A Survey on Edge Detection based recent Marine Horizon Line Detection Methods and their Applications

Sea and sky boundary identification (i.e. marine horizon line detection) from a marine image is a problem of great interest for reasons such as, unmanned surface or aerial vehicle navigation, surveillance by object detection and tracking, and determining the spatial orientation of the ship. Due to the complexity of the marine environment, the problem poses its own unique challenges. In recent years, different methods have been proposed by the researchers to solve the problem. Those methods can be grouped into two categories; (i) edge detection based horizon detection, and (ii) machine learning-based horizon detection. In this paper, we present a survey on edge detection based recent marine horizon line detection methods and their applications. We have selected studies from the previous three years and discussed each study’s approach to marine horizon line detection issue, the datasets used for testing purposes and its results. The authors’ observations for each study are presented with a recommendation for their suitability for a specific application in the marine environment. Findings of the survey and future research directions for the researchers are also identified and presented. We hope that this survey paper provides a comprehensive overview of edge detection based recent marine horizon line detection methods and help the researchers in exploring new solutions to this challenging problem.