Underwater imaging has been present for many decades due to its relevance in vision and navigation systems. In recent years, advances in robotics have led to the availability of autonomous or unmanned underwater vehicles (AUVs, UUVs). Despite the rapid development of new studies and promising algorithms in this field, there is currently a lack of research toward standardized, general-approach proposals. This issue has been stated in the literature as a limiting factor to be addressed in the future. The key starting point of this work is to identify a synergistic effect between professional photography and scientific fields by analyzing image acquisition issues. Subsequently, we discuss underwater image enhancement and quality assessment, image mosaicking and algorithmic concerns as the last processing step. In this line, statistics about 120 AUV articles fro recent decades have been analyzed, with a special focus on state-of-the-art papers from recent years. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify critical issues in autonomous underwater vehicles encompassing the entire process, starting from optical issues in image sensing and ending with some issues related to algorithmic processing. In addition, a global underwater workflow is proposed, extracting future requirements, outcome effects and new perspectives in this context.
Keywords: image acquisition; image processing methods; optical imaging technologies; sensing for autonomous underwater vehicles; underwater image.