Review of Underwater Machine Vision Technology and Its Applications

The characteristics of the underwater environment often present difficult challenges for machine vision technology. The images of inspected targets are distorted, blurred, and severely attenuated in an environment where lighting, visibility, and stability are generally not controllable. Therefore, underwater machine vision hardware and technology and their use in underwater robot/vehicle tasks such as ecological monitoring, map creation, and 3-D reconstruction provide ways to solve the described problems. The objective of this review is to highlight areas of research and development in the field of underwater machine vision that have made progress but have not been widely used for operational tasks. There are many potential underwater applications for this technology that could improve productivity and efficiency. To improve the accuracy of the underwater machine vision system, camera calibration and image preprocessing are still the focuses of research. If combined with other sensors, the system can better complete underwater tasks. There have been a number of initiatives in this area of study. Close collaboration with experts in other fields is also very important.