• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.164-173
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• 2014

In underwater robotics, vision would be a key element for recognition in underwater environments. However, due to turbidity an underwater optical camera is rarely available. An underwater imaging sonar, as an alternative, delivers low quality sonar images which are not stable and accurate enough to find out natural objects by image processing. For this, artificial landmarks based on the characteristics of ultrasonic waves and their recognition method by a shape matrix transformation were proposed and were proven in Part 1. But, this is not working properly in undulating and dynamically noisy sea-bottom. To solve this, we propose a framework providing a selection phase of likelihood candidates, a selection phase for final candidates, recognition phase and tracking phase in sequence images, where a particle filter based selection mechanism to eliminate fake candidates and a mean shift based tracking algorithm are also proposed. All 4 steps are running in parallel and real-time processing. The proposed framework is flexible to add and to modify internal algorithms. A pool test and sea trial are carried out to prove the performance, and detail analysis of experimental results are done. Information is obtained from tracking phase such as relative distance, bearing will be expected to be used for control and navigation of underwater robots.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.94-100
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• 2017

In the case of the side scan sonar operated by the towing method, the underwater structure electric jig was developed because there is a difficulty in the cross-sectional survey that the user wants when conducting the survey. However, in the case of the sound wave photographing method using the electric jig, since the boat and the sonar behaves as one body, data distortion has occurred due to various problems according to working environment, such as, the rolling phenomenon of the boat due to the wave and the fluctuation of the sonic image due to the inoperability of the boat driver. Therefore, in order to solve the image blurring caused by the operation of the equipment for underwater survey of the existing side scan sonar, in this research, the program was supplemented to enable the shake correction by attaching the shake correction sensor and developing the shake correction algorithm. In order to verify the improvement of the sonar data resolution, the sonic images before and after the shake correction were collected through on-site investigation and the analysis of the sonic image data acquired by a diver measuring the actual damage length and depth. This study is expected to contribute to the development of sonar imaging technique of the underwater surface of the structure and bed surface of the sea or a river using the side scan sonar in the future.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.55-65
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• 2016

Detecting an object which is located at seabed is an important issue for various areas. This paper presents an approach to detection of an object that is placed at seabed in the shallow water. A conventional scheme is to employ a side-scan sonar to obtain images of a detection area and to use image processing schemes to recognize an object. Since this approach relies on high frequency signals to get clear images, its detection range becomes shorter and the processing time is getting longer. In this paper, we consider an active sonar system that is repeatedly sending a linear frequency modulated signal of 6~20 kHz in the shallow water of 100m depth. The proposed approach is to model consecutively received reflected signals and to measure their modeling error magnitudes which decide the existence of an object placed on seabed depending on relative magnitude with respect to threshold value. The feature of this approach is to only require an assumption that the seabed consists of an homogeneous sediment, and not to require a prior information on the specific properties of the sediment. We verify the proposed approach in terms of detection probability through computer simulation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.121-129
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• 2021

This paper deals with a super-resolution that improves the resolution of side scan sonar images using learning-based compressive sensing. Learning-based compressive sensing combined with deep learning and compressive sensing takes a structure of a feed-forward network and parameters are set automatically through learning. In particular, we propose a method that can effectively extract additional information required in the super-resolution process through various initialization methods. Representative experimental results show that the proposed method provides improved performance in terms of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structure Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) than conventional methods.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.2E
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• pp.68-73
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• 2004

In the East Sea of Korea, the ocean environments are known to have strong variations in space and time. Their effects are very important factors in sound propagation and sonar performance. We consider the environmental factors such as eddies and thermal fronts affecting underwater sound propagation and target detection performance by sonars. Unfortunately, however, the detailed structure of eddies is usually difficult to understand by using the sea surface temperatures from infrared images alone or a few profiles from the CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) castings. The temperature fields of eddy and thermal front are simulated with typical patterns of those obtained from several observations. This paper delivers the overviews of environments and acoustic models with their simulation results on sonar performance.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.7
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• pp.1081-1087
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• 2015

