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Autonomous underwater vehicle guidance by integrating neural networks and geometric reasoning

✍ Scribed by Gian Luca Foresti; Stefania Gentili; Massimo Zampato


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
1999
Tongue
English
Weight
456 KB
Volume
10
Category
Article
ISSN
0899-9457

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✦ Synopsis


This paper presents a method for guiding an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) during sea bottom inspection missions. The vehicle is equipped with several sensors (optical, sonar, acoustic) and is able to detect and follow a pipeline placed on the sea bottom. Neural networks and geometric reasoning methods are integrated to perform a real-time identification of pipeline borders in a complex underwater environment. Different scenarios characterized by both obstacles and/or artifacts (due to reflections of artificial light sources used by the vehicle to illuminate the scene) have been considered. Results focus on pipeline detection accuracy and on AUV missions in the absence or presence of down stream and/or obstacles.