PLOCAN marine test site, Gran Canria, Spain

Seabed photography

The dataset consists of colour corrected benthic images collected during two shore-launched deployments of the 6000 m rated Autosub Long Range (ALR) Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) of the National Oceanography Centre, UK. The deployments took place on 14 and 16 March 2024 in the PLOCAN marine test site in Gran Canaria, Spain. The images were acquired using the BioCam seafloor imaging device of the University of Southampton mounted on the AUV. Two strobes, one mounted at the front and one at the back of the AUV, illuminated the seafloor when the colour camera of BioCam, mounted at the centre of the AUV, acquired those images once every 3 s. Images were stored in raw format along with timestamped navigation data (DVL, USBL, GPS). Data from different navigation sensors were fused with the images in post processing using an extended Kalman smoother (EKS) implemented in oplab-pipeline (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10171699) to determine the best pose estimate for each image. The images were then de-bayered and colour corrected with an algorithm implemented in oplab-pipeline. The imaging survey was undertaken to demonstrate the BioCam technology developed by University of Southampton scientists under the TechOceanS project (Grant Agreement No 101000858) as part of the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

British Oceanographic Data Centre
Joseph Proudman Building 6 Brownlow Street
Liverpool
Merseyside
L3 5DA
United Kingdom