Image Easy Sonar: software para el procesado digital de imágenes sonar con aplicaciones docentes

Abstract

Usually, the knowledge about digital images provided by onboard sidescan sonar in unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), is far away of educational purposes. In this communication authors demonstrate that this target is possible at affordable cost. This kind of images are usually poor in their resolution if are compared with optical images. There are two commercial expensive solutions for this trouble: the first one is the use of high resolution multibeam sidescan sonar, the second one consists in the use of bathymetric sonar. It is evident that for a spanish university these solutions exceeds the economical education budget and needs a generous external support. This work shows an economical solution for this problem by using digital image processing techniques under MATLAB environment. Results are comparable in quality with the commercial expensive hardware solutions. The application presented here is easy to use and has been developed under “user friendly” philosophy and could be operated for users at any level. This work is the first step for future lines of work in underwater recognition of objects.