Modeling of High-Resolution 3D Sonar for Image Recognition

Abstract

Automated underwater 3D sonar image recognition has great potential to simplify many underwater tasks. Sonar modeling is necessary to recognize 3D object images. We propose a 3D sonar model that can predict what an object is based on by recognizing similarities to objects that pre-exist in a database. The sonar's displaying mechanism and characteristics of the 3D sonar image are studied. Due to the nature of acoustics, a sonar image is not necessarily always an accurate depiction of an object. The proposed model enables mapping of a 3D world onto a 2D sonar screen. This modeling framework enables the implementation of various optical vision techniques for recognition. Recognition experiments were conducted to evaluate the model's accuracy.