Herrmann, Philip, Reißmann, Sylvia, Rothenbeck, Marcel, Woelk, Felix and Köser, Kevin (2022) Robust Human-Identifiable Markers for Absolute Relocalization of Underwater Robots in Marine Data Science Applications. In: Image Analysis and Processing – ICIAP 2022. , ed. by Sclaroff, S., Distante, C., Leo, M., Farinella, G. M. and Tombari, F.. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13233 . Springer, Cham, pp. 449-460, 12 pp. ISBN 978-3-031-06433-3 DOI 10.1007/978-3-031-06433-3_38.

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Abstract

Since global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for determining the absolute geolocation do not reach into the ocean, underwater robots typically obtain a GNSS position at the water surface and then use a combination of different sensors for estimating their pose while diving, including inertial navigation, acoustic doppler velocity logs, ultra short baseline localization systems and pressure sensors. When re-navigating to the same seafloor location after several days, months or years, e.g. for coastal monitoring, the absolute uncertainty of such systems can be in the range of meters for shallow water, and tens of meters for deeper waters in practice. To enable absolute relocalization in marine data science applications that require absolute seafloor positions in the range of centimeter precision, in this contribution we suggest to equip the monitoring area with visual markers that can be detected reliably even in case they are partially overgrown or partially buried by sediment, which can happen quickly in coastal waters. Inspired by patterns successful in camera calibration, we create robust markers that exhibit features at different scales, in order to allow detection, identification and pose estimation from different cameras and various altitudes as visibility (and therefore the maximum possible survey altitude) in coastal waters can vary significantly across seasons, tides and weather. The low frequency content of the marker resembles a human-readable digit, in order to allow easy identification by scientists. We present early results including promising initial tests in coastal waters.

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