Local Defogging Algorithm for the First Frame Image of Unmanned Surface Vehicles Based on a Radar-Photoelectric System

Abstract

Unmanned surface vehicles frequently encounter foggy weather when performing surface object tracking tasks, resulting in low optical image quality and object recognition accuracy. Traditional defogging algorithms are time consuming and do not meet real-time requirements. In addition, there are problems with oversaturated colors, low brightness, and overexposed areas in the sky. In order to solve the problems mentioned above, this paper proposes a defogging algorithm for the first frame image of unmanned surface vehicles based on a radar-photoelectric system. The algorithm involves the following steps. The first is the fog detection algorithm for sea surface image, which determines the presence of fog. The second is the sea-sky line extraction algorithm which realizes the extraction of the sea-sky line in the first frame image. The third is the object detection algorithm based on the sea-sky line, which extracts the target area near the sea-sky line. The fourth is the local defogging algorithm, which defogs the extracted area to obtain higher quality images. This paper effectively solves the problems above in the sea test and dramatically reduces the calculation time of the defogging algorithm by 86.7%, compared with the dark channel prior algorithm.

Keywords

• unmanned surface vehicle
• radar-photoelectric system
• fog detection
• sea-sky line extraction
• defogging algorithm