2025/06/06 by Pushyami Kaveti, Kaveti, Pushyami, Ambjorn Grimsrud Waldum +5 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced Vision and Imaging #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Robotics (cs.RO) #Robotics and Sensor-Based Localization #Underwater Vehicles and Communication Systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.06476
openalex publication_date 2025/06/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) demand robust spatial perception capabilities, including Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), to support both remote and autonomous tasks. Vision-based systems have been integral to these advancements, capturing rich color and texture at low cost while enabling semantic scene understanding. However, underwater conditions -- such as light attenuation, backscatter, and low contrast -- often degrade image quality to the point where traditional vision-based SLAM pipelines fail. Moreover, these pipelines typically rely on monocular or stereo inputs, limiting their scalability to the multi-camera configurations common on many vehicles. To address these issues, we propose to leverage multi-modal sensing that fuses data from multiple sensors-including cameras, inertial measurement units (IMUs), and acoustic devices-to enhance situational awareness and enable robust, real-time SLAM. We explore both geometric and learning-based techniques along with semantic analysis, and conduct experiments on the data collected from a work-class ROV during several field deployments in the Trondheim Fjord. Through our experimental results, we demonstrate the feasibility of real-time reliable state estimation and high-quality 3D reconstructions in visually challenging underwater conditions. We also discuss system constraints and identify open research questions, such as sensor calibration, limitations with learning-based methods, that merit further exploration to advance large-scale underwater operations.