3,043 research outputs found
Single camera pose estimation using Bayesian filtering and Kinect motion priors
Traditional approaches to upper body pose estimation using monocular vision
rely on complex body models and a large variety of geometric constraints. We
argue that this is not ideal and somewhat inelegant as it results in large
processing burdens, and instead attempt to incorporate these constraints
through priors obtained directly from training data. A prior distribution
covering the probability of a human pose occurring is used to incorporate
likely human poses. This distribution is obtained offline, by fitting a
Gaussian mixture model to a large dataset of recorded human body poses, tracked
using a Kinect sensor. We combine this prior information with a random walk
transition model to obtain an upper body model, suitable for use within a
recursive Bayesian filtering framework. Our model can be viewed as a mixture of
discrete Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, in that states behave as random walks,
but drift towards a set of typically observed poses. This model is combined
with measurements of the human head and hand positions, using recursive
Bayesian estimation to incorporate temporal information. Measurements are
obtained using face detection and a simple skin colour hand detector, trained
using the detected face. The suggested model is designed with analytical
tractability in mind and we show that the pose tracking can be
Rao-Blackwellised using the mixture Kalman filter, allowing for computational
efficiency while still incorporating bio-mechanical properties of the upper
body. In addition, the use of the proposed upper body model allows reliable
three-dimensional pose estimates to be obtained indirectly for a number of
joints that are often difficult to detect using traditional object recognition
strategies. Comparisons with Kinect sensor results and the state of the art in
2D pose estimation highlight the efficacy of the proposed approach.Comment: 25 pages, Technical report, related to Burke and Lasenby, AMDO 2014
conference paper. Code sample: https://github.com/mgb45/SignerBodyPose Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJMTSo7-uF
Markerless visual servoing on unknown objects for humanoid robot platforms
To precisely reach for an object with a humanoid robot, it is of central
importance to have good knowledge of both end-effector, object pose and shape.
In this work we propose a framework for markerless visual servoing on unknown
objects, which is divided in four main parts: I) a least-squares minimization
problem is formulated to find the volume of the object graspable by the robot's
hand using its stereo vision; II) a recursive Bayesian filtering technique,
based on Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) filtering, estimates the 6D pose
(position and orientation) of the robot's end-effector without the use of
markers; III) a nonlinear constrained optimization problem is formulated to
compute the desired graspable pose about the object; IV) an image-based visual
servo control commands the robot's end-effector toward the desired pose. We
demonstrate effectiveness and robustness of our approach with extensive
experiments on the iCub humanoid robot platform, achieving real-time
computation, smooth trajectories and sub-pixel precisions
Numerical Fitting-based Likelihood Calculation to Speed up the Particle Filter
The likelihood calculation of a vast number of particles is the computational
bottleneck for the particle filter in applications where the observation
information is rich. For fast computing the likelihood of particles, a
numerical fitting approach is proposed to construct the Likelihood Probability
Density Function (Li-PDF) by using a comparably small number of so-called
fulcrums. The likelihood of particles is thereby analytically inferred,
explicitly or implicitly, based on the Li-PDF instead of directly computed by
utilizing the observation, which can significantly reduce the computation and
enables real time filtering. The proposed approach guarantees the estimation
quality when an appropriate fitting function and properly distributed fulcrums
are used. The details for construction of the fitting function and fulcrums are
addressed respectively in detail. In particular, to deal with multivariate
fitting, the nonparametric kernel density estimator is presented which is
flexible and convenient for implicit Li-PDF implementation. Simulation
comparison with a variety of existing approaches on a benchmark 1-dimensional
model and multi-dimensional robot localization and visual tracking demonstrate
the validity of our approach.Comment: 42 pages, 17 figures, 4 tables and 1 appendix. This paper is a
draft/preprint of one paper submitted to the IEEE Transaction
A recursive Bayesian filter for landmark-based localisation of a wheelchair robot
An odometry model, represented by a set of nodes (waypoints), is considered to be the infrastructure of any probabilistic-based localisation method. Gaussian and nonparametric filters utilise an odometry model to localise robots, while predictions are made by the filters to actively correct the robot's location and coordination. In this work, we present a recursive Bayesian filter for landmark recognition, which is used to verify the pose of a robotic wheelchair at a certain node location. The Bayesian rule in the proposed method does not incorporate a control action to rectify the robot's pose (passive localisation). The filter approximates the robot's pose based on a feature extraction sensor model. Features are extracted from local environmental regions (landmarks), and each landmark is assigned with a distinct posterior probability (signature), at each node location. A node is verified by the robot when the covariance between the posterior and prior probability falls bellow a threshold. We tested the proposed method in an indoor environment where accurate localisation results have been obtained. The experimentation demonstrated the robustness of the filter to work for passive localisation
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