11,410 research outputs found
An Underwater SLAM System using Sonar, Visual, Inertial, and Depth Sensor
This paper presents a novel tightly-coupled keyframe-based Simultaneous
Localization and Mapping (SLAM) system with loop-closing and relocalization
capabilities targeted for the underwater domain. Our previous work, SVIn,
augmented the state-of-the-art visual-inertial state estimation package OKVIS
to accommodate acoustic data from sonar in a non-linear optimization-based
framework. This paper addresses drift and loss of localization -- one of the
main problems affecting other packages in underwater domain -- by providing the
following main contributions: a robust initialization method to refine scale
using depth measurements, a fast preprocessing step to enhance the image
quality, and a real-time loop-closing and relocalization method using bag of
words (BoW). An additional contribution is the addition of depth measurements
from a pressure sensor to the tightly-coupled optimization formulation.
Experimental results on datasets collected with a custom-made underwater sensor
suite and an autonomous underwater vehicle from challenging underwater
environments with poor visibility demonstrate performance never achieved before
in terms of accuracy and robustness
Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)consists in the concurrent
construction of a model of the environment (the map), and the estimation of the
state of the robot moving within it. The SLAM community has made astonishing
progress over the last 30 years, enabling large-scale real-world applications,
and witnessing a steady transition of this technology to industry. We survey
the current state of SLAM. We start by presenting what is now the de-facto
standard formulation for SLAM. We then review related work, covering a broad
set of topics including robustness and scalability in long-term mapping, metric
and semantic representations for mapping, theoretical performance guarantees,
active SLAM and exploration, and other new frontiers. This paper simultaneously
serves as a position paper and tutorial to those who are users of SLAM. By
looking at the published research with a critical eye, we delineate open
challenges and new research issues, that still deserve careful scientific
investigation. The paper also contains the authors' take on two questions that
often animate discussions during robotics conferences: Do robots need SLAM? and
Is SLAM solved
ProSLAM: Graph SLAM from a Programmer's Perspective
In this paper we present ProSLAM, a lightweight stereo visual SLAM system
designed with simplicity in mind. Our work stems from the experience gathered
by the authors while teaching SLAM to students and aims at providing a highly
modular system that can be easily implemented and understood. Rather than
focusing on the well known mathematical aspects of Stereo Visual SLAM, in this
work we highlight the data structures and the algorithmic aspects that one
needs to tackle during the design of such a system. We implemented ProSLAM
using the C++ programming language in combination with a minimal set of well
known used external libraries. In addition to an open source implementation, we
provide several code snippets that address the core aspects of our approach
directly in this paper. The results of a thorough validation performed on
standard benchmark datasets show that our approach achieves accuracy comparable
to state of the art methods, while requiring substantially less computational
resources.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
Pop-up SLAM: Semantic Monocular Plane SLAM for Low-texture Environments
Existing simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms are not
robust in challenging low-texture environments because there are only few
salient features. The resulting sparse or semi-dense map also conveys little
information for motion planning. Though some work utilize plane or scene layout
for dense map regularization, they require decent state estimation from other
sources. In this paper, we propose real-time monocular plane SLAM to
demonstrate that scene understanding could improve both state estimation and
dense mapping especially in low-texture environments. The plane measurements
come from a pop-up 3D plane model applied to each single image. We also combine
planes with point based SLAM to improve robustness. On a public TUM dataset,
our algorithm generates a dense semantic 3D model with pixel depth error of 6.2
cm while existing SLAM algorithms fail. On a 60 m long dataset with loops, our
method creates a much better 3D model with state estimation error of 0.67%.Comment: International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
201
Feedback Control as a Framework for Understanding Tradeoffs in Biology
Control theory arose from a need to control synthetic systems. From
regulating steam engines to tuning radios to devices capable of autonomous
movement, it provided a formal mathematical basis for understