{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,9]],"date-time":"2026-07-09T04:14:28Z","timestamp":1783570468917,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":28,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,20]],"date-time":"2019-04-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1555718400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Innovation funds of Chinese Academy of Sciences","award":["CXJJ-M130"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["CXJJ-M130"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) play very important roles in underwater missions. However, the reliability of the automated recovery of AUVs has still not been well addressed. We propose a vision-based framework for automatically recovering an AUV by another AUV in shallow water. The proposed framework contains a detection phase for the robust detection of underwater landmarks mounted on the docking station in shallow water and a pose-estimation phase for estimating the pose between AUVs and underwater landmarks. We propose a Laplacian-of-Gaussian-based coarse-to-fine blockwise (LCB) method for the detection of underwater landmarks to overcome ambient light and nonuniform spreading, which are the two main problems in shallow water. We propose a novel method for pose estimation in practical cases where landmarks are broken or covered by biofouling. In the experiments, we show that our proposed LCB method outperforms the state-of-the-art method in terms of remote landmark detection. We then combine our proposed vision-based framework with acoustic sensors in field experiments to demonstrate its effectiveness in the automated recovery of AUVs.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s19081889","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,22]],"date-time":"2019-04-22T11:02:53Z","timestamp":1555930973000},"page":"1889","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":51,"title":["Visual Navigation for Recovering an AUV by Another AUV in Shallow Water"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"19","author":[{"given":"Shuang","family":"Liu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"},{"name":"Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hongli","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"},{"name":"Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yang","family":"Lin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"},{"name":"Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Lei","family":"Gao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"},{"name":"Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"48","DOI":"10.1016\/j.oceaneng.2008.10.001","article-title":"Experiments on vision guided docking of an autonomous underwater vehicle using one camera","volume":"36","author":"Park","year":"2009","journal-title":"Ocean Eng."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Maki, T., Shiroku, R., Sato, Y., Matsuda, T., Sakamaki, T., and Ura, T. (2013, January 5\u20138). Docking method for hovering type AUVs by acoustic and visual positioning. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Underwater Technology Symposium, Tokyo, Japan.","DOI":"10.1109\/UT.2013.6519905"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"163","DOI":"10.1016\/j.oceaneng.2015.10.015","article-title":"AUV docking experiments based on vision positioning using two cameras","volume":"110","author":"Li","year":"2015","journal-title":"Ocean Eng."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"106","DOI":"10.1016\/j.oceaneng.2018.01.114","article-title":"AUV homing and docking for remote operations","volume":"154","author":"Palomeras","year":"2018","journal-title":"Ocean Eng."},{"key":"ref_5","first-page":"37","article-title":"A USV-Based Automated Launch and Recovery System for AUVs","volume":"42","author":"Sarda","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE J. Ocean. Eng."},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"Raspante, F. (2012, January 21\u201324). Underwater mobile docking of autonomous underwater vehicles. Proceedings of the OCEANS 2012 Conference, Hampton Roads, VA, USA."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Irani, R., Kehoe, D., Spencer, W., Watt, G., Gillis, C., Carretero, J., and Dubay, R. (2014, January 18\u201319). Towards a UUV launch and recovery system on a slowly moving submarine. Proceedings of the Warship 2014: Naval Submarines & UUV\u2019s, Bath, UK.","DOI":"10.3940\/rina.ws.2014.19"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"193","DOI":"10.3723\/ut.32.193","article-title":"A simplified concept for recovering a UUV to a submarine","volume":"32","author":"Renilson","year":"2014","journal-title":"Underw. Technol."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"471","DOI":"10.1109\/JOE.2015.2424731","article-title":"A concept for docking a UUV with a slowly moving submarine under waves","volume":"41","author":"Watt","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE J. Ocean. Eng."},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Brizzolara, S., and Chryssostomidis, C. (2012, January 14\u201315). Design of an Unconventional ASV for Underwater Vehicles Recovery: Simulation of the motions for operations in rough seas. Proceedings of the ASNE International Conference on Launch & Recovery, Linthicum, MD, USA."