High-resolution structured light 3D sensor for autonomous underwater inspection

Sensors that can provide detailed 3D data underwater are a prerequisite for enabling autonomous inspection of e.g. seafloor integrity, ocean habitats and subsea installations with unmanned underwater vehicles. Sonars are currently the primary source of 3D data on moving platforms subsea but have limited depth and lateral resolution. Several optical approaches exist such as passive stereo, which have problems with textureless objects, and LIDARs which are slow and provide low lateral resolution. In this work we explore the use of structured light, to achieve high-resolution 3D of objects in an underwater environment. We have adapted a Gray Code Phase Stepping (GCPS) structured light approach to be more robust to the contrast degradation caused by the scattering and attenuation of light in water. The robustness towards increasing water turbidity has been verified in pool experiments. We achieve a depth resolution ranging from 1.4 mm to 6.4 mm depending on the turbidity when imaging an object at 1.1 m distance with a pixel resolution of 1280x1024 at a framerate of 8Hz.