building a lattice of template matching responses for a sequence of sonar images, and using the Viterbi algorithm to find the most probable sequence of cable locations that fits the maximum speed assumed for the surveying vessel. Performance is explored in pool and sea trials, and involves an MSIS onboard an underwater vehicle scanning its surrounding to identify a steel-core cable. The results show a sub-meter accuracy in the multi-reverberant pool environment and in the sea trial. For reproducibility, we share our implementation code.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 14