• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• v.1
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• pp.41-46
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• 2006

This paper describes a marine watch system on a ship, which is aided by an image processing method. The system detects other ships through a navigational image sequence to prevent oversights, and it measures their bearings to maintain their movements. The proposed method is described, the detection techniques and measurement of bearings techniques are derived, and the results have been reported. The image is divided into small regions on the basis of the brightness value and then labeled. Each region is considered as a template. A template is assumed to be a ship. Then, the template is compared with frames in the original image after a selected time. A moving vector of the regions is calculated using an Excel table. Ships are detected using the characteristics of the moving vector. The video camera captures 30 frames per second. We segmented one frame into approximately 5000 regions; from these, approximately 100 regions are presumed to be ships and considered to be templates. Each template was compared with frames captured at 0.33 s or 0.66 s. In order to improve the accuracy, this interval was changed on the basis of the magnification of the video camera. Ships’ bearings also need to be determined. The proposed method can measure the ships’ bearings on the basis of three parameters: (1) the course of the own ship, (2) arrangement between the camera and hull, and (3) coordinates of the ships detected from the image. The course of the own ship can be obtained by using a gyrocompass. The camera axis is calibrated along a particular direction using a stable position on a bridge. The field of view of the video camera is measured from the size of a known structure on the hull in the image. Thus, ships’ bearings can be calculated using these parameters.