Real-time Underwater 3D Scene Reconstruction Using Commercial Depth Sensor

This paper presents preliminary work to utilize a commercial time of flight depth camera for real-time 3D scene reconstruction of underwater objects. Typical RGB stereo camera imaging for 3D capturing suffers from blur and haziness due to turbidity of water in addition to critical dependence on light, either from natural or artificial sources. We propose a method for repurposing the low-cost Microsoft Kinect (TM) Time of Flight camera for underwater environment enabling dense depth data acquisition that can be processed in real time. Our motivation is the ease of use and low cost of the device for high quality real-time scene reconstruction as compared to multi view stereo cameras, albeit at a smaller range. Preliminary results of depth data acquisition and surface reconstruction in underwater environment are also presented. The novelty of our work is the utilization of the Kinect depth camera for real-time 3D mesh reconstruction and our main objective is to develop an economical and compact solution for underwater 3D mapping.