Barrel Distortion Correction for Digital Optic-Based Motion Tracking in Ship Hydrodynamic Model Experiments

In hydrodynamic ship-model experiments, motion tracking of ship model trajectory is employed to predict the maneuverability of the ship when operating in its actual environment. There are some systems for motion tracking, such as inertial measurement unit, radar, laser, and infrared sensors. The system has proven reliable, however, the disadvantage is that they are all relatively expensive. This paper proposes a low-cost digital optic-based motion tracking system using consumer-grade video camera. In order to examine the accuracy of the system, some experiments to apply the method were carried out in maneuvering offshore engineering basin at the Indonesian Hydrodynamics Laboratory, The National Agency for Research and Innovation. To cover a broader area of the trajectory, a wide-angle camera lens was utilized, consequently, the image recorded by the camera experienced a barrel distortion. As a reference for the measurements, gridlines spaced 2 meters apart were drawn on the floor of the basin. Using the grid pattern, the distortion was corrected by finding the relationship between the grid pattern in the object space and in the distorted image. A fourth-order polynomial regression was applied to solve the problem. The results showed that the method was effective for correcting distorted images with a relative standard error of 0.42%.