CNN-Based Monocular 3D Ship Detection Using Inverse Perspective

Three-dimensional ship localization with only one camera is a challenging task due to the loss of depth information caused by perspective projection. In this paper, we propose a method to measure distances based on the assumption that ships lie on a flat surface. This assumption allows to recover depth from a single image using the principle of inverse perspective. For the 3D ship detection task, we use a hybrid approach that combines image detection with a convolutional neural network, camera geometry and inverse perspective. Furthermore, a novel calculation of object height is introduced. Experiments show that the monocular distance computation works well in comparison to a Velodyne lidar. Due to its robustness, this could be an easy-to-use baseline method for detection tasks in navigation systems.