Design and Implementation of SSS-Based AUV Autonomous Online Object Detection System

Underwater object detection is an important task in marine exploration. The existing autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) designs typically lack an integrated object detection module and are constrained by communication limitations in underwater environments. This results in a situation where AUV, when tasked with object detection missions, require real-time transmission of underwater sensing data to shore-based stations but are unable to do so. Consequently, the task is divided into two discontinuous phases: AUV acquisition of underwater data and shore-based object detection, leading to limited autonomy and intelligence for the AUV. In this paper, we propose a novel autonomous online underwater object detection system for AUV based on side-scan sonar (SSS). This system encompasses both hardware and software components and enables AUV to perform simultaneous data acquisition and object detection for underwater objects, thereby providing guidance for coherent AUV underwater operations. Firstly, this paper outlines the hardware design and layout of a portable integrated AUV for reconnaissance and strike missions, achieving online object detection through the integration of an acoustic processing computer. Subsequently, a modular design for the software architecture and a multi-threaded parallel design for the software workflow are developed, along with the integration of the YOLOv7 intelligent detection model, addressing three key technological challenges: real-time data processing, autonomous object detection, and intelligent online detection. Finally, lake experiments show that the system can meet the autonomy and real-time requirements of predefined object detection on AUV, and the average positioning error is better than 5 m, which verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the system. This provides a new solution for underwater object detection in AUV.