An Attitude Determination Method for Comprehensive Inspection Vehicle Based on Track Profile Registration

The attitude of the comprehensive inspection vehicle is one of the important factors that affect the accuracy of the inspection of metro line infrastructure, meanwhile the metro environment restricts the employment of common attitude determination methods. A new method of attitude determination is presented in this paper, which takes the track as reference and employs non-contact measurement to acquire the track profile simulta-neously. By registration of measurement track profile and the standard track profile, the relative position between the vehicle and the track reference can be calculated; and the instantaneous attitude of the vehicle can be determined by the matrix inverse calculation. The performance of the method is verified by an experiment using the road-rail comprehensive inspection vehicle

Design of a self-leveling cam mechanism for a stair climbing wheelchair

This paper presents a new version of Wheelchair.q, a wheelchair with stair climbing ability. The wheelchair is able to climb single obstacles or staircases thanks to a hybrid wheel-leg locomotion unit with a triple-wheels cluster architecture. The new concept presented in this work represents an improvement respect to previous versions. Through a different arrangement of functional elements, the wheelchair performances in terms of stability and regularity during movement on stair have been increased. In particular, attention has been paid to ensure a regular and comfortable motion for the user during stair climbing operation. For this reason, a cam mechanism has been introduced and designed with the aim to compensate the oscillation generated on the wheelchair frame by the locomotion unit rotation. A design methodology for the cam profile is presented. Moreover, a parametric analysis on the cam profile and on the mechanism dimensions has been conducted with the aim to find a cam profile with suitable dimensions and performances in terms of pressure angle and radius of curvature

On the geometry of rolling and interpolation curves on S-n, SOn, and Grassmann manifolds

We present a procedure to generate smooth interpolating curves on submanifolds, which are given in closed form in terms of the coordinates of the embedding space. In contrast to other existing methods, this approach makes the corresponding algorithm eas

Vision-based navigation with reality-based 3D maps

This research is focused on developing vision-based navigation system for positioning and navigation in GPS degraded environments. The main research contributions are summarized as follows: a. A new concept of 3D map, which mainly consists of geo-referenced images, has been introduced. In this research, it provides the map-matching function for vision-based positioning. b. A method of vision-based positioning with use of photogrammetric methodologies has been proposed. It mainly obtains geometric information of the navigation environment from the 3D map through SIFT based image matching and uses photogrammetric space resection to solve the position in 6 degrees of freedom. The algorithms have been tested in an indoor environment. The accuracy has reached around 10 cm. c. A multi-level outlier detection scheme for the vision-based navigation system has been developed. It mainly combines RANSAC with data snooping. The former one deals with high percentage of mismatches, while data snooping removes outliers from different sources in the least squares adjustment for both 3D mapping and positioning solution. d. The deficiency of using RANSAC for outlier detection in image matching and homography estimation has been identified. In this research, a novel method which combines cross correlation with feature based image matching has been proposed. It is able to evaluate the RANSAC homography estimation and improve the image matching performance. The method has been successfully applied to the vision-based navigation solution to find corresponding view from the database and improve the final positioning accuracy. e. The positioning performance of the system has been evaluated through the analysis of mathematical model and experiments. The focus has been on various image matching conditions/methods and their impact on the system performance. The strength and weaknesses of the system have been revealed and investigated. f. The vision-based navigation system has been extended from indoor to outdoor with corresponding changes. Besides camera, it also takes advantage of multiple built-in sensors, including GPS receiver and a digital compass to assist visual methods in outdoor environments. Experiments demonstrate that such system can largely improve the position accuracy in areas where stand-alone GPS is affected and can be easily adopted on mobile devic

Modélisation du profil émotionnel de l'utilisateur dans les interactions parlées Humain-Machine

