Time-of-Flight (ToF) Cameras for Underwater Situational Awareness

Recently developed commercial Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras have been used to accurately and reliably measure scene depth with high resolution in applications such as automotive LiDAR. There is a desire to adapt this technology for applications in underwater environments. In this work, we establish a methodology for using modified commercial ToF cameras in turbid water. We express the need for hardware and software modifications to the camera and demonstrate initial results in the efficacy of the camera in an underwater test scenario. We include ToF camera imagery taken under a variety of water conditions to understand the performance limitations of this technology as a function of water clarity. Target detection results from preliminary laboratory test tank experiments are presented for two different classifiers, each of which achieves high accuracy for a certain range of water conditions.