Distributed Mixed reality for diving and underwater tasks using Remotely Operated Vehicles
Abstract
Taking advantage of state of the art underwater vehicles and current networking capabilities, the
visionary double objective of this work is to “open to people connected to the Internet, an access to
ocean depths anytime, anywhere.” Today, these people can just perceive the changing surface of the sea
from the shores, but ignore almost everything on what is hidden. If they could explore seabed and
become knowledgeable, they would get involved in finding alternative solutions for our vital terrestrial
problems – pollution, climate changes, destruction of biodiversity and exhaustion of Earth resources.
The second objective is to assist professionals of underwater world in performing their tasks by
augmenting the perception of the scene and offering automated actions such as wildlife monitoring and
counting. The introduction of Mixed Reality and Internet in aquatic activities constitutes a technological
breakthrough when compared with the status of existing related technologies. Through Internet,
anyone, anywhere, at any moment will be naturally able to dive in real-time using a Remote Operated
Vehicle (ROV) in the most remarkable sites around the world. The heart of this work is focused on
Mixed Reality. The main challenge is to reach real time display of digital video stream to web users, by
mixing 3D entities (objects or pre-processed underwater terrain surfaces), with 2D videos of live
images collected in real time by a teleoperated ROV.