• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.16-25
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• 2015

Visual census and hydro-acoustic survey was carried out at Ulju small scale marine ranching area (MRA) to estimate demersal fish aggregations on September and November 2013. In this hydro-acoustic survey, the authors combined an image sonar with a scientific echo sounder to monitor an underwater situation and compare two acoustic data. Consequently, visual census survey was useful to estimate fish species composition for hydro-acoustic survey, because it is easy to identify aggregated fish species and overcome limits on a fishing depth and ability of an conventional fishing gear like a bottom gill-net or a fish trap at marine ranching area. Mean fish density was estimated as $0.757g/m^2$ on September and $0.219g/m^2$ on November and Fish abundance was finally calculated as 1.51ton (coefficient of variation, CV=13.1%) on September and 0.44ton (CV=47.7%) on November, respectively. Hydro-acoustic survey combined with the image sonar was useful to monitor fish aggregations and estimate fish stocks around artificial reefs at shallow coastal MRA. We were able to easily identify the underwater structures like an artificial reef and a fishing rope as well as fish aggregations from image sonar data. Therefore, the method was effective to separate unwanted echo signals in acoustic data of scientific echo sounder.

• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.136-148
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• 2017

The paper presents dual arm ROV manipulation using deep reinforcement learning. The purpose of this underwater manipulator is to investigate and excavate natural resources in ocean, finding lost aircraft blackboxes and for performing other extremely dangerous tasks without endangering humans. This research work emphasizes on a self-learning approach using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). DRL technique allows ROV to learn the policy of performing manipulation task directly, from raw image data. Our proposed architecture maps the visual inputs (images) to control actions (output) and get reward after each action, which allows an agent to learn manipulation skill through trial and error method. We have trained our network in simulation. The raw images and rewards are directly provided by our simple Lua simulator. Our simulator achieve accuracy by considering underwater dynamic environmental conditions. Major goal of this research is to provide a smart self-learning way to achieve manipulation in highly dynamic underwater environment. The results showed that a dual robotic arm trained for a 3DOF movement successfully achieved target reaching task in a 2D space by considering real environmental factor.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.89-90
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• 2008

We present an implementation and it's real-sea test of an underwater acoustic communication system, which allows the system to reduce complexity and increase robustness in time variant underwater environments. For easy adaptation to complicated and time-varying environments of the ocean, all-digital transmitter and receiver systems were implemented. For frame synchronization the CAZAC sequence was used, and QPSK modulation/demodulation method with carrier frequency of 25kHz and a bandwidth of 5kHz were applied to generate 10kbps transmission rate including overhead. To improve transmission quality, we used several techniques and algorithms such as adaptive beamforming, adaptive equalizer, and convolution coding/Viterbi decoding. For the verification of the system performance, measurement of BER has been done in a very shallow water with depth of 20m at JangMok, Geoje. During the experiment, image data were successfully transmitted up to about 9.6km.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.51-59
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• 2016

In this paper we present (1) analysis of imaging sonar measurement for two-view relative pose estimation of an autonomous vehicle and (2) bundle adjustment and 3D reconstruction method using imaging sonar. Sonar has been a popular sensor for underwater application due to its robustness to water turbidity and visibility in water medium. While vision based motion estimation has been applied to many ground vehicles for motion estimation and 3D reconstruction, imaging sonar addresses challenges in relative sensor frame motion. We focus on the fact that the sonar measurement inherently poses ambiguity in its measurement. This paper illustrates the source of the ambiguity in sonar measurements and summarizes assumptions for sonar based robot navigation. For validation, we synthetically generated underwater seafloor with varying complexity to analyze the error in the motion estimation.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1353-1369
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• 2023

