Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles

Water segmentation is essential for the autonomous driving system of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), which provides reliable navigation for making safety decisions. However, existing methods have only used monocular images as input, which often suffer from the changes in illumination and weather....

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Main Authors: Jiantao Gao, Jingting Zhang, Chang Liu, Xiaomao Li, Yan Peng
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-05-01
Series:Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/10/6/744
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author Jiantao Gao
Jingting Zhang
Chang Liu
Xiaomao Li
Yan Peng
author_facet Jiantao Gao
Jingting Zhang
Chang Liu
Xiaomao Li
Yan Peng
author_sort Jiantao Gao
collection DOAJ
description Water segmentation is essential for the autonomous driving system of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), which provides reliable navigation for making safety decisions. However, existing methods have only used monocular images as input, which often suffer from the changes in illumination and weather. Compared with monocular images, LiDAR point clouds can be collected independently of ambient light and provide sufficient 3D information but lack the color and texture that images own. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel camera-LiDAR cross-modality fusion water segmentation method, which combines the data characteristics of the 2D image and 3D LiDAR point cloud in water segmentation for the first time. Specifically, the 3D point clouds are first supplemented with 2D color and texture information from the images and then distinguished into water surface points and non-water points by the early 3D cross-modality segmentation module. Subsequently, the 3D segmentation results and features are fed into the late 2D cross-modality segmentation module to perform 2D water segmentation. Finally, the 2D and 3D water segmentation results are fused for the refinement by an uncertainty-aware cross-modality fusion module. We further collect, annotate and present a novel Cross-modality Water Segmentation (CMWS) dataset to validate our proposed method. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first water segmentation dataset for USVs in inland waterways consisting of images and corresponding point clouds. Extensive experiments on the CMWS dataset demonstrate that our proposed method can significantly improve image-only-based methods, achieving improvements in accuracy and MaxF of approximately 2% for all the image-only-based methods.
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spelling doaj.art-98fddcd662134b659a5a470521c73dd32023-11-23T17:22:12ZengMDPI AGJournal of Marine Science and Engineering2077-13122022-05-0110674410.3390/jmse10060744Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface VehiclesJiantao Gao0Jingting Zhang1Chang Liu2Xiaomao Li3Yan Peng4Research Institute of USV Engineering, School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, ChinaResearch Institute of USV Engineering, School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, ChinaResearch Institute of USV Engineering, School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, ChinaResearch Institute of USV Engineering, School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, ChinaResearch Institute of USV Engineering, School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, ChinaWater segmentation is essential for the autonomous driving system of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), which provides reliable navigation for making safety decisions. However, existing methods have only used monocular images as input, which often suffer from the changes in illumination and weather. Compared with monocular images, LiDAR point clouds can be collected independently of ambient light and provide sufficient 3D information but lack the color and texture that images own. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel camera-LiDAR cross-modality fusion water segmentation method, which combines the data characteristics of the 2D image and 3D LiDAR point cloud in water segmentation for the first time. Specifically, the 3D point clouds are first supplemented with 2D color and texture information from the images and then distinguished into water surface points and non-water points by the early 3D cross-modality segmentation module. Subsequently, the 3D segmentation results and features are fed into the late 2D cross-modality segmentation module to perform 2D water segmentation. Finally, the 2D and 3D water segmentation results are fused for the refinement by an uncertainty-aware cross-modality fusion module. We further collect, annotate and present a novel Cross-modality Water Segmentation (CMWS) dataset to validate our proposed method. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first water segmentation dataset for USVs in inland waterways consisting of images and corresponding point clouds. Extensive experiments on the CMWS dataset demonstrate that our proposed method can significantly improve image-only-based methods, achieving improvements in accuracy and MaxF of approximately 2% for all the image-only-based methods.https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/10/6/744water segmentationsemantic segmentationimage segmentationLiDAR point clouddeep learningunmanned surface vessel
spellingShingle Jiantao Gao
Jingting Zhang
Chang Liu
Xiaomao Li
Yan Peng
Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
water segmentation
semantic segmentation
image segmentation
LiDAR point cloud
deep learning
unmanned surface vessel
title Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
title_full Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
title_fullStr Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
title_full_unstemmed Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
title_short Camera-LiDAR Cross-Modality Fusion Water Segmentation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
title_sort camera lidar cross modality fusion water segmentation for unmanned surface vehicles
topic water segmentation
semantic segmentation
image segmentation
LiDAR point cloud
deep learning
unmanned surface vessel
url https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/10/6/744
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AT changliu cameralidarcrossmodalityfusionwatersegmentationforunmannedsurfacevehicles
AT xiaomaoli cameralidarcrossmodalityfusionwatersegmentationforunmannedsurfacevehicles
AT yanpeng cameralidarcrossmodalityfusionwatersegmentationforunmannedsurfacevehicles