Abstract:In response to the complex terrain and landforms of the seabed, as well as the disturbance during autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigation, when carrying a large range side scan sonar for wide-area rapid exploration, distortion, gain imbalance, and uneven brightness, of waterfall of collected sonar data make it difficult to visually present the seabed terrain and landforms. This article combines the imaging principle of side scan sonar, the characteristics of side scan sonar equipment, AUV motion sensing information, and image processing methods to propose a distortion correction method that integrates motion characteristics with seabed baseline extraction, a vertical gain correction method that integrates the characteristics of side scan sonar equipment, and a brightness correction method that adapts histogram equalization. The experiment shows that the method described in this article can clearly present terrain and geomorphic information.
