Reliable vessel attitude estimation by wide angle camera

In the maritime field, one of the most sensitive information is the vessel attitude, because in several scenarios it could compromise the safety of the ship. Gyrocompasses provide the yaw angle with high accuracy, while the roll and pitch angles are directly measured by traditional sensor such as the classical inclinometers. In maritime dynamic positions systems, high-performance inertial sensors are employed to obtain continues attitude information; such systems are very expensive, and they are not spread on all common ships. The goal of this work is to develop a low-cost and non-invasive system able to estimate the roll and pitch angle. The developed system is based on visual observation obtained by a consumer camera. Roll and Pitch measurements are computed on the position and slope of the horizon line that falls within the image. The paper describes the procedures developed to obtain the attitude parameters.