Extended range distributed laser serial imaging in turbid estuarine and coastal conditions

One pressing need in the drive to better secure the coastal environment and associated natural and manmade assets is the ability to rapidly identify suspicious undersea objects. Typically murky harbor and coastal waters render this task nearly impossible, even with the most sophisticated underwater camera technologies. However, simpler system architectures that can extend operational range and also rapidly transmit high-quality imagery and other information to remote locations could be realized if a serial laser illuminator and single element detector sub-systems are operated in a distributed configuration, possibly among multiple undersea robotic platforms. To gain a better understanding of the potential performance of this distributed undersea imaging technique in natural waters, and also to determine if precise alignment is required between laser illuminator and detector sub-systems during such operations, the Ocean Visibility and Optics Laboratory at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute recently developed a prototype distributed laser imager. The system was tested recently in a range of very turbid estuarine conditions off the east coast of Florida. Results from these experiments as well as a description of this distributed laser imager prototype will be presented and discussed in this paper.