288 research outputs found

    A novel score-based LiDAR point cloud degradation analysis method

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    Assisted and automated driving systems critically depend on high-quality sensor data to build accurate situational awareness. A key aspect of maintaining this quality is the ability to quantify the perception sensor degradation through detecting dissimilarities in sensor data. Amongst various perception sensors, LiDAR technology has gained traction, due to a significant reduction of its cost and the benefits of providing a detailed 3D understanding of the environment (point cloud). However, measuring the dissimilarity between LiDAR point clouds, especially in the context of data degradation due to noise factors, has been underexplored in the literature. A comprehensive point cloud dissimilarity score metric is essential for detecting severe sensor degradation, which could lead to hazardous events due to the compromised performance of perception tasks. Additionally, this score metric plays a central role in the use of virtual sensor models, where a thorough validation of sensor models is required for accuracy and reliability. To address this gap, this paper introduces a novel framework that evaluates point clouds dissimilarity based on high-level geometries. Contrasting with traditional methods like the computationally expensive Hausdorff metric which involves correspondence-search algorithms, our framework uses a tailored downsampling method to ensure efficiency. This is followed by condensing point clouds into shape signatures which results in efficient comparison. In addition to controlled simulations, our framework demonstrated repeatability, robustness, and consistency, in highly noisy real-world scenarios, surpassing traditional methods

    Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion. Collected Works, Volume 5

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    This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well

    Development of Bridge Information Model (BrIM) for digital twinning and management using TLS technology

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    In the current modern era of information and technology, the concept of Building Information Model (BIM), has made revolutionary changes in different aspects of engineering design, construction, and management of infrastructure assets, especially bridges. In the field of bridge engineering, Bridge Information Model (BrIM), as a specific form of BIM, includes digital twining of the physical asset associated with geometrical inspections and non-geometrical data, which has eliminated the use of traditional paper-based documentation and hand-written reports, enabling professionals and managers to operate more efficiently and effectively. However, concerns remain about the quality of the acquired inspection data and utilizing BrIM information for remedial decisions in a reliable Bridge Management System (BMS) which are still reliant on the knowledge and experience of the involved inspectors, or asset manager, and are susceptible to a certain degree of subjectivity. Therefore, this research study aims not only to introduce the valuable benefits of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) as a precise, rapid, and qualitative inspection method, but also to serve a novel sliced-based approach for bridge geometric Computer-Aided Design (CAD) model extraction using TLS-based point cloud, and to contribute to BrIM development. Moreover, this study presents a comprehensive methodology for incorporating generated BrIM in a redeveloped element-based condition assessment model while integrating a Decision Support System (DSS) to propose an innovative BMS. This methodology was further implemented in a designed software plugin and validated by a real case study on the Werrington Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge in New South Wales, Australia. The finding of this research confirms the reliability of the TLS-derived 3D model in terms of quality of acquired data and accuracy of the proposed novel slice-based method, as well as BrIM implementation, and integration of the proposed BMS into the developed BrIM. Furthermore, the results of this study showed that the proposed integrated model addresses the subjective nature of decision-making by conducting a risk assessment and utilising structured decision-making tools for priority ranking of remedial actions. The findings demonstrated acceptable agreement in utilizing the proposed BMS for priority ranking of structural elements that require more attention, as well as efficient optimisation of remedial actions to preserve bridge health and safety

    On the motion planning & control of nonlinear robotic systems

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    In the last decades, we saw a soaring interest in autonomous robots boosted not only by academia and industry, but also by the ever in- creasing demand from civil users. As a matter of fact, autonomous robots are fast spreading in all aspects of human life, we can see them clean houses, navigate through city traffic, or harvest fruits and vegetables. Almost all commercial drones already exhibit unprecedented and sophisticated skills which makes them suitable for these applications, such as obstacle avoidance, simultaneous localisation and mapping, path planning, visual-inertial odometry, and object tracking. The major limitations of such robotic platforms lie in the limited payload that can carry, in their costs, and in the limited autonomy due to finite battery capability. For this reason researchers start to develop new algorithms able to run even on resource constrained platforms both in terms of computation capabilities and limited types of endowed sensors, focusing especially on very cheap sensors and hardware. The possibility to use a limited number of sensors allowed to scale a lot the UAVs size, while the implementation of new efficient algorithms, performing the same task in lower time, allows for lower autonomy. However, the developed robots are not mature enough to completely operate autonomously without human supervision due to still too big dimensions (especially for aerial vehicles), which make these platforms unsafe for humans, and the high probability of numerical, and decision, errors that robots may make. In this perspective, this thesis aims to review and improve the current state-of-the-art solutions for autonomous navigation from a purely practical point of view. In particular, we deeply focused on the problems of robot control, trajectory planning, environments exploration, and obstacle avoidance

