Texture-Based Seafloor Characterization Using Gaussian Process Classification

Synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) allows for high-resolution imagery of the seafloor with a quality that approaches that of an optical camera. Identifying seabed types within SAS images can prove very useful in a setting where autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are used, since information about the bottom type can be used to determine the behavior of the AUV. In this article, we present a new algorithm for the automatic detection of different seabed types based on SAS image texture. Using a Gaussian process classification (GPC) model, we were able to predict the seabed type, as well as an uncertainty estimate on this prediction. The GPC-based model is able to learn the most informative textures from a training data set, and by construction is robust against outliers or data points that are very different from those in the training set. An additional benefit of the model is that it can be easily configured to hit the desired tradeoff between computational complexity and accuracy.