Résumé. Nous présentons dans ce papier des approches de fusion d’informations haut niveau applicables pour des données numériques ou des données symboliques. Nous étudions l’intérêt des telles approches particulièrement pour la fusion de classifieurs. Une étude comparative est présentée dans le cadre de la caractérisation des fonds marins à partir d’images sonar. Reconnaı̂tre le type de sédiment...

The long term goal of this international cooperative research program is to investigate behavioral reactions and the sound exposures required to elicit them of herring, killer whales, pilot whales and sperm whales to Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS) and Mid Frequency Active Sonar (MFAS) signals, in order to establish safety limits for sonar operations for these species. The hypothesis that we ...

INTRODUCTION In humans, and other terrestrial animals, acoustic and non-acoustic detrimental effects of noise have been described long ago (1,2). In the recent years there is an increase in public and expert interest in the potential damaging consequences of acoustic pollution to marine life. The general increase in underwater noise and the use of sonar (1,2) have been associated with behaviora...

Given the limited range and applicability of visual imaging systems in the underwater environment, sonar has been the preferred solution for the observation of the seabed since its inception in the 1950s (Blondel 2002). The images produced by the most commonly used side-looking sonars (side-scan and, more recently, synthetic aperture sonars) contain information on the backscatter strength recor...

Echolocation operates through adaptive sensorimotor systems that collectively enable the bat to localize and track sonar objects as it flies. The features of sonar signals used by a bat to probe its surroundings determine the information available to its acoustic imaging system. In turn, the bat's perception of a complex scene guides its active adjustments in the features of subsequent sonar vo...