Automated, objective texture segmentation of multibeam echosounder data - Seafloor survey and substrate maps from James Island to Ozette Lake, Washington Outer Coast

Without knowledge of basic seafloor characteristics, the ability to address any number of critical marine and/or coastal management issues is diminished. For example, management and conservation of essential fish habitat (EFH), a requirement mandated by federally guided fishery management plans (FMPs), requires among other things a description of habitats for federally managed species. Although the list of attributes important to habitat are numerous, the ability to efficiently and effectively describe many, and especially at the scales required, does not exist with the tools currently available. However, several characteristics of seafloor morphology are readily obtainable at multiple scales and can serve as useful descriptors of habitat. Recent advancements in acoustic technology, such as multibeam echosounding (MBES), can provide remote indication of surficial sediment properties such as texture, hardness, or roughness, and further permit highly detailed renderings of seafloor morphology. With acoustic-based surveys providing a relatively efficient method for data acquisition, there exists a need for efficient and reproducible automated segmentation routines to process the data. Using MBES data collected by the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS), and through a contracted seafloor survey, we expanded on the techniques of Cutter et al. (2003) to describe an objective repeatable process that uses parameterized local Fourier histogram (LFH) texture features to automate segmentation of surficial sediments from acoustic imagery using a maximum likelihood decision rule. Sonar signatures and classification performance were evaluated using video imagery obtained from a towed camera sled. Segmented raster images were converted to polygon features and attributed using a hierarchical deep-water marine benthic classification scheme (Greene et al. 1999) for use in a geographical information system (GIS). (PDF contains 41 pages.

Popular Ensemble Methods: An Empirical Study

An ensemble consists of a set of individually trained classifiers (such as neural networks or decision trees) whose predictions are combined when classifying novel instances. Previous research has shown that an ensemble is often more accurate than any of the single classifiers in the ensemble. Bagging (Breiman, 1996c) and Boosting (Freund and Shapire, 1996; Shapire, 1990) are two relatively new but popular methods for producing ensembles. In this paper we evaluate these methods on 23 data sets using both neural networks and decision trees as our classification algorithm. Our results clearly indicate a number of conclusions. First, while Bagging is almost always more accurate than a single classifier, it is sometimes much less accurate than Boosting. On the other hand, Boosting can create ensembles that are less accurate than a single classifier -- especially when using neural networks. Analysis indicates that the performance of the Boosting methods is dependent on the characteristics of the data set being examined. In fact, further results show that Boosting ensembles may overfit noisy data sets, thus decreasing its performance. Finally, consistent with previous studies, our work suggests that most of the gain in an ensemble's performance comes in the first few classifiers combined; however, relatively large gains can be seen up to 25 classifiers when Boosting decision trees

Learning to automatically detect features for mobile robots using second-order Hidden Markov Models

In this paper, we propose a new method based on Hidden Markov Models to interpret temporal sequences of sensor data from mobile robots to automatically detect features. Hidden Markov Models have been used for a long time in pattern recognition, especially in speech recognition. Their main advantages over other methods (such as neural networks) are their ability to model noisy temporal signals of variable length. We show in this paper that this approach is well suited for interpretation of temporal sequences of mobile-robot sensor data. We present two distinct experiments and results: the first one in an indoor environment where a mobile robot learns to detect features like open doors or T-intersections, the second one in an outdoor environment where a different mobile robot has to identify situations like climbing a hill or crossing a rock.Comment: 200

Monocular Vision as a Range Sensor

One of the most important abilities for a mobile robot is detecting obstacles in order to avoid collisions. Building a map of these obstacles is the next logical step. Most robots to date have used sensors such as passive or active infrared, sonar or laser range finders to locate obstacles in their path. In contrast, this work uses a single colour camera as the only sensor, and consequently the robot must obtain range information from the camera images. We propose simple methods for determining the range to the nearest obstacle in any direction in the robot’s field of view, referred to as the Radial Obstacle Profile. The ROP can then be used to determine the amount of rotation between two successive images, which is important for constructing a 360º view of the surrounding environment as part of map construction

Segmentation invariante en rasance des images sonar latéral par une approche neuronale compétitive

The sidescan sonar records the energy of an emitted acoustical wave backscattered by the seabed for a large range of grazing angles. The statistical analysis of the recorded signals points out a dependence according grazing angles, which penalizes the segmentation of the seabed into homogeneous regions. To improve this segmentation, classical approaches consist in compensating artifacts due to the sonar image formation (geometry of acquisition, gains, etc.) considering a flat seabed and using either Lambert’s law or an empirical law estimated from the sonar data. The approach chosen in this study proposes to split the sonar image into stripes in the swath direction; the stripe width being limited so that the statistical analysis of pixel values can be considered as independent of grazing angles. Two types of texture analysis are used for each stripe of the image. The first technique is based on the Grey-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and various Haralick attributes derived from. The second type of analysis is the estimation of spectral attributes. The starting stripe at mid sonar slant range is segmented with an unsupervised competitive neural network based on the adaptation of Self- Organizing Feature Maps (SOFM) algorithm. Then, from the knowledge acquired on the segmentation of this first stripe, the classifier adapts its segmentation to the neighboring stripes, allowing slight changes of statistics from one stripe to the other. The operation is repeated until the beginning and the end of the slant range are reached. The study made in this work is validated on real data acquired by the sidescan sonar Klein 5000. Segmentation performances of the proposed algorithm are compared with those of conventional approaches.Un sonar latéral de cartographie enregistre les signaux qui ont été rétrodiffusés par le fond marin sur une large fauchée. Les signaux sont ainsi révélateurs de l’interaction entre l’onde acoustique émise et le fond de la mer pour une large plage de variation de l’angle de rasance. L’analyse des statistiques de ces signaux rétrodiffusés montre une dépendance à ces angles de rasance, ce qui pénalise fortement la segmentation des images en régions homogènes. Pour améliorer cette segmentation, l’approche classique consiste à corriger les artefacts dus à la formation de l’image sonar (géométrie d’acquisition, gains variables, etc.) en considérant un fond marin plat et en estimant des lois physiques (Lambert, Jackson, etc.) ou des modèles empiriques. L’approche choisie dans ce travail propose de diviser l’image sonar en bandes dans le sens de la portée ; la largeur de ces bandes étant suffisamment faible afin que l’analyse statistique de la rétrodiffusion puisse être considérée indépendante de l’angle de rasance. Deux types d’analyse de texture sont utilisés sur chaque bande de l’image. La première technique est basée sur l’estimation d’une matrice des cooccurrences et de différents attributs d’Haralick. Le deuxième type d’analyse est l’estimation d’attributs spectraux. La bande centrale localisée à la moitié de la portée du sonar est segmentée en premier par un réseau de neurones compétitifs basé sur l’algorithme SOFM (Self-Organizing Feature Maps) de Kohonen. Ensuite, la segmentation est réalisée successivement sur les bandes adjacentes, jusqu’aux limites basse et haute de la portée sonar. A partir des connaissances acquises sur la segmentation de cette première bande, le classifieur adapte sa segmentation aux bandes voisines. Cette nouvelle méthode de segmentation est évaluée sur des données réelles acquises par le sonar latéral Klein 5000. Les performances de segmentation de l’algorithme proposé sont comparées avec celles obtenues par des techniques classiques