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"498","DOI":"10.1109\/48.972084","article-title":"Docking for an autonomous ocean sampling network","volume":"26","author":"Singh","year":"2001","journal-title":"IEEE J. Ocean. Eng."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wirtz, M., Hildebrandt, M., and Gaudig, C. (2012, January 22\u201324). Design and test of a robust docking system for hovering AUVs. Proceedings of the 2012 Oceans, Arlington, VA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/OCEANS.2012.6404975"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"299","DOI":"10.1002\/rob.21740","article-title":"The ARTEMIS under-ice AUV docking system","volume":"35","author":"Kimball","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Field Robot."},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"Pai, S., Guerrini, P., Potter, J., Maguer, A., Chitre, M., and Biagini, S. (2009, January 21\u201326). Autonomous initial capture system for AUV recovery. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference and Exhibition on Underwater Acoustic Measurements: Technologies and Results, Nafplion, Greece."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"127","DOI":"10.1016\/j.oceaneng.2015.08.029","article-title":"Autonomous underwater vehicle docking system for cabled ocean observatory network","volume":"109","author":"Li","year":"2015","journal-title":"Ocean Eng."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2720","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2885537","article-title":"Detection and Pose Estimation for Short-Range Vision-Based Underwater Docking","volume":"7","author":"Liu","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"515","DOI":"10.1109\/48.972086","article-title":"Autonomous underwater vehicle homing\/docking via electromagnetic guidance","volume":"26","author":"Feezor","year":"2001","journal-title":"IEEE J. Ocean. Eng."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Cowen, S., Briest, S., and Dombrowski, J. (1997, January 6\u20139). Underwater docking of autonomous undersea vehicles using optical terminal guidance. Proceedings of the Oceans \u201997. MTS\/IEEE Conference, Halifax, NS, Canada.","DOI":"10.21236\/ADA422445"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sato, Y., Maki, T., Masuda, K., Matsuda, T., and Sakamaki, T. (2017, January 21\u201324). Autonomous docking of hovering type AUV to seafloor charging station based on acoustic and visual sensing. Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE Underwater Technology (UT), Busan, Korea.","DOI":"10.1109\/UT.2017.7890282"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"221","DOI":"10.1007\/s00138-015-0736-4","article-title":"Reliable pose estimation of underwater dock using single camera: A scene invariant approach","volume":"27","author":"Ghosh","year":"2016","journal-title":"Mach. Vis. Appl."},{"key":"ref_21","unstructured":"Hong, Y.H., Kim, J.Y., Oh, J.H., Lee, P.M., Jeon, B.H., and Oh, K.H. (2003, January 25\u201330). Development of the homing and docking algorithm for AUV. Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference, Honolulu, HI, USA."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1719","DOI":"10.1109\/TSMCB.2012.2228639","article-title":"A generalized Laplacian of Gaussian filter for blob detection and its applications","volume":"43","author":"Kong","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Cybern."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"62","DOI":"10.1109\/TSMC.1979.4310076","article-title":"A Threshold Selection Method from Gray-Level Histograms","volume":"9","author":"Otsu","year":"1979","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern."},{"key":"ref_24","unstructured":"ABDEL-AZIZ, Y. (1971, January 11). Direct linear transformation from comparator coordinates into object space in close-range photogrammetry. Proceedings of the ASP Symposium on Close-Range Photogrammetry, Falls Church, VA, USA."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"227","DOI":"10.1006\/cviu.1997.0632","article-title":"A Fully Projective Formulation to Improve the Accuracy of Lowe\u2019s Pose-Estimation Algorithm","volume":"70","author":"Carceroni","year":"1998","journal-title":"Comput. Vis. Image Underst."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"495","DOI":"10.1006\/cviu.1996.0037","article-title":"Iterative Pose Estimation Using Coplanar Feature Points","volume":"63","author":"Oberkampf","year":"1996","journal-title":"Comput. Vis. Image Underst."},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"610","DOI":"10.1109\/34.862199","article-title":"Fast and globally convergent pose estimation from video images","volume":"22","author":"Lu","year":"2000","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1444","DOI":"10.1109\/TPAMI.2012.41","article-title":"A Robust O(n) Solution to the Perspective-n-Point Problem","volume":"34","author":"Li","year":"2012","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/8\/1889\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:47:01Z","timestamp":1760186821000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/8\/1889"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,20]]},"references-count":28,"journal-issue":{"issue":"8","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,4]]}},"alternative-id":["s19081889"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s19081889","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,20]]}}}