Research and Experiment of an Underwater Stereo Vision System

Underwater computer vision is a challenging task due to the severe underwater condition. The underwater optical system can provide more detailed information than the acoustic system. This paper describes a new stereo vision system for underwater object detection and 3D reconstruction. The Stereolabs ZED 2K Stereo Camera and NVIDIA Jetson TX2 are the core components of the system. A USB3.0 optical cable can transmit the high-definition video at the maximum speed of 5.0 GB/s within a distance of 300 meters. All software modules are developed based on ROS (Robot Operating System) middleware. The underwater camera calibration has been carried out to correct the underwater distortion of stereo vision, and underwater 3D reconstruction experiments have proven the validity of the system.