Air-borne stereo observation of ocean wave height using two independent cameras from a single unmanned aerial vehicle

This study exploits a convenient, stable, accurate estimation of the spatio-temporal distribution of ocean wave heights by stereo observation using a single unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with two independent optical cameras fixed to it. To accurately estimate the spatio-temporal distribution of water levels, the photographing rate of each camera is set to 240 frames per second (fps), and luminescence captured during flight is used to realize the time synchronization within ~ 4 ms between the cameras. Based on the setting of the UAV and the cameras, we carry out aerial stereo observation of the spatio-temporal distribution of nearshore water levels. The estimated water levels showed good agreement with ground truth observation. We examine the dependence of the estimation accuracy on the photographing time difference between the cameras. Simulations were conducted to increase the time difference by decreasing the photographing rate. The estimation based on low photographing rates (e.g., 60 and 30 fps) likely failed when breaking wave crests prevailed in the optical images. This indicates that strict time synchronization (e.g., ~ 4 ms) between the cameras is an important, necessary condition to accomplish accurate stereo observation of ocean waves including wave breaking.