    Pre-Trained Driving in Localized Surroundings with Semantic Radar Information and Machine Learning

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    Entlang der Signalverarbeitungskette von Radar Detektionen bis zur Fahrzeugansteuerung, diskutiert diese Arbeit eine semantischen Radar Segmentierung, einen darauf aufbauenden Radar SLAM, sowie eine im Verbund realisierte autonome Parkfunktion. Die Radarsegmentierung der (statischen) Umgebung wird durch ein Radar-spezifisches neuronales Netzwerk RadarNet erreicht. Diese Segmentierung ermöglicht die Entwicklung des semantischen Radar Graph-SLAM SERALOC. Auf der Grundlage der semantischen Radar SLAM Karte wird eine beispielhafte autonome Parkfunktionalität in einem realen Versuchsträger umgesetzt. Entlang eines aufgezeichneten Referenzfades parkt die Funktion ausschließlich auf Basis der Radar Wahrnehmung mit bisher unerreichter Positioniergenauigkeit. Im ersten Schritt wird ein Datensatz von 8.2 · 10^6 punktweise semantisch gelabelten Radarpunktwolken über eine Strecke von 2507.35m generiert. Es sind keine vergleichbaren Datensätze dieser Annotationsebene und Radarspezifikation öffentlich verfügbar. Das überwachte Training der semantischen Segmentierung RadarNet erreicht 28.97% mIoU auf sechs Klassen. Außerdem wird ein automatisiertes Radar-Labeling-Framework SeRaLF vorgestellt, welches das Radarlabeling multimodal mittels Referenzkameras und LiDAR unterstützt. Für die kohärente Kartierung wird ein Radarsignal-Vorfilter auf der Grundlage einer Aktivierungskarte entworfen, welcher Rauschen und andere dynamische Mehrwegreflektionen unterdrückt. Ein speziell für Radar angepasstes Graph-SLAM-Frontend mit Radar-Odometrie Kanten zwischen Teil-Karten und semantisch separater NDT Registrierung setzt die vorgefilterten semantischen Radarscans zu einer konsistenten metrischen Karte zusammen. Die Kartierungsgenauigkeit und die Datenassoziation werden somit erhöht und der erste semantische Radar Graph-SLAM für beliebige statische Umgebungen realisiert. Integriert in ein reales Testfahrzeug, wird das Zusammenspiel der live RadarNet Segmentierung und des semantischen Radar Graph-SLAM anhand einer rein Radar-basierten autonomen Parkfunktionalität evaluiert. Im Durchschnitt über 42 autonome Parkmanöver (∅3.73 km/h) bei durchschnittlicher Manöverlänge von ∅172.75m wird ein Median absoluter Posenfehler von 0.235m und End-Posenfehler von 0.2443m erreicht, der vergleichbare Radar-Lokalisierungsergebnisse um ≈ 50% übertrifft. Die Kartengenauigkeit von veränderlichen, neukartierten Orten über eine Kartierungsdistanz von ∅165m ergibt eine ≈ 56%-ige Kartenkonsistenz bei einer Abweichung von ∅0.163m. Für das autonome Parken wurde ein gegebener Trajektorienplaner und Regleransatz verwendet

    Robust Lidar SLAM Under Adverse Weather

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    LiDAR Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technologies, which are the foundational technology of autonomous driving, have attracted large interest recently and been a significant research field. The performance of existing State-Of-The-Art LiDAR SLAM systems has been proven to produce accurate odometry estimation on autonomous driving datasets. These datasets are usually collected by vehicles equipped with various sensors under favorable weather conditions. However, challenging weather conditions such as rain and snow are still great obstacles because the rainfalls or snowflakes which are not static will cause noisy points for LiDAR perception and the assumption that the surrounding environment is static will be broken. Specifically, adverse weather will introduce noisy points which have physical structures and could be detected by LiDAR. Meanwhile, these noisy points would tightly surround the LiDAR and block other objects. This will lead to serious deficiencies in environmental structures and introduce more difficulties to pose estimation and loop closure, finally increasing the error of pose estimation and reducing the accuracy of LiDAR SLAM algorithms. Considering that noisy points usually lack the inherent structures exhibited in clean points, we propose a novel denoising framework for point clouds generated from lidar sensors that eliminate stochastic noisy points in a down sampling and super resolution manner to address this issue. Specifically, we first investigate to which degree the performance of the State-Of-The-Art lidar SLAM approaches will decrease when exposed to adverse weather conditions and then implement the denoising framework by combining the DS module with SR module which is based on the U-Net and trained under certain super-solution datasets. The accuracy and robustness of our framework were validated on the Oxford RobotCar dataset and the Canadian Adverse Driving Conditions dataset

    Advanced Characterization and On-Line Process Monitoring of Additively Manufactured Materials and Components

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    This reprint is concerned with the microstructural characterization and the defect analysis of metallic additively manufactured (AM) materials and parts. Special attention is paid to the determination of residual stress in such parts and to online monitoring techniques devised to predict the appearance of defects. Finally, several non-destructive testing techniques are employed to assess the quality of AM materials and parts

    Robotics Approach in Mobile Laser Scanning Generation of Georeferenced Point-based Forest Models

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    A mobile laser scanning (MLS) system equipped with a lidar, inertial navigation system and satellite positioning can be used to reconstruct georeferenced point-based models of the surveyed environments. Ideal reconstruction requires accurate trajectories that are challenging to obtain in forests. Satellite signals are heavily degraded under the forest canopy, while lidar-based positioning is often inefficient due to the forest's unstructured and complex nature. Most forestry-related solutions compute or improve the trajectory in post-processing, focusing on accuracy rather than the possibility of real-time operation. On the other hand, real-time solutions exist, but they are primarily tested and evaluated in urban environments, and the forest's effect on them is less known. In this study, high-quality, real-time point-based forest model generation was considered by applying techniques from the field of robotics. Forest data were collected with an MLS system mounted 1) on a stick carried by a person and 2) mounted on a forest harvester while performing thinning operations. The system's trajectory was computed using lidar-inertial-based smoothing and mapping algorithms with real-time limitations. In addition, satellite measurements were either fused into the smoothing algorithm contributing to the trajectory estimation or were used to georeference the trajectory in a post-processing manner. Collecting reliable reference trajectories is difficult in forests. Therefore, this study mainly contains qualitative and relative evaluation. The results indicate that real-time and onboard processing is feasible for forest data with adequate accuracy. State-of-the-art edge and planar feature-based lidar odometry was the most accurate but could not fully maintain real-time operation. On the other hand, the normal distributions transform-based odometry can maintain fast and constant computation with slightly lower accuracy. Fusing the satellite positioning for the mapping reduced the internal integrity of the reconstructed point cloud models, and it is suggested to use it for post-processed georeferencing instead

    Enhancing RGB-D SLAM Using Deep Learning

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    Aiding the conservation of two wooden Buddhist sculptures with 3D imaging and spectroscopic techniques

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    The conservation of Buddhist sculptures that were transferred to Europe at some point during their lifetime raises numerous questions: while these objects historically served a religious, devotional purpose, many of them currently belong to museums or private collections, where they are detached from their original context and often adapted to western taste. A scientific study was carried out to address questions from Museo d'Arte Orientale of Turin curators in terms of whether these artifacts might be forgeries or replicas, and how they may have transformed over time. Several analytical techniques were used for materials identification and to study the production technique, ultimately aiming to discriminate the original materials from those added within later interventions
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