Tracking System for Underwater Inspection Using Computer Vision

Nowadays, the ocean plays a fundamental role in the global economy, mainly due to oil extraction industry. It makes this environment be populated with human-made structures that needs to be inspected and maintained. In this context, this paper details a system for on-line detecting an underwater cable-like target using computer vision algorithms. It makes able an underwater vehicle to tracking this target. Together with an automatic control, this system could be used to assist a human operator during inspection tasks. This work is concluded with a series of tests and analyses aiming to the system validation.