A Cost-Effective Person-Following System for Assistive Unmanned Vehicles with Deep Learning at the Edge

The vital statistics of the last century highlight a sharp increment of the average age of the world population with a consequent growth of the number of older people. Service robotics applications have the potentiality to provide systems and tools to support the autonomous and self-sufficient older adults in their houses in everyday life, thereby avoiding the task of monitoring them with third parties. In this context, we propose a cost-effective modular solution to detect and follow a person in an indoor, domestic environment. We exploited the latest advancements in deep learning optimization techniques, and we compared different neural network accelerators to provide a robust and flexible person-following system at the edge. Our proposed cost-effective and power-efficient solution is fully-integrable with pre-existing navigation stacks and creates the foundations for the development of fully-autonomous and self-contained service robotics applications

Recent Advances in Multi Robot Systems

To design a team of robots which is able to perform given tasks is a great concern of many members of robotics community. There are many problems left to be solved in order to have the fully functional robot team. Robotics community is trying hard to solve such problems (navigation, task allocation, communication, adaptation, control, ...). This book represents the contributions of the top researchers in this field and will serve as a valuable tool for professionals in this interdisciplinary field. It is focused on the challenging issues of team architectures, vehicle learning and adaptation, heterogeneous group control and cooperation, task selection, dynamic autonomy, mixed initiative, and human and robot team interaction. The book consists of 16 chapters introducing both basic research and advanced developments. Topics covered include kinematics, dynamic analysis, accuracy, optimization design, modelling, simulation and control of multi robot systems

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Hybrid wheelchair controller for handicapped and quadriplegic patients

In this dissertation, a hybrid wheelchair controller for handicapped and quadriplegic patient is proposed. The system has two sub-controllers which are the voice controller and the head tilt controller. The system aims to help quadriplegic, handicapped, elderly and paralyzed patients to control a robotic wheelchair using voice commands and head movements instead of a traditional joystick controller. The multi-input design makes the system more flexible to adapt to the available body signals. The low-cost design is taken into consideration as it allows more patients to use this system

Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS 1994), volume 1

The AIAA/NASA Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS '94) was originally proposed because of the strong belief that America's problems of global economic competitiveness and job creation and preservation can partly be solved by the use of intelligent robotics, which are also required for human space exploration missions. Individual sessions addressed nuclear industry, agile manufacturing, security/building monitoring, on-orbit applications, vision and sensing technologies, situated control and low-level control, robotic systems architecture, environmental restoration and waste management, robotic remanufacturing, and healthcare applications