An Underwater Image Enhancement Algorithm for Environment Recognition and Robot Navigation

• Main Authors: Kun Xie, Wei Pan, Suxia Xu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-03-01
• Series: Robotics
• Subjects: dark channel prior; underwater reflection models; underwater environment recognition; Image enhancement
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/7/1/14

There are many tasks that require clear and easily recognizable images in the field of underwater robotics and marine science, such as underwater target detection and identification of robot navigation and obstacle avoidance. However, water turbidity makes the underwater image quality too low to recognize. This paper proposes the use of the dark channel prior model for underwater environment recognition, in which underwater reflection models are used to obtain enhanced images. The proposed approach achieves very good performance and multi-scene robustness by combining the dark channel prior model with the underwater diffuse model. The experimental results are given to show the effectiveness of the dark channel prior model in underwater scenarios.