An Efficient Implementation of Tracking Using Kalman Filter for Underwater Robot Application

Abstract

The exploration of oceans and sea beds is being made increasingly possible through the development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). This is an activity that concerns the marine community and it must confront the existence of notable challenges. However, an automatic detecting and tracking system is the first and foremost element for an AUV or an aqueous surveillance network. In this paper a method of Kalman filter was presented to solve the problems of objects track in sonar images. Region of object was extracted by threshold segment and morphology process, and the features of invariant moment and area were analysed. Results show that the method presented has the advantages of good robustness, high accuracy and real-time characteristic, and it is efficient in underwater target track based on sonar images and also suited for the purpose of Obstacle avoidance for the AUV to operate in the constrained underwater environment.