Related papers: Simulation and Testing Results for a Sub-Bottom Im…
This paper describes a high-fidelity sonar model and a simulation environment that implements the model. The model and simulation environment have been developed to aid in the design of a forward looking sonar for autonomous underwater…
The increasing demand for underwater vehicles highlights the necessity for robust localization solutions in inspection missions. In this work, we present a novel real-time sonar-based underwater global positioning algorithm for AUVs…
Side-scan sonar (SSS) is a lightweight acoustic sensor that is frequently deployed on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to provide high-resolution seafloor images. However, using side-scan images to perform simultaneous localization and…
Imaging sonar produces clear images in underwater environments, independent of water turbidity and lighting conditions. The next generation 2D forward looking sonars are compact in size and able to generate high-resolution images which…
Visual degradation in underwater environments poses unique and significant challenges, which distinguishes underwater SLAM from popular vision-based SLAM on the ground. In this paper, we propose RUSSO, a robust underwater SLAM system which…
Recent work has achieved dense 3D reconstruction with wide-aperture imaging sonar using a stereo pair of orthogonally oriented sonars. This allows each sonar to observe a spatial dimension that the other is missing, without requiring any…
Among underwater perceptual sensors, imaging sonar has been highlighted for its perceptual robustness underwater. The major challenge of imaging sonar, however, arises from the difficulty in defining visual features despite limited…
Visual challenges in underwater environments significantly hinder the accuracy of vision-based localisation and the high-fidelity dense reconstruction. In this paper, we propose VISO, a robust underwater SLAM system that fuses a stereo…
Aerial scans with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more widely adopted across industries, from smart farming to urban mapping. An application area that can leverage the strength of such systems is search and rescue (SAR)…
Drowning is an omnipresent risk associated with any activity on or in the water, and rescuing a drowning person is particularly challenging because of the time pressure, making a short response time important. Further complicating water…
Side-scan sonar (SSS) is a lightweight acoustic sensor that is commonly deployed on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to provide high-resolution seafloor images. However, leveraging side-scan images for simultaneous localization and…
Combining synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) imagery with optical images for underwater object classification has the potential to overcome challenges such as water clarity, the stability of the optical image analysis platform, and strong…
Accurate 3D reconstruction in visually-degraded underwater environments remains a formidable challenge. Single-modality approaches are insufficient: vision-based methods fail due to poor visibility and geometric constraints, while sonar is…
We propose a novel method to generate underwater object imagery that is acoustically compliant with that generated by side-scan sonar using the Unreal Engine. We describe the process to develop, tune, and generate imagery to provide…
To meet the immediate needs of environmental monitoring or hazardous event detection, we consider the automatic deployment of a group of low-cost or disposable sensors by a drone. Introducing sensors by drones to an environment instead of…
Underwater intervention is an important capability in several marine domains, with numerous industrial, scientific, and defense applications. However, existing perception systems used during intervention operations rely on data from optical…
This paper introduces a novel benchmark dataset of Visible and Near-Infrared (VNIR) hyperspectral imagery acquired via an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform for landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) detection research. The dataset was…
3D situational awareness is critical for any autonomous system. However, when operating underwater, environmental conditions often dictate the use of acoustic sensors. These acoustic sensors are plagued by high noise and a lack of 3D…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant popularity in scene reconstruction. This paper presents SOAR, a LiDAR-Visual heterogeneous multi-UAV system specifically designed for fast autonomous reconstruction of complex…
The fusion of multiple sensor modalities, especially through deep learning architectures, has been an active area of study. However, an under-explored aspect of such work is whether the methods can be robust to degradations across their…