Abstract
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), a comparatively new technology in the field of underwater surveying, has principally been used for taking precise measurement of undersea structures in the oil and gas industry. Typically, the LiDAR is deployed on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which will “land” on the seafloor in order to generate a 3D point cloud of its environment from a stationary position. To explore the potential of subsea LiDAR on a moving platform in an environmental context, we deployed an underwater LiDAR system simultaneously with a multibeam echosounder (MBES), surveying Kingston Reef off the coast of Rottnest Island, Western Australia. This paper compares and summarises the relative accuracy and characteristics of underwater LiDAR and multibeam sonar and investigates synergies between sonar and LiDAR technology for the purpose of benthic habitat mapping and underwater simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). We found that LiDAR reflectivity and multibeam backscatter are complementary technologies for habitat mapping, which can combine to discriminate between habitats that could not be mapped with either one alone. For robot navigation, SLAM can be effectively applied with either technology, however, when a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is available, SLAM does not significantly improve the self-consistency of multibeam data, but it does for LiDAR.
Highlights
The diversity and extent of benthic habitats are of great interest to ocean resource managers, marine ecologists, conservationists, and others who wish to sustainably exploit the ocean’s resources [1]
We analysed and compared the specifications for simultaneously acquired ship-mounted Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and multibeam data. No surveys of this type have been previously conducted; both systems have been simultaneously mounted on an Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) [14], a detailed comparison of the data sources has not been published
The subsea LiDAR data have superior spatial resolution to the sonar, the LiDAR footprint is 25 times smaller, which allowed greater detail to be resolved on the seafloor
Summary
The diversity and extent of benthic habitats are of great interest to ocean resource managers, marine ecologists, conservationists, and others who wish to sustainably exploit the ocean’s resources [1]. This is true in vulnerable, high-biodiversity areas, such as reefs [2], whose condition can have far reaching effects on benthic communities [3]. High-resolution reconnaissance of benthic environments will permit rapid response to environmental challenges, such as pollution or flood events [9], reducing risks and costs associated with harm minimisation and remediation. Often this work is undertaken using multibeam echo sounders (MBES; [10]), the resolution of these systems can be too coarse to detect individuals of invasive species, such as the Crown of Thorns starfish [11]
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