Bridging text spotting and SLAM with junction features

Navigating in a previously unknown environment and recognizing naturally occurring text in a scene are two important autonomous capabilities that are typically treated as distinct. However, these two tasks are potentially complementary, (i) scene and pose priors can benefit text spotting, and (ii) the ability to identify and associate text features can benefit navigation accuracy through loop closures. Previous approaches to autonomous text spotting typically require significant training data and are too slow for real-time implementation. In this work, we propose a novel high-level feature descriptor, the “junction”, which is particularly well-suited to text representation and is also fast to compute. We show that we are able to improve SLAM through text spotting on datasets collected with a Google Tango, illustrating how location priors enable improved loop closure with text features.Andrea Bocelli FoundationEast Japan Railway CompanyUnited States. Office of Naval Research (N00014-10-1-0936, N00014-11-1-0688, N00014-13-1-0588)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (IIS-1318392

Virtual Borders: Accurate Definition of a Mobile Robot's Workspace Using Augmented Reality

We address the problem of interactively controlling the workspace of a mobile robot to ensure a human-aware navigation. This is especially of relevance for non-expert users living in human-robot shared spaces, e.g. home environments, since they want to keep the control of their mobile robots, such as vacuum cleaning or companion robots. Therefore, we introduce virtual borders that are respected by a robot while performing its tasks. For this purpose, we employ a RGB-D Google Tango tablet as human-robot interface in combination with an augmented reality application to flexibly define virtual borders. We evaluated our system with 15 non-expert users concerning accuracy, teaching time and correctness and compared the results with other baseline methods based on visual markers and a laser pointer. The experimental results show that our method features an equally high accuracy while reducing the teaching time significantly compared to the baseline methods. This holds for different border lengths, shapes and variations in the teaching process. Finally, we demonstrated the correctness of the approach, i.e. the mobile robot changes its navigational behavior according to the user-defined virtual borders.Comment: Accepted on 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), supplementary video: https://youtu.be/oQO8sQ0JBR

Remembering trauma : HIV/AIDS literature and intergenerational memory : a creative and critical response

The thesis consists of creative and critical sections that explore and discuss the AIDS crisis and the way in which memories and experiences of it can be explored in the present. The creative portion ‘Ricordare’ is a series of vignettes that move from the past to the present, alternating points of view from the narrator, myself, and that of a relative who has died of HIV/AIDS complications. The work explores the stigma attached to the disease, even years later, and the way in which memory is problematised due to this. It represents a quest to understand the past and endeavours to represent the life and suffering of a man whom both family and time has tried to forget. The exegetical portion of the work examines the short stories of Susan Sontag and Andrew Holleran in conjunction with the work ‘Ricordare’. Using the framework postmemory and its evocation of memory and pain in the present, I argue that the literary devices and themes present within these works allow for interactions with experiences of trauma to occur, and provide a framework through which memory can be accessed and mediated in the present. The thesis aims to highlight the essential nature of literatures of trauma, and the importance of writing and reading itself as a means of understanding the past and ensuring experiences of marginalisation, trauma and loss are not forgotten through the distance time provides

Assessment of monthly rain fade in the equatorial region at C & KU-band using measat-3 satellite links

C & Ku-band satellite communication links are the most commonly used for equatorial satellite communication links. Severe rainfall rate in equatorial regions can cause a large rain attenuation in real compared to the prediction. ITU-R P. 618 standards are commonly used to predict satellite rain fade in designing satellite communication network. However, the prediction of ITU-R is still found to be inaccurate hence hinder a reliable operational satellite communication link in equatorial region. This paper aims to provide an accurate insight by assessment of the monthly C & Ku-band rain fade performance by collecting data from commercial earth stations using C band and Ku-band antenna with 11 m and 13 m diameter respectively. The antennas measure the C & Ku-band beacon signal from MEASAT-3 under equatorial rain conditions. The data is collected for one year in 2015. The monthly cumulative distribution function is developed based on the 1-year data. RMSE analysis is made by comparing the monthly measured data of C-band and Ku-band to the ITU-R predictions developed based on ITU-R’s P.618, P.837, P.838 and P.839 standards. The findings show that Ku-band produces an average of 25 RMSE value while the C-band rain attenuation produces an average of 2 RMSE value. Therefore, the ITU-R model still under predicts the rain attenuation in the equatorial region and this call for revisit of the fundamental quantity in determining the rain fade for rain attenuation to be re-evaluated

Remote Sensing for Land Administration 2.0

The reprint “Land Administration 2.0” is an extension of the previous reprint “Remote Sensing for Land Administration”, another Special Issue in Remote Sensing. This reprint unpacks the responsible use and integration of emerging remote sensing techniques into the domain of land administration, including land registration, cadastre, land use planning, land valuation, land taxation, and land development. The title was chosen as “Land Administration 2.0” in reference to both this Special Issue being the second volume on the topic “Land Administration” and the next-generation requirements of land administration including demands for 3D, indoor, underground, real-time, high-accuracy, lower-cost, and interoperable land data and information

EG-ICE 2021 Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering

The 28th EG-ICE International Workshop 2021 brings together international experts working at the interface between advanced computing and modern engineering challenges. Many engineering tasks require open-world resolutions to support multi-actor collaboration, coping with approximate models, providing effective engineer-computer interaction, search in multi-dimensional solution spaces, accommodating uncertainty, including specialist domain knowledge, performing sensor-data interpretation and dealing with incomplete knowledge. While results from computer science provide much initial support for resolution, adaptation is unavoidable and most importantly, feedback from addressing engineering challenges drives fundamental computer-science research. Competence and knowledge transfer goes both ways

Advances in Human-Robot Interaction

Rapid advances in the field of robotics have made it possible to use robots not just in industrial automation but also in entertainment, rehabilitation, and home service. Since robots will likely affect many aspects of human existence, fundamental questions of human-robot interaction must be formulated and, if at all possible, resolved. Some of these questions are addressed in this collection of papers by leading HRI researchers