Intelligent determination of the ice concentration and floe size

Abstract

Ice induces additional difficulty for maritime transportation. The important parameters from the ship’s performance point of view are ice thickness, ice concentration and floe size. These parameters have been traditionally observed visually and the development of remote sensing has enabled more advanced techniques to estimate these parameters. However, these methods have their own hindrances. Visual observations are subjective and satellite are not frequently passing the area and the footprint of the data might be too large for tactical navigation. Thus, new additional technologies are needed for the determination of concentration and floe size. Machinery vision offers a possibility to provide the additional information from these conditions. For these reason, the stereo camera system that has been used in previous SANAE voyages for ice thickness measurements was tuned for concentration and floe size measurements. The distance between cameras were increased to improve the long distance resolution and the system was mounted to the crow’s nest of S.A. Agulhas II for the SANAE voyage 2017-18. The system recorded images and the in-house MATLAB code calculated the floe size and concentration of the field in real time. - Abstract as displayed in the - Abstract booklet. There was no presentation.