Recently, the researches of aerial drones are actively executed in various areas, the researches of surface drones and underwater drones are also executed in marine areas. In case of surface drones, they essentially utilize acoustic information by the sonar and consequently have the local information in the obstacle avoidance as the sonar has the limitations due to the beam width and detection range. In order to overcome this, more global method that utilizes optical images by the camera is required. Related to this, the aerial drone with the camera is desirable as the obstacle detection of the surface drone with the camera is impossible in case of the existence of clutters. However, the dynamic-floating aerial drone is not desirable for the long-term operation as its power consumption is high. To solve this problem, a collaborative obstacle avoidance method based on the acoustic information by the sonar of the surface drone and the optical image by the camera of the static-floating aerial drone is proposed. To verify the performance of the proposed method, the collaborative obstacle avoidances of a MSD(Micro Surface Drone) with an OAS(Obstacle Avoidance Sonar) and a BMAD(Balloon-based Micro Aerial Drone) with a camera are executed. The test results show the possibility of real applications and the need for additional studies.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-56
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• 2001

To acquire seabed information, the mosaic images of the seabed were generated using Side Scan Sonar. Short time energy function which is needed for slant range correction is proposed to get the height of Tow-Fish to the reflected acoustic amplitudes of each ping, and that leads to a mosaic image without water column. While generating mosaic image, maximum value, last value and average value are used for the measure of a pixel in the mosaic image and 3-D information was kept by using acoustic amplitudes which were heading for specific direction. As a generating method of mosaic image, low resolution mosaic image which is over 1m/pixel resolution was generated for whole survey area first, and then high resolution mosaic image which is generated under 0.1m/pixel resolution was generated for the selected area. Rocks, ripple mark, sand wave, tidal flat and artificial fish reef are found in the mosaic image.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.215-222
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• 2017

An active synthetic aperture sonar mounted on small UUV is generated various trajectory disturbances in the traveling path by the influence of external underwater environments. That is the phase mismatch occurs in the synthetic aperture processing of the signals reflected from seabed objects and fetches the detection performance decreases. In this paper, we compensated deteriorated images by the active SAS autofocus processing using DPC and analyzed the effects of detection performance when the periodic trajectory disturbances occur in the side direction at a constant velocity and straight movement of UUV. Through simulations, the deteriorated images according to the periodic disturbance magnitudes and period variations in the platform were compensated using difference phases processing of the overlapping displaced phase centers on the adjacent transmitted ping signals, and we conformed the improved performance characteristics of azimuth resolution and detection images at 3dB reference point.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.147-153
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• 2002

Due to the growth of population and industrial development at the coastal cities, there has been much increase in necessity to effective control of the wastes into the coastal water and river. The amount of disposal at those waters has been increased rapidly and it is necessary for us to track of it in order to keep the water clean. The investigation and research related to the water quality in this region have been conducted continuously but the systematic survey of the disposed wastes at the bottom was neglected and/or minor. In this study we surveyed the status of disposed waste distribution at the bottom coastal water and river from the scanned images. The intensity of sound received by the side scan sonar tow vehicle from the sea floor provides information as to the general distribution and characteristics of the superficial wastes. The port and starboard side scanned images produced from a transducer borne on a tow fish connected by tow cable to a tug boat have the area with width of 22m∼112m, and band of 44m∼224m. All data are displayed in real-time on a high-resolution color display (1280 ${\times}$ 1024 pixels) together with position information by DGPS. From the field measurement and analysis of the recorded images, we could draw the location and distribution of bottom disposals. Furthermore, we made a database system which might be fundamental for planning the waste reception and process control system.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.351-360
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• 2020

Of late, demand for test sites for marine equipment such as ASV, AUV, ROV, and various underwater sensors is increasing. The authors have focused on an oscillating water column (OWC), which is being constructed near Chagwido Island Jeju, as one of the test-sites. The main objective of the OWC is to produce wave energy and develop technologies. It has been built in the sea approximately 1 km off the coast. It has berth accommodation and some rooms that can be used as laboratories. To investigate the feasibility of its usage as a test site for marine equipment, we acquired bathymetric data around the OWC by using a multi-beam echo sounder and a single-beam scanning sonar. The accessibility of the OWC from nearby ports and the use of support vessels or ships were also investigated. 3D point cloud data from the multi-beam echo sounder and 2D acoustic images from the scanning sonar are expected to be used as references for identifying changes over time. In addition, through these experiments, we derived a procedure to use this facility as a test site by using the IDEF0 functional modelling method. Based on this preliminary investigation and previously reported examples, we determined the general conditions and preferences for evaluating the performance of various marine equipment heuristically. Finally, we developed five applications that were derived from this investigation.