Automatic Watercraft Recognition and Identification on Water Areas Covered by Video Monitoring as Extension for Sea and River Traffic Supervision Systems

Abstract

The article presents the watercraft recognition and identification system as an extension for the presently used visual water area monitoring systems, such as VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) or RIS (River Information Service). The watercraft identification systems (AIS-Automatic Identification Systems) which are presently used in both sea and inland navigation require purchase and installation of relatively expensive transceivers on ships, the presence of which is not formally required as equipment of unconventional watercrafts, such as yachts, motor boats, and other pleasure crafts. These watercrafts may pose navigation or even terrorist threat, can be the object of interest of the customs, or simply cause traffic problems on restricted water areas. The article proposes extending the traffic supervision system by a module which will identify unconventional crafts based on video monitoring. Recognition and identification will be possible through the use of image identification and processing methods based on artificial intelligence algorithms, among other tools. The system will be implemented as independent service making use of the potential of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and XML/SOAP (Extensible Markup Language/Simple Object Access Protocol) technology.