Direct estimation of motion from sea floor images for automaticstation-keeping of submersible platforms |
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Authors: | Negahdaripour S Xu X Jin L |
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Institution: | Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Miami Univ., Coral Gables, FL; |
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Abstract: | Maintaining a fixed position near the sea floor is a critical capability during the deployment of remotely operated or intelligent (autonomous) undersea vehicles in a variety of missions, including inspection and repair of undersea structures, data collection, and surveillance. We present an automatic optical station-keeping system for application to submersible vehicles in deep waters by exploiting the information in sea floor images. Readily measurable spatio-temporal image gradients are used to detect and compute the vehicle's translational and yaw motions using a direct motion vision technique. The vision system has been implemented on a Windows-NT Pentium platform, and the estimated positions and yaw angles are communicated via a serial link to the control system, running on a PC-386. Accurate station-keeping is demonstrated in experiments with a three-thruster floating vehicle in a 6-ft×12-ft×6-ft water tank |
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