Banca de DEFESA: LÍDIA GABRIELLY DUTRA DE MENESES SANTOS

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : LÍDIA GABRIELLY DUTRA DE MENESES SANTOS
DATE: 29/07/2026
TIME: 10:00
LOCAL: Sala de Reuniões do DCA
TITLE:

Multi-Variable Expanded Latent Space Autoencoder for Image Classification Applied to Visual Monitoring of Coral Reefs and Navigation of Unmanned Surface Vehicles 

KEY WORDS:

Computer Vision, Image Analysis, Underwater Images, Multi-variable Autoencoder, Expanded Latent Space, Image Classification

PAGES: 80
BIG AREA: Ciências Exatas e da Terra
AREA: Ciência da Computação
SUBÁREA: Metodologia e Técnicas da Computação
SPECIALTY: Processamento Gráfico (Graphics)
SUMMARY:

We propose the use of the Multi-Variable Expanded Latent Space Autoencoder (MVELSA) to classify aquatic imagery, encompassing underwater domain, which can be applied to enable aquatic monitoring and other autonomous navigation tasks of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) in complex obstacle-ridden scenarios. Our core hypothesis is that MVELSA can identify objects of interest with efficacy and precision comparable or superior to traditional convolutional models and Vision Transformers (ViT) by leveraging an expanded latent representation that preserves critical morphological features. To validate this, we used as dataset the public AQUA20 benchmark, which consists of 20 subaquatic classes. Experimental results demonstrate that MVELSA, when used with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Self-Organizing Map (SOM), achieves a macro-average F1 score of 0.97 achieves a macro-averaged F1-Score of 0.97, outperforming baseline models in handling highly imbalanced data. Integrated into visual monitoring of coral reefs or navigation algorithms of a robotic sailboat, this system can help preservation missions and/or facilitate autonomous movement across oceans and lagoons with high reliability and minimal human intervention.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1345674 - LUIZ MARCOS GARCIA GONCALVES
Externo ao Programa - 1170845 - BRUNO MARQUES FERREIRA DA SILVA - UFRNExterno à Instituição - EMERSON VILAR DE OLIVEIRA - UFRN
Externo à Instituição - JORIS MICHEL GERARD DANIEL GUERIN - IRD