Visual Tracking at Sea

Charles Bibby, Ian D. Reid

Abstract: We describe progress in the design, build and test of a mechatronic system capable of visually tracking objects at sea from a moving platform, such as a boat. The mechanism comprises three controllable degrees of freedom that can carry a small camera as payload. The camera position is stabilised using inertial sensing, and the stabilised images are processed using a published colour-based tracking algorithm to achieve visual pursuit of the target [1], [3]. We describe novel improvements to the tracker that enhance its performance in the case of tracking a target at sea. The system is demonstrated on real footage and its performance assessed.