The Usage of the Underwater Drone with the Introduction of a Case of Analyzing Underwater Images of Seaweed Bed

Abstract

Recently, the underwater drone has been developed and utilized in industry. In this paper, we introduce current situation of the utilization of underwater drone in industry and discuss advantages and disadvantages of using underwater drone comparing with diving with scuba. The underwater drone is used in oceanic and freshwater survey, safety inspection of infrastructures, life-saving services, and fisheries. Utilization of the underwater drone in these situations is able to reduce hazardous tasks and employment cost of divers. In the survey of water distinct, the underwater drone can also survey deeper zone (over 30-m depth) during longer time than diving observation even though scuba diving needs countermeasures against the decompression disease. On the other hand, diving observation can observe the object more precisely than underwater drone. Particularly, in survey of seaweed bed, diving observation can distinguish much more variety of organism species. We introduce the case of utilization of underwater drone for the analysis of coverage survey of seaweed bed. Images of seaweed bed taken by an underwater drone were used for obtaining the teaching and validating data for distinguishing seaweed bed from satellite images. The accuracy of the identification method of seaweed species from the images were applicable for practical situation but need more improvement.