Navigational intelligence at river: a laser-based imaging approach for nocturnal vessel detection

Abstract

In this 21st century, maritime routes are crucial for geographical and financial reasons in riverine countries which include passenger traveling, cargo vessels, fishing, etc., and play an equally imperative role in the economy. To fulfill all the maritime based needs, current developing countries in the world do not have proper surveillance and monitoring systems in the local water vessels to tackle any possible disaster such as vessel collision. Despite being involved in trading through the maritime silk roads from 500 BC, the navigation system remains rudimentary in these developing countries and one of the worst outcomes of this architecture is regular death by launch accidents. Considering this paramount issue, we attempted to develop a secure, optimized, and effective system to make river traveling safe and secure, and in this paper, our focus was on Bangladesh’s inland waterway transportation, particularly at night. We proposed a system with the help of laser technology that tracks both the host ship and its surrounding vessels and provides real-time tracking position. Cameras such as CCTV or IP-based ones will be used to monitor the face vessel’s movement in real-time application. The diameter of the laser beam sphere was the primary source of data to work on for our proposed model, which was later annotated using image processing. The control room will be monitoring data continuously and since it is an AIS, the data will be updated automatically after the system is implemented on a vessel. This proposal was presented through modeling and simulations based on laser detection and identification.