{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,12]],"date-time":"2025-12-12T13:37:06Z","timestamp":1765546626446,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":42,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"14","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,20]],"date-time":"2020-07-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1595203200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001665","name":"Agence Nationale de la Recherche","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["ANR-16-IDEX-0006","ANR-10-LABX-20"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ANR-16-IDEX-0006","ANR-10-LABX-20"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001665","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper proposes a solution for merging the measurements from two perpendicular profiling sonars with different beam-widths, in the context of underwater karst (cave) exploration and mapping. This work is a key step towards the development of a full 6D pose SLAM framework adapted to karst aquifer, where potential water turbidity disqualifies vision-based methods, hence relying on acoustic sonar measurements. Those environments have complex geometries which require 3D sensing. Wide-beam sonars are mandatory to cover previously seen surfaces but do not provide 3D measurements as the elevation angles are unknown. The approach proposed in this paper leverages the narrow-beam sonar measurements to estimate local karst surface with Gaussian process regression. The estimated surface is then further exploited to infer scaled-beta distributions of elevation angles from a wide-beam sonar. The pertinence of the method was validated through experiments on simulated environments. As a result, this approach allows one to benefit from the high coverage provided by wide-beam sonars without the drawback of loosing 3D information.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20144028","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,20]],"date-time":"2020-07-20T10:59:38Z","timestamp":1595242778000},"page":"4028","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":11,"title":["Elevation Angle Estimations of Wide-Beam Acoustic Sonar Measurements for Autonomous Underwater Karst Exploration"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2834-1678","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yohan","family":"Breux","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics and MicroElectronics (LIRMM) (UMR 5506 CNRS\u2014UM), Universit\u00e9 Montpellier, 161 rue Ada, CEDEX 5, 34392 Montpellier, France"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4320-2118","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Lionel","family":"Lapierre","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics and MicroElectronics (LIRMM) (UMR 5506 CNRS\u2014UM), Universit\u00e9 Montpellier, 161 rue Ada, CEDEX 5, 34392 Montpellier, France"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Thrun, S., Burgard, W., and Fox, D. 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