What can be seen using an IR camera on the ocean

http://ubcsailbot.org/2014/12/28/using-ir-imaging-to-detect-floating-obstacles/

by joshandrews • 12 years ago

44 8 12 years ago

jzwinck• 12 years ago

There are racing teams with multi-million dollar budgets who would be interested in this sort of detection technology. For example, just a couple days ago one of the top competitors in the Sydney-Hobart abandoned the yacht race due to hull damage from hitting...something [1].

However, testing in waves is very important, and this article shows none of that (barely mentions it, in fact). But at least the big boats have the advantage of being able to put a sensor 50 meters up in the air, if that helps.

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/sport/sailing/sydney-to-hobart-comanch...

jonah• 12 years ago

I'd think underwater hazard detection would be more relevant.

Another modern shipwreck: http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/twenty-first-ce...

kristoffervh3• 12 years ago

Underwater hazard detection would be very interesting to explore, but for UBC SailBot's purpose (crossing Atlantic Ocean with surface vessel) overwater hazard detection seems more feasible with the technologies currently out there (radar, IR, AIS, etc). Do you have any suggestions for good technologies to explore for (horizontal) underwater obstacle detection? We have played with the idea of horizontal sonar, but not sure how feasible this is...

joshvm• 12 years ago

It seems like you could take advantage of some background subtraction.

Detecting the horizon seems trivial enough (hough transform? or a robust edge detector). If you know where that line is then you can take series of gradients normal to it and form an average temperature model as a function of distance from the horizon. If you take enough of these gradients across the image, you should be able to get a robust average.

You then use this model to predict the temperature at each pixel and take a difference with the observed data. What should happen is you get a ton of ~zeros, a bit of noise due to waves and any non-sea object will stick out like a sore thumb.

The rule here is that absolute measurements will kill you when it comes to dynamic range. You're much better off taking relative measurements.

mangoldm• 12 years ago

Well that's kind of boring. I was hoping I could use this to look for sharks before going for a swim.

kristoffervh3• 12 years ago

now that would be awesome! :-D

poopchute• 12 years ago

Interestingly, the last picture there - the one looking at the sun - was taken at a nude beach (wreck beach)

kristoffervh3• 12 years ago

"clothing optional" you mean... ;-)

What can be seen using an IR camera on the ocean

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