8,116 research outputs found
Fast, Accurate Thin-Structure Obstacle Detection for Autonomous Mobile Robots
Safety is paramount for mobile robotic platforms such as self-driving cars
and unmanned aerial vehicles. This work is devoted to a task that is
indispensable for safety yet was largely overlooked in the past -- detecting
obstacles that are of very thin structures, such as wires, cables and tree
branches. This is a challenging problem, as thin objects can be problematic for
active sensors such as lidar and sonar and even for stereo cameras. In this
work, we propose to use video sequences for thin obstacle detection. We
represent obstacles with edges in the video frames, and reconstruct them in 3D
using efficient edge-based visual odometry techniques. We provide both a
monocular camera solution and a stereo camera solution. The former incorporates
Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) data to solve scale ambiguity, while the latter
enjoys a novel, purely vision-based solution. Experiments demonstrated that the
proposed methods are fast and able to detect thin obstacles robustly and
accurately under various conditions.Comment: Appeared at IEEE CVPR 2017 Workshop on Embedded Visio
Agile Autonomous Driving using End-to-End Deep Imitation Learning
We present an end-to-end imitation learning system for agile, off-road
autonomous driving using only low-cost sensors. By imitating a model predictive
controller equipped with advanced sensors, we train a deep neural network
control policy to map raw, high-dimensional observations to continuous steering
and throttle commands. Compared with recent approaches to similar tasks, our
method requires neither state estimation nor on-the-fly planning to navigate
the vehicle. Our approach relies on, and experimentally validates, recent
imitation learning theory. Empirically, we show that policies trained with
online imitation learning overcome well-known challenges related to covariate
shift and generalize better than policies trained with batch imitation
learning. Built on these insights, our autonomous driving system demonstrates
successful high-speed off-road driving, matching the state-of-the-art
performance.Comment: 13 pages, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 201
Keyframe-based monocular SLAM: design, survey, and future directions
Extensive research in the field of monocular SLAM for the past fifteen years
has yielded workable systems that found their way into various applications in
robotics and augmented reality. Although filter-based monocular SLAM systems
were common at some time, the more efficient keyframe-based solutions are
becoming the de facto methodology for building a monocular SLAM system. The
objective of this paper is threefold: first, the paper serves as a guideline
for people seeking to design their own monocular SLAM according to specific
environmental constraints. Second, it presents a survey that covers the various
keyframe-based monocular SLAM systems in the literature, detailing the
components of their implementation, and critically assessing the specific
strategies made in each proposed solution. Third, the paper provides insight
into the direction of future research in this field, to address the major
limitations still facing monocular SLAM; namely, in the issues of illumination
changes, initialization, highly dynamic motion, poorly textured scenes,
repetitive textures, map maintenance, and failure recovery
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