Boat Detection in Marina Using Time-Delay Analysis and Deep Learning

An autonomous acoustic system based on two bottom-moored hydrophones, a two-input audio board and a small single-board computer was installed at the entrance of a marina to detect entering/exiting boat. Windowed time lagged cross-correlations are calculated by the system to find the consecutive time delays between the hydrophone signals and to compute a signal which is a function of the boats' angular trajectories. Since its installation, the single-board computer performs online prediction with a signal processing-based algorithm which achieved an accuracy of 80 %. To improve system performance, a convolutional neural network (CNN) is trained with the acquired data to perform real-time detection. Two classification tasks were considered (binary and multiclass) to both detect a boat and its direction of navigation. Finally, a trained CNN was implemented in a single-board computer to ensure that prediction can be performed in real time.