• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.143-148
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• 2012

There are many researches on segmentation of sidescan sonar image to recognize or classify the underwater objects. Although existing algorithms's performance is good in detecting object's shadow and reducing the underwater noise, the computing time is very low. In this paper we try to separate shadow from background and segment the underwater image by using morphological method using background's noise distribution characteristics and object's shadow charateristics. This algorithm is useful when the average of background is lower than the average of the shadow, because this is adjusted from the background's chracteristics. Results shows that the algorithm works fine in multiple object environments and the computing time is reduced to 1 second.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.679-688
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• 2009

Worldwide exploring and research for manganese nodules, as new energy resource, distributed on the deep seabed have progressed recently. Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute(KORDI) is a central organization to exploit the manganese nodules in the Pacific Ocean with 5,000m depth. Precise exploration is required for estimating amount of recoverable deposit, and this task could be accomplished by processing digital image processing techniques to the images taken by underwater camera system. Image processing and analysis provide information about characteristics of distribution of the manganese nodules. This study proposed effective methods to remove vignetting effect to improve image quality and to extract information. The results show more reliable information could be obtained by removing the vignetting and feasibility of utilizing image processing techniques for exploring the manganese nodules.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.12-20
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• 2018

Efforts have been made to reconstruct low-resolution underwater images to high-resolution ones by using the image SR (Super-Resolution) method, all to improve efficiency when acquiring side-scan sonar images. As side-scan sonar images are similar with the optical images with respect to exploiting 2-dimensional signals, conventional image restoration methods for optical images can be considered as a solution. One of the most typical super-resolution methods for optical image is a sparse coding and there are studies for verifying applicability of sparse coding method for underwater images by analyzing sparsity of underwater images. Sparse coding is a method that obtains recovered signal from input signal by linear combination of dictionary and sparse coefficients. However, it requires huge computational load to accurately estimate sparse coefficients. In this study, a sparse coding based underwater image super-resolution method is applied while a selective reconstruction method for object region is suggested to reduce the processing time. For this method, this paper proposes an edge detection and object and non object region classification method for underwater images and combine it with sparse coding based image super-resolution method. Effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by reducing the processing time for image reconstruction over 32 % while preserving same level of PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) compared with conventional method.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.1379-1386
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• 2018

Conventional underwater cameras used in fish farms can only shoot limited areas and are vulnerable to underwater contamination. There is also a problem with contaminated farms as surplus residues are deposited as a result of feed supply to farms' nets. This paper proposes underwater drones for underwater monitoring of fish farms and cleaning nets. If underwater drones are used for management of fish farms, underwater imaging, monitoring and cleaning of fish farms' nets can be possible. By using this technology, data can be collected by detecting changes in the environment of a fish farm and responding to changes that occur within a fish farm based on the data. In addition, the establishment of an integrated control system will enable to build efficient and stable smart farms.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.593-600
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• 2000

Most of ground investigations can be grasped geological distribution which like rock name, geological structure, soil condition, underwater condition, land slide, ground cave-in, ground collapse by geological survey. But geological survey is limited to part region geological structure, not wide region. Therefore, Image Processing Method must need to grasp wide region geological structure. The object of this research is presented analysis data of geotechnical engineering in first step investigation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Marine Engineers Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.152-153
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• 2005

Side scan sonar System occupies an important position as one of marine survey equipments. The purpose of this research is to express sonar' scan images in underwater and compare with the measured size, shape and the quality of the material. Also we confirm the effectiveness of obtained images using the Side scan sonar.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.287-292
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• 2011

To evaluate the pressure-resistant performance of underwater equipment, hyperbaric chamber test facility which can make the hydrostatic pressure is used. In this test, strain gage is generally applied to measure the strain of object under test is suitable for measuring a tiny deformation, but it can not measure a large deformation. Thus this paper suggests a method to estimate the over -order deformation of object under test by the image processing with the image acquired from underwater camera in the hydrostatic test. The main procedure of suggested method comprises the first step to find significant points by processing the image two dimensionally and the second step to estimate a deformation of object under test by tracking the motion of these points. If completing the remained research which is estimating the deformation and comparing it with a real one, it can be a method to measure the over -order deformation of object under test.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.746-751
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• 2003

A method of measuring the length of defects on the wall of the spent nuclear fuel pool using the image processing and a laser slit beam is proposed. Since the defect monitoring camera is suspended by a crane and hinged to the crane hook, the camera viewing direction can not be adjusted to the orientation that is exactly perpendicular to the wall. Thus, the image taken by the camera, which is horizontally rotated along the axis of the camera supporting beam, is distorted and thus, the precise length can not be measured. In this paper, by using the LASER slit beam generator, the horizontally rotated angle of the camera is estimated. Once the angle is obtained, the distorted image can be easily reconstructed to the image normal to the wall. The estimation algorithm adopts a 3-dimensional coordinate transformation of the image plane where both the laser slit beam and the original image of the defects exist. The estimation equation is obtained by using the information of the beam projected on the wall and the parameters of this equation are experimentally obtained. With this algorithm, the original image of the defect taken at arbitrary rotated angle can be reconstructed to an image normal to the wall. From the result of a series of experiments, the accuracy of the defect is measured within 0.6 and 1.3 % error bound of real defect size in the air and underwater, respectively under 30 degree of the inclined angle of the laser slit beam generator. Also, the error increases as the inclined angle increases upto 60 degree. Over this angle, the defect length can not be measured since the defect image disappears. The proposed algorithm enables the accurate measurement of the defect length only by using a single camera and a laser slit beam.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.679-687
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• 2019

This paper presents the autonomous swimming technology developed for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) operating in the underwater jacket structure environment. To prevent the position divergence of the inertial navigation system constructed for the primary navigation solution for the vehicle, we've developed kinds of marker-recognition based underwater localization methods using both of optical and acoustic cameras. However, these two methods all require the artificial markers to be located near to the cameras mounted on the vehicle. Therefore, in the case of the vehicle far away from the structure where the markers are usually mounted on, we may need alternative position-aiding solution to guarantee the navigation accuracy. For this purpose, we develop a sonar image processing based underwater localization method using a Forward Looking Sonar (FLS) mounted in front of the vehicle. The primary purpose of this FLS is to detect the obstacles in front of the vehicle. According to the detected obstacle(s), we apply an Occupancy Grid Map (OGM) based path planning algorithm to derive an obstacle collision-free reference path. Experimental studies are carried out in the water tank and also in the Pohang Yeongilman port sea environment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed autonomous swimming technology.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.225-234
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• 2018

A Multibeam Echo Sounder (MBES) is commonly used for rapid seafloor mapping. We herein present a time-domain integrated system simulation technique for MBES development. The Modeling and Simulation (M&S) modules consist of four parts: sensor array signal transmission, propagation and backscattering modeling in the ocean environment, beamforming of the received signals, and image processing. Also, the simulation employs a ray-theory-based algorithm to correct the reconstructed bathymetry, which has errors due to the refraction caused by the vertical sound velocity profile. The developed M&S technique enables design parameter verification and system parameter optimization for MBES. The framework of this technique can also be potentially used to characterize the seabed properties. Finally, typical seafloor images are presented and discussed.