An AUV vision system for target detection and precise positioning

As autonomous underwater vehicle missions expand to include more hazardous situations, there is an increasing need to develop techniques for incorporating high resolution feedback to the mission planner, vehicle navigation, and robotic manipulator systems. This paper describes in-progress results in the development of the computer vision system that is part of a sensor-in-the-loop AUV simulation platform utilizing high resolution imaging to perform target detection, range-to-target estimation, and target orientation estimation.