34,376 research outputs found
FlightGoggles: A Modular Framework for Photorealistic Camera, Exteroceptive Sensor, and Dynamics Simulation
FlightGoggles is a photorealistic sensor simulator for perception-driven
robotic vehicles. The key contributions of FlightGoggles are twofold. First,
FlightGoggles provides photorealistic exteroceptive sensor simulation using
graphics assets generated with photogrammetry. Second, it provides the ability
to combine (i) synthetic exteroceptive measurements generated in silico in real
time and (ii) vehicle dynamics and proprioceptive measurements generated in
motio by vehicle(s) in a motion-capture facility. FlightGoggles is capable of
simulating a virtual-reality environment around autonomous vehicle(s). While a
vehicle is in flight in the FlightGoggles virtual reality environment,
exteroceptive sensors are rendered synthetically in real time while all complex
extrinsic dynamics are generated organically through the natural interactions
of the vehicle. The FlightGoggles framework allows for researchers to
accelerate development by circumventing the need to estimate complex and
hard-to-model interactions such as aerodynamics, motor mechanics, battery
electrochemistry, and behavior of other agents. The ability to perform
vehicle-in-the-loop experiments with photorealistic exteroceptive sensor
simulation facilitates novel research directions involving, e.g., fast and
agile autonomous flight in obstacle-rich environments, safe human interaction,
and flexible sensor selection. FlightGoggles has been utilized as the main test
for selecting nine teams that will advance in the AlphaPilot autonomous drone
racing challenge. We survey approaches and results from the top AlphaPilot
teams, which may be of independent interest.Comment: Initial version appeared at IROS 2019. Supplementary material can be
found at https://flightgoggles.mit.edu. Revision includes description of new
FlightGoggles features, such as a photogrammetric model of the MIT Stata
Center, new rendering settings, and a Python AP
State Estimation for Kite Power Systems with Delayed Sensor Measurements
We present a novel estimation approach for airborne wind energy systems with ground-based control and energy generation. The estimator fuses measurements from an inertial measurement unit attached to a tethered wing and position measurements from a camera as well as line angle sensors in an unscented Kalman filter. We have developed a novel kinematic description for tethered wings to specifically address tether dynamics. The presented approach simultaneously estimates feedback variables for a flight controller as well as model parameters, such as a time-varying delay. We demonstrate the performance of the estimator for experimental flight data and compare it to a state-of-the-art estimator based on inertial measurements
The Coordinate Particle Filter - A novel Particle Filter for High Dimensional Systems
Parametric filters, such as the Extended Kalman Filter and the Unscented
Kalman Filter, typically scale well with the dimensionality of the problem, but
they are known to fail if the posterior state distribution cannot be closely
approximated by a density of the assumed parametric form. For nonparametric
filters, such as the Particle Filter, the converse holds. Such methods are able
to approximate any posterior, but the computational requirements scale
exponentially with the number of dimensions of the state space. In this paper,
we present the Coordinate Particle Filter which alleviates this problem. We
propose to compute the particle weights recursively, dimension by dimension.
This allows us to explore one dimension at a time, and resample after each
dimension if necessary. Experimental results on simulated as well as real data
confirm that the proposed method has a substantial performance advantage over
the Particle Filter in high-dimensional systems where not all dimensions are
highly correlated. We demonstrate the benefits of the proposed method for the
problem of multi-object and robotic manipulator tracking
An Equivariant Observer Design for Visual Localisation and Mapping
This paper builds on recent work on Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping
(SLAM) in the non-linear observer community, by framing the visual localisation
and mapping problem as a continuous-time equivariant observer design problem on
the symmetry group of a kinematic system. The state-space is a quotient of the
robot pose expressed on SE(3) and multiple copies of real projective space,
used to represent both points in space and bearings in a single unified
framework. An observer with decoupled Riccati-gains for each landmark is
derived and we show that its error system is almost globally asymptotically
stable and exponentially stable in-the-large.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, published in 2019 IEEE CD
The path inference filter: model-based low-latency map matching of probe vehicle data
We consider the problem of reconstructing vehicle trajectories from sparse
sequences of GPS points, for which the sampling interval is between 10 seconds
and 2 minutes. We introduce a new class of algorithms, called altogether path
inference filter (PIF), that maps GPS data in real time, for a variety of
trade-offs and scenarios, and with a high throughput. Numerous prior approaches
in map-matching can be shown to be special cases of the path inference filter
presented in this article. We present an efficient procedure for automatically
training the filter on new data, with or without ground truth observations. The
framework is evaluated on a large San Francisco taxi dataset and is shown to
improve upon the current state of the art. This filter also provides insights
about driving patterns of drivers. The path inference filter has been deployed
at an industrial scale inside the Mobile Millennium traffic information system,
and is used to map fleets of data in San Francisco, Sacramento, Stockholm and
Porto.Comment: Preprint, 23 pages and 23 figure
Collision Detection and Reaction: A Contribution to Safe Physical Human-Robot Interaction
In the framework of physical Human-Robot Interaction
(pHRI), methodologies and experimental tests are
presented for the problem of detecting and reacting to collisions
between a robot manipulator and a human being. Using a
lightweight robot that was especially designed for interactive
and cooperative tasks, we show how reactive control strategies
can significantly contribute to ensuring safety to the human
during physical interaction. Several collision tests were carried
out, illustrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed
approach. While a subjective “safety” feeling is experienced by
users when being able to naturally stop the robot in autonomous
motion, a quantitative analysis of different reaction strategies
was lacking. In order to compare these strategies on an objective
basis, a mechanical verification platform has been built. The
proposed collision detection and reactions methods prove to
work very reliably and are effective in reducing contact forces
far below any level which is dangerous to humans. Evaluations
of impacts between robot and human arm or chest up to a
maximum robot velocity of 2.7 m/s are presented
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