AquaAI: Smart Detection Beneath the Waves
The marine environment covering approximately two-thirds of the Earth’s total surface area boasts a wide diversity of objects, thereby necessitating detection of marine objects as a pivotal aspect. Marine Object Detection encompasses a broad range of applications spanning from maritime surveillance to submarine cable detection, underwater pipeline monitoring and underwater oil spill detection. Additionally, MOD plays a crucial role in marine organism detection, underwater trash detection, underwater cultural artefacts, underwater navigation and numerous other applications. Although numerous methodologies pertaining to general object detection have been suggested over the years, the challenges encountered in detecting marine objects are unique that requires advanced detection methods.
Challenges of Detecting Objects in Underwater Environments
Several methods for MOD have been proposed over a decade, ranging from conventional-based approach to an Advanced Learning (AL) based approach. Despite this progress, MOD still remains a challenging task. The complex characteristics of maritime settings poses significant challenges in detecting marine objects. The images captured in marine environments often encounter issues such as haziness, low contrast, colour distortion and uneven lightning causing severe degradation in quality of the images.
Addressing Complex Marine Detection Scenarios with AquaAI
Specifically, marine organisms typically appear small, often gather in groups and face obstacles from surrounding objects. Additionally, they frequently bear a resemblance to their environment including coral reefs and rocks. Moreover, the detection process is further complicated by the significant variation in size, texture, shape, movement and changing postures of the marine organisms. Changing water quality and dynamic water conditions further aggravate the problem. To add further, MOD necessitates research into lightweight model that offers both real-time efficiency with excellent accuracy. Robust MOD mechanisms are essentially needed to effectively address these distinct challenges.