Leveraging synthetic imagery for collision-at-sea avoidance

Chris M. Ward; Josh Harguess; Alexander G. Corelli

doi:10.1117/12.2306113

4 May 2018 Leveraging synthetic imagery for collision-at-sea avoidance

Chris M. Ward, Josh Harguess, Alexander G. Corelli

Proceedings Volume 10645, Geospatial Informatics, Motion Imagery, and Network Analytics VIII; 1064507 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2306113
Event: SPIE Defense + Security, 2018, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

Maritime collisions involving multiple ships are considered rare, but in 2017 several United States Navy vessels were involved in fatal at-sea collisions that resulted in the death of seventeen American Servicemembers. The experimentation introduced in this paper is a direct response to these incidents. We propose a shipboard Collision-At-Sea avoidance system, based on video image processing, that will help ensure the safe stationing and navigation of maritime vessels. Our system leverages a convolutional neural network trained on synthetic maritime imagery in order to detect nearby vessels within a scene, perform heading analysis of detected vessels, and provide an alert in the presence of an inbound vessel. Additionally, we present the Navigational Hazards - Synthetic (NAVHAZ-Synthetic) dataset. This dataset, is comprised of one million annotated images of ten vessel classes observed from virtual vessel-mounted cameras, as well as a human “Topside Lookout” perspective. NAVHAZ-Synthetic includes imagery displaying varying sea-states, lighting conditions, and optical degradations such as fog, sea-spray, and salt-accumulation. We present our results on the use of synthetic imagery in a computer vision based collision-at-sea warning system with promising performance.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Chris M. Ward, Josh Harguess, and Alexander G. Corelli "Leveraging synthetic imagery for collision-at-sea avoidance", Proc. SPIE 10645, Geospatial Informatics, Motion Imagery, and Network Analytics VIII, 1064507 (4 May 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2306113

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