Unsupervised Learning for Subterranean Junction Recognition Based on 2D Point Cloud

This article proposes a novel unsupervised learning framework for detecting the number of tunnel junctions in subterranean environments based on acquired 2D point clouds. The implementation of the framework provides valuable information for high level mission planners to navigate an aerial platform in unknown areas or robot homing missions. The framework utilizes spectral clustering, which is capable of uncovering hidden structures from connected data points lying on non-linear manifolds. The spectral clustering algorithm computes a spectral embedding of the original 2D point cloud by utilizing the eigen decomposition of a matrix that is derived from the pairwise similarities of these points. We validate the developed framework using multiple data-sets, collected from multiple realistic simulations, as well as from real flights in underground environments, demonstrating the performance and merits of the proposed methodology

Unsupervised Learning for Subterranean Junction Recognition Based on 2D Point Cloud

This article proposes a novel unsupervised learning framework for detecting the number of tunnel junctions in subterranean environments based on acquired 2D point clouds. The implementation of the framework provides valuable information for high level mission planners to navigate an aerial platform in unknown areas or robot homing missions. The framework utilizes spectral clustering, which is capable of uncovering hidden structures from connected data points lying on non-linear manifolds. The spectral clustering algorithm computes a spectral embedding of the original 2D point cloud by utilizing the eigen decomposition of a matrix that is derived from the pairwise similarities of these points. We validate the developed framework using multiple data-sets, collected from multiple realistic simulations, as well as from real flights in underground environments, demonstrating the performance and merits of the proposed methodology

Vehicle Localization Based on Visual Lane Marking and Topological Map Matching

International audienceAccurate and reliable localization is crucial to autonomous vehicle navigation and driver assistance systems. This paper presents a novel approach for online vehicle localization in a digital map. Two distinct map matching algorithms are proposed: i) Iterative Closest Point (ICP) based lane level map matching is performed with visual lane tracker and grid map ii) decision-rule based approach is used to perform topological map matching. Results of both the map matching algorithms are fused together with GPS and dead reckoning using Extended Kalman Filter to estimate vehicle's pose relative to the map. The proposed approach has been validated on real life conditions on an equipped vehicle. Detailed analysis of the experimental results show improved localization using the two aforementioned map matching algorithm