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Underwater Perception

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 6943

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Technology and Science, Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: marine robotics; adaptive sampling; control; guidance; autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV); autonomous surface vehicles (ASV); underwater system design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
2. Centre for Applied Photonics, INESC TEC—Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science, Porto, Portugal
Interests: optical chemical and biological sensors; optical fiber sensors; optical tweezers; laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Even though the oceans play a major role in the regulation of Earth's ecosystems, there is still a large fraction of the worlds' oceans that remain unexplored. One of the reasons is that saltwater virtually blocks electromagnetic propagation, which disallows the use of ubiquitous remote-sensing techniques available for sampling large continental areas. In most cases, underwater measurements must be performed in situ, demanding a proximity between the sensors and the region of interest and exposing the sensors to the dynamic and harsh nature of the underwater marine environment. These localized measurements also result in poor space-and-time sampling scales, which are often improved with the use of robotic systems. However, the integration of sensors in moving platforms may result in the degradation of data quality as a result of different sources of contamination (e.g., temperature influence, water mixing, water dragging, etc.). In this kind of application, the perception of the environment is affected by the quality of the sensor data, by tools that combine these measurements into computed water characteristics, and by sensors and methods that are used to determine the location of the platforms that are taking the measurements. This Special Issue addresses these multiple aspects related to the use of sensors for underwater perception. Recent years have shown innovative tools and methods to take accurate measurements of water properties, and to estimate characteristics of the underwater environment. At the same time, the increase in computational power has allowed for the implementation of complex algorithms in real time, ensuring unprecedent resolution in mapping, localization, and general perception of the environment. This Special Issue seeks innovative works in a wide range of research topics, spanning both theoretical and systems research, including results from industry and academic/industrial collaborations, related but not restricted to the following topics:

  • Sensors for fundamental properties of seawater;
  • Targeted sampling;
  • Optical sensors;
  • Acoustic sensors;
  • New sampling tools and methods;
  • Distributed perception;
  • Cooperative perception;
  • Algorithms to combine sensors for underwater navigation or localization;
  • Design of underwater navigation or localization systems combining multiple sensors;
  • Filtering techniques for multisensor fusion.

Dr. Nuno A. Cruz
Prof. Dr. Pedro Jorge
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 7430 KiB  
Article
Sensor Placement in an Irregular 3D Surface for Improving Localization Accuracy Using a Multi-Objective Memetic Algorithm
by Paula A. Graça, José C. Alves and Bruno M. Ferreira
Sensors 2023, 23(14), 6316; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23146316 - 11 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1502
Abstract
Accurate localization is a critical task in underwater navigation. Typical localization methods use a set of acoustic sensors and beacons to estimate relative position, whose geometric configuration has a significant impact on the localization accuracy. Although there is much effort in the literature [...] Read more.
Accurate localization is a critical task in underwater navigation. Typical localization methods use a set of acoustic sensors and beacons to estimate relative position, whose geometric configuration has a significant impact on the localization accuracy. Although there is much effort in the literature to define optimal 2D or 3D sensor placement, the optimal sensor placement in irregular and constrained 3D surfaces, such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) or other structures, is not exploited for improving localization. Additionally, most applications using AUVs employ commercial acoustic modems or compact arrays, therefore the optimization of the placement of spatially independent sensors is not a considered issue. This article tackles acoustic sensor placement optimization in irregular and constrained 3D surfaces, for inverted ultra-short baseline (USBL) approaches, to improve localization accuracy. The implemented multi-objective memetic algorithm combines an evaluation of the geometric sensor’s configuration, using the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB), with the incidence angle of the received signal. A case study is presented over a simulated homing and docking scenario to demonstrate the proposed optimization algorithm. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Perception)
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21 pages, 9590 KiB  
Article
Real-Time Pipe and Valve Characterisation and Mapping for Autonomous Underwater Intervention Tasks
by Miguel Martin-Abadal, Gabriel Oliver-Codina and Yolanda Gonzalez-Cid
Sensors 2022, 22(21), 8141; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22218141 - 24 Oct 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2581
Abstract
Nowadays, more frequently, it is necessary to perform underwater operations such as surveying an area or inspecting and intervening on industrial infrastructures such as offshore oil and gas rigs or pipeline networks. Recently, the use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) has grown as [...] Read more.
Nowadays, more frequently, it is necessary to perform underwater operations such as surveying an area or inspecting and intervening on industrial infrastructures such as offshore oil and gas rigs or pipeline networks. Recently, the use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) has grown as a way to automate these tasks, reducing risks and execution time. One of the used sensing modalities is vision, providing RGB high-quality information in the mid to low range, making it appropriate for manipulation or detail inspection tasks. This work presents the use of a deep neural network to perform pixel-wise 3D segmentation of pipes and valves on underwater point clouds generated using a stereo pair of cameras. In addition, two novel algorithms are built to extract information from the detected instances, providing pipe vectors, gripping points, the position of structural elements such as elbows or connections, and valve type and orientation. The information extracted on spatially referenced point clouds can be unified to form an information map of an inspected area. Results show outstanding performance on the network segmentation task, achieving a mean F1-score value of 88.0% at a pixel-wise level and of 95.3% at an instance level. The information extraction algorithm also showcased excellent metrics when extracting information from pipe instances and their structural elements and good enough metrics when extracting data from valves. Finally, the neural network and information algorithms are implemented on an AUV and executed in real-time, validating that the output information stream frame rate of 0.72 fps is high enough to perform manipulation tasks and to ensure full seabed coverage during inspection tasks. The used dataset, along with a trained model and the information algorithms, are provided to the scientific community. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Perception)
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25 pages, 2381 KiB  
Article
Genetic Algorithm to Solve Optimal Sensor Placement for Underwater Vehicle Localization with Range Dependent Noises
by Murillo Villa, Bruno Ferreira and Nuno Cruz
Sensors 2022, 22(19), 7205; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22197205 - 22 Sep 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1834
Abstract
In source localization problems, the relative geometry between sensors and source will influence the localization performance. The optimum configuration of sensors depends on the measurements used for the source location estimation, how these measurements are affected by noise, the positions of the source, [...] Read more.
In source localization problems, the relative geometry between sensors and source will influence the localization performance. The optimum configuration of sensors depends on the measurements used for the source location estimation, how these measurements are affected by noise, the positions of the source, and the criteria used to evaluate the localization performance. This paper addresses the problem of optimum sensor placement in a plane for the localization of an underwater vehicle moving in 3D. We consider sets of sensors that measure the distance to the vehicle and model the measurement noises with distance dependent covariances. We develop a genetic algorithm and analyze both single and multi-objective problems. In the former, we consider as the evaluation metric the arithmetic average along the vehicle trajectory of the maximum eigenvalue of the inverse of the Fisher information matrix. In the latter, we estimate the Pareto front of pairs of common criteria based on the Fisher information matrix and analyze the evolution of the sensor positioning for the different criteria. To validate the algorithm, we initially compare results with a case with a known optimal solution and constant measurement covariances, obtaining deviations from the optimal less than 0.1%. Posterior, we present results for an underwater vehicle performing a lawn-mower maneuver and a spiral descent maneuver. We also present results restricting the allowed positions for the sensors. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Perception)
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