Development of Image Processing Technique for Detection of the Rescue Target in the Marine Casualty

When a marine casualty occurs, the detection of the rescue target such as life rafts depends on the visual search of human's eye. It is predicted, however, that human eye sometimes loses its sight and ability of detection falls down owing to the long flight and the nasty weather. For a practical purpose of the prompt rescue of human life, development of searching support system in place of human eye is surely required. To realize the detection of the small rescue target in the wide sea, we propose a new searching system using image processing techniques based on the color information. The searching system consists of a visual sensor, an equipment of image processing and a knowledge database. Integration of these parts enables us to detect the rescue target accurately no matter how bad the condition is. At the first step of our study, we attempt the development of image processing techniques to detect accurately the rescue target under the various weather conditions.