AUTOMATIC SPATIAL CLUSTERING AND TRACKING OF SEA SURFACE OBSTACLES IN FORWARD LOOKING SONAR IMAGES
Résumé
This paper presents an automatic sea surface object clustering and tracking in
forward looking sonar images. The considered sea surface obstacles are man-made
objects: buoys, boats, ships (motorboats or sailboats). Their acoustic signature varies
according to their type and state (fixed or moving).
The proposed method detects the various target signatures. Then detections are gathered
into clusters using an automatic and adaptive clustering method based on the Delaunay
Triangulation. After the clustering stage, isolated detections are rejected and the
remaining clusters are classified into two types: clusters including wake or not. This
classification is based on the shape eccentricity feature. Then, according to the cluster
type, the obstacle position is extracted to be used for tracking. For clusters without wake,
the obstacle position is the centroid of the cluster but for clusters including wake, wake
extremities are set as possible vessel position.
Finally, obstacle tracking is carried out in Cartesian coordinates using the Debiased
Converted Measurement Kalman filter and the Joint Probabilistic Data Association Filter.
Promising results are obtained using real data collected at sea with various objects and
scenarios.