31,137 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
Virtual Rephotography: Novel View Prediction Error for 3D Reconstruction
The ultimate goal of many image-based modeling systems is to render
photo-realistic novel views of a scene without visible artifacts. Existing
evaluation metrics and benchmarks focus mainly on the geometric accuracy of the
reconstructed model, which is, however, a poor predictor of visual accuracy.
Furthermore, using only geometric accuracy by itself does not allow evaluating
systems that either lack a geometric scene representation or utilize coarse
proxy geometry. Examples include light field or image-based rendering systems.
We propose a unified evaluation approach based on novel view prediction error
that is able to analyze the visual quality of any method that can render novel
views from input images. One of the key advantages of this approach is that it
does not require ground truth geometry. This dramatically simplifies the
creation of test datasets and benchmarks. It also allows us to evaluate the
quality of an unknown scene during the acquisition and reconstruction process,
which is useful for acquisition planning. We evaluate our approach on a range
of methods including standard geometry-plus-texture pipelines as well as
image-based rendering techniques, compare it to existing geometry-based
benchmarks, and demonstrate its utility for a range of use cases.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, paper was submitted to ACM Transactions on
Graphics for revie
Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System for Ancient Documentary Artefacts
This tutorial summarises our uses of reflectance transformation imaging in archaeological contexts. It introduces the UK AHRC funded project reflectance Transformation Imaging for Anciant Documentary Artefacts and demonstrates imaging methodologies
Real-time High Resolution Fusion of Depth Maps on GPU
A system for live high quality surface reconstruction using a single moving
depth camera on a commodity hardware is presented. High accuracy and real-time
frame rate is achieved by utilizing graphics hardware computing capabilities
via OpenCL and by using sparse data structure for volumetric surface
representation. Depth sensor pose is estimated by combining serial texture
registration algorithm with iterative closest points algorithm (ICP) aligning
obtained depth map to the estimated scene model. Aligned surface is then fused
into the scene. Kalman filter is used to improve fusion quality. Truncated
signed distance function (TSDF) stored as block-based sparse buffer is used to
represent surface. Use of sparse data structure greatly increases accuracy of
scanned surfaces and maximum scanning area. Traditional GPU implementation of
volumetric rendering and fusion algorithms were modified to exploit sparsity to
achieve desired performance. Incorporation of texture registration for sensor
pose estimation and Kalman filter for measurement integration improved accuracy
and robustness of scanning process
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