The stereo vision system for an underwater vehicle

A vision system and a working system are particular important because they are indispensable for works of an underwater vehicle like remotely operated vehicle (ROV). So, generally, the ROV is equipped with TV cameras as the vision system and manipulators as the working system. However the manipulator operation watching a monitor, which appears the working environment taken by a TV camera, is very difficult because the operator can not have a sense of distance in the working environment. So the work ability of the manipulator depends strongly on the operator´s experience and skill. Based on that, in this paper, the stereo vision system, which calculates three dimensional position data of an object in the working environment, is described. It is hoped that the position data causes the manipulator operation without the operator´s experience and skill. And also, it is hoped that the dimension of the underwater object such as a marine organism can be got by the position data. In order to realize these, a camera calibration method applying the manipulator in the water was designed. And experiments were carried out to confirm the effect of the stereo vision system based on the camera model. As the result, its position accuracy was result in line with expectations.