Acoustic Stereo Imaging (ASI) system

In this paper, the preliminary design and evaluation of a real time underwater 3D reconstruction system using multiple sonar views from an acoustic camera are presented. The proposed system which is called Acoustic Stereo Imaging (ASI) consists of two relatively inexpensive acoustic sensors situated above each other with known distance (D) between them. The acoustic sensors are multi-beam, high resolution sonars like the ProViewerE P900E-20 sonar and DIDSON sonar. The problem to solve is very similar to stereo vision in classic video camera systems. The ASI Vertical configuration consists of two sonars situated above each other and assumes that all beams of the first sonar are aligned with the corresponding beams in the second sonar. In this configuration, we have derived the ASI geometry which solves the well known correspondence problem in classical video stereo systems.