Les travaux de recherche de la thèse portent sur l'étude et la formalisation des interactions émotionnelles Humain-Machine. Au delà d une détection d'informations paralinguistiques (émotions, disfluences,...) ponctuelles, il s'agit de fournir au système un profil interactionnel et émotionnel de l'utilisateur dynamique, enrichi pendant l interaction. Ce profil permet d adapter les stratégies de réponses de la machine au locuteur, et il peut également servir pour mieux gérer des relations à long terme. Le profil est fondé sur une représentation multi-niveau du traitement des indices émotionnels et interactionnels extraits à partir de l'audio via les outils de détection des émotions du LIMSI. Ainsi, des indices bas niveau (variations de la F0, d'énergie, etc.), fournissent des informations sur le type d'émotion exprimée, la force de l'émotion, le degré de loquacité, etc. Ces éléments à moyen niveau sont exploités dans le système afin de déterminer, au fil des interactions, le profil émotionnel et interactionnel de l'utilisateur. Ce profil est composé de six dimensions : optimisme, extraversion, stabilité émotionnelle, confiance en soi, affinité et domination (basé sur le modèle de personnalité OCEAN et les théories de l interpersonal circumplex). Le comportement social du système est adapté en fonction de ce profil, de l'état de la tâche en cours, et du comportement courant du robot. Les règles de création et de mise à jour du profil émotionnel et interactionnel, ainsi que de sélection automatique du comportement du robot, ont été implémentées en logique floue à l'aide du moteur de décision développé par un partenaire du projet ROMEO. L implémentation du système a été réalisée sur le robot NAO. Afin d étudier les différents éléments de la boucle d interaction émotionnelle entre l utilisateur et le système, nous avons participé à la conception de plusieurs systèmes : système en Magicien d Oz pré-scripté, système semi-automatisé, et système d interaction émotionnelle autonome. Ces systèmes ont permis de recueillir des données en contrôlant plusieurs paramètres d élicitation des émotions au sein d une interaction ; nous présentons les résultats de ces expérimentations, et des protocoles d évaluation de l Interaction Humain-Robot via l utilisation de systèmes à différents degrés d autonomie.Analysing and formalising the emotional aspect of the Human-Machine Interaction is the key to a successful relation. Beyond and isolated paralinguistic detection (emotion, disfluences ), our aim consists in providing the system with a dynamic emotional and interactional profile of the user, which can evolve throughout the interaction. This profile allows for an adaptation of the machine s response strategy, and can deal with long term relationships. A multi-level processing of the emotional and interactional cues extracted from speech (LIMSI emotion detection tools) leads to the constitution of the profile. Low level cues ( F0, energy, etc.), are then interpreted in terms of expressed emotion, strength, or talkativeness of the speaker. These mid-level cues are processed in the system so as to determine, over the interaction sessions, the emotional and interactional profile of the user. The profile is made up of six dimensions: optimism, extroversion, emotional stability, self-confidence, affinity and dominance (based on the OCEAN personality model and the interpersonal circumplex theories). The information derived from this profile could allow for a measurement of the engagement of the speaker. The social behaviour of the system is adapted according to the profile, and the current task state and robot behaviour. Fuzzy logic rules drive the constitution of the profile and the automatic selection of the robotic behaviour. These determinist rules are implemented on a decision engine designed by a partner in the project ROMEO. We implemented the system on the humanoid robot NAO. The overriding issue dealt with in this thesis is the viable interpretation of the paralinguistic cues extracted from speech into a relevant emotional representation of the user. We deem it noteworthy to point out that multimodal cues could reinforce the profile s robustness. So as to analyse the different parts of the emotional interaction loop between the user and the system, we collaborated in the design of several systems with different autonomy degrees: a pre-scripted Wizard-of-Oz system, a semi-automated system, and a fully autonomous system. Using these systems allowed us to collect emotional data in robotic interaction contexts, by controlling several emotion elicitation parameters. This thesis presents the results of these data collections, and offers an evaluation protocol for Human-Robot Interaction through systems with various degrees of autonomy.PARIS11-SCD-Bib. électronique (914719901) / SudocSudocFranceF