Restoring Polarization Angle Map for High- Fidelity Underwater Imaging

Obtaining polarization information enables researchers to enhance underwater imaging quality by removing backscattering effect and to distinguish targets of different materials.However,due to the simplified assumption of unpolarized target light,most of the existing underwater polari-metric methods lose part of the polarization information,resulting in degraded imaging quality.In this work,a novel underwater polarimetric method is reported,which obtains the angle of polariza-tion(AOP)map to improve imaging quality.Specifically,the Stokes vectors were exploited to re-move the backscattering effect by obtaining two pairs of orthogonal polarization sub-images of the underwater scene.The target reflected light and the angle between the polarization directions of the target reflected light and the backscattered light were computed through the two groups of the or-thogonal polarized sub-images.The AOP map of the target light could be derived from the Stokes vectors.Then,the transmission map of the target light was estimated by using the non-local color priorly combined with the properties of light propagating underwater.Experiments show that the reported technique enables distinguishing different targets when the colors are similar.The quantit-ative metrics validate that the reported technique produces state-of-the-art performance for under-water imaging.

Bioinspired polarized light compass in moonlit sky for heading determination based on probability density estimation

Bioinspired polarized skylight navigation,which can be used in unfamiliar territories,is an important alternative autonomous navigation technique in the absence of Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS).However,the polarization pattern in night environment with noise effects and model uncertainties is a less explored area.Although several decades have passed since the first publication about the polarization of the moonlit night sky,the usefulness of nocturnal polarization navigation is only sporadic in previous researches.This study demonstrates that the nocturnal polarized light is capable of providing accurate and stable navigation information in dim light outdoor environment.Based on the statistical characteristics of Angle of Polarization(Ao P)error,a probability density estimation method is proposed for heading determination.To illustrate the application potentials,the simulation and outdoor experiments are performed.Resultingly,the proposed method robustly models the distribution of Ao P error and gives accurate heading estimation evaluated by Standard Deviation(STD)which is 0.32°in a clear night sky and 0.47°in a cloudy night sky.