In the event of a disaster accident at sea, the scale of damage will vary due to weather effects such as wind, currents, and tidal waves, and it is obligatory to minimize the scale of damage by establishing appropriate control plans through quick on-site identification. In particular, it is difficult to identify pollutants that exist in a thin film at sea surface due to their relatively low viscosity and surface tension among pollutants discharged into the sea. Therefore, this study aims to develop an algorithm to detect suspended pollutants on the sea surface in RGB images using imaging equipment that can be easily used in the field, and to evaluate the performance of the algorithm using input data obtained from actual waters. The developed algorithm uses image enhancement techniques to improve the contrast between the intensity values of pollutants and general sea surfaces, and through histogram analysis, the background threshold is found,suspended solids other than pollutants are removed, and finally pollutants are classified. In this study, a real sea test using substitute materials was performed to evaluate the performance of the developed algorithm, and most of the suspended marine pollutants were detected, but the false detection area occurred in places with strong waves. However, the detection results are about three times better than the detection method using a single threshold in the existing algorithm. Through the results of this R&D, it is expected to be useful for on-site control response activities by detecting suspended marine pollutants that were difficult to identify with the naked eye at existing sites.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.35 no.8A
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• pp.777-784
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• 2010

Recently, the necessity of underwater communication and demand for transmitting and receiving various data such as voice or high resolution image data are increasing as well. The performance of underwater acoustic communication system is influenced by characteristics of the underwater communication channels. Especially, ISI(inter symbol interference) occurs because of delay spread according to multi-path and communication performance is degraded. In this paper, we study the OFDM technique to overcome the delay spread in underwater channel and by using CP, we compensate for delay spread. But PAPR which OFDM system has problem is very high. Therefore, we use DFT-spread OFDM method to avoid nonlinear distortion by high PAPR and to improve efficiency of amplifier. DFT-spread OFDM technique obtains high PAPR reduction effect because of each parallel data loads to all subcarrier by DFT spread processing before IFFT. In this paper, we show performance about delay spread through OFDM system and verify method that DFT spread OFDM is more suitable than OFDM for underwater communication. And we analyze performance according to two subcarrier mapping methods(Interleaved, Localized). Through the simulation results, performance of DFT spread OFDM is better about 5~6dB at $10^{-4}$ than OFDM. When compared to BER according to subcarrier mapping, Interleaved method is better about 3.5dB at $10^{-4}$ than Localized method.

• 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.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.3E
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• pp.104-110
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• 2007

As the exploration of the seabed is extended ever further, automated recognition and classification of sonar images become increasingly important. However, most of the methods ignore the directional information and its effect on the image textures produced. To deal with this problem, we apply 2D Gabor filters to extract the features of sonar images. The filters are designed with constrained parameters to reduce the complexity and to improve the calculation efficiency. Meanwhile, at each orientation, the optimal Gabor filter parameters will be selected with the help of bandwidth parameters based on the Fisher criterion. This method can overcome some disadvantages of the traditional approaches of extracting texture features, and improve the recognition rate effectively.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.216-221
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• 2000

This paper deals with the Gain Control in the processing of the underwater acoustic image obtained from side scan sonar(SSS) system. At first, this paper describes the principles of SSS that is a surveying equipment for the underground of the rivers or dams as well as sea floor. Then this paper analyzes the cause and effects of the time varying intensity from the view point of transmission loss and beam pattern. At last, the time varying gain filter that is adopted by the towfish is introduced.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.3E
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• pp.77-83
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• 2008

In the process of the sonar image textures produced, the orientation and scale factors are very significant. However, most of the related methods ignore the directional information and scale invariance or just pay attention to one of them. To overcome this problem, we apply Gabor wavelet to extract the features of sonar images, which combine the advantages of both the Gabor filter and traditional wavelet function. The mother wavelet is designed with constrained parameters and the optimal parameters will be selected at each orientation, with the help of bandwidth parameters based on the Fisher criterion. The Gabor wavelet can have the properties of both multi-scale and multi-orientation. Based on our experiment, this method is more appropriate than traditional wavelet or single Gabor filter as it provides the better discrimination of the textures and improves the recognition rate effectively. Meanwhile, comparing with other fusion methods, it can reduce the complexity and improve the calculation efficiency.