Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

This paper introduces an active vision system for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Because of the property of underwater environment, lots of researchers are doing research in this area. It is very difficult to get images from environments like messy underwater. With the help of a proper vision system we can use the vehicle for different purposes like underwater monitoring as well as rescue operations.

An underwater vehicle is expected to be highly efficient in its vision or object detection rather than just relying on sensors. To do the project first I looked at other articles based on robotic vision. Most of the reviews are interfaced with sensors. When we use more sensors the system will be complicated. But as an engineer I want to create a simple system rather than a complicated one.

In underwater applications the vision is limited because of the underwater environment. Cameras are one of the important factors in these types of devices. It is very important in such a device to implement a perfect camera with high resolution and with RGB sensors. The underwater pictures taken by the cameras are often of poor quality because of high attenuation and it is easily affected by noise. However, different image enhancing tools are available to enhance image quality.

This article presents an active vision system for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. Vision is an important factor for an underwater vehicle. Because of efficient vision system, the vehicle can be used for different monitoring purposes. It can also be used for rescue operations because it has got an advanced image processing system and an AUV can frequently send images to the base station. We can easily find out the problems in underwater pipelines or cables and can easily rectify the problems.