China’s first domestically developed omnidirectional monitoring system for ships on the sea surface and in the marine environment has successfully completed its target identification mission with an unmanned vessel on the sea recently, the Science and Technology Daily reported on Sunday.

This high-resolution multimodal panoramic vision system developed by scientists from Harbin Engineering University (HEU) delivers long-range, high-precision visibility during the day while maintaining sharp detection capabilities at night and in extreme maritime conditions, including heavy fog, enabling real-time, all-weather long-distance identification and monitoring of maritime targets.

After 14 years of dedicated research, the research team had focused on key challenges in intelligent vision perception, overcoming three key technical challenges in environmental sensing and target detection: visibility blind spots, image blurriness, and identification difficulties in practical applications, according to Cai Chengtao, professor from the College of Intelligent Systems Science and Engineering of HEU, who led the research.

To meet the requirements for real-time operation, high resolution, and low power consumption in panoramic stitching technology, the research and development team has overcome traditional vision system limitations, addressing blind spots, optimizing the balance between wide-area perception and high-resolution detail, and enhancing all-weather adaptability.

The system integrates dual-mode visible light and infrared data, boosts target perception in complex environments and enhances panoramic image quality in low-light conditions.

The system has demonstrated outstanding performance in visual identification across fields such as intelligent ships, environmental monitoring, autonomous driving, and smart transportation.

It has successfully detected and issued early warnings for multiple ship collisions due to visibility blind spots and has been applied to China’s first intelligent scientific research test ship,“Dolphin 1.”

In addition, it has also been widely used in multiple other scenarios such as maritime perception, berthing and unberthing environment perception as well as security monitoring.

Equipped with a cutting-edge, domestically developed infrared imaging engine and microprocessor, along with advanced algorithms and boosted computing power, China’s homegrown panoramic vision system provides improved stability and long-range thermal imaging capabilities, ensuring greater accuracy in low-visibility and extended-distance scenarios, according to research team member Zeng Bowen.