This paper proposes a method for the integration of acoustic and
optical data to enhance the perception of an underwater environment in
teleoperation tasks. Off-shore applications are addressed, in which an
underwater remotely operated vehicle is approaching an oil rig for
inspection, maintenance and repairing tasks. A technique is presented
which takes advantage of optical features to segment an acoustic
three-dimensional image. Cylindrical surfaces are than extracted from
3-D points, and whole cylinders are reconstructed. The final step is to
present useful information to the human operator, by displaying the
superposition of measured acoustic data and geometric primitives
fitted to parts of it, i.e. an augmented reality view. Experimental
results are reported showing the effectiveness of the proposed
approach
