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Water Detection Based on Object Reflections

Author
Rankin, Arturo L.
Published
September 2012.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Matthies, Larry H.
Online Version

Availability

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Restrictions on Access
Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
Free-to-read Unrestricted online access
Summary
Water bodies are challenging terrain hazards for terrestrial unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) for several reasons. Traversing through deep water bodies could cause costly damage to the electronics of UGVs. Additionally, a UGV that is either broken down due to water damage or becomes stuck in a water body during an autonomous operation will require rescue, potentially drawing critical resources away from the primary operation and increasing the operation cost. Thus, robust water detection is a critical perception requirement for UGV autonomous navigation. One of the properties useful for detecting still water bodies is that their surface acts as a horizontal mirror at high incidence angles. Still water bodies in wide-open areas can be detected by geometrically locating the exact pixels in the sky that are reflecting on candidate water pixels on the ground, predicting if ground pixels are water based on color similarity to the sky and local terrain features. But in cluttered areas where reflections of objects in the background dominate the appearance of the surface of still water bodies, detection based on sky reflections is of marginal value. Specifically, this software attempts to solve the problem of detecting still water bodies on cross-country terrain in cluttered areas at low cost.
Other Subject(s)
Collection
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
Note
Document ID: 20120014100.
NPO-48494.
NASA Tech Briefs, September 2012; 39-40.
Terms of Use and Reproduction
Copyright, Distribution as joint owner in the copyright.
View MARC record | catkey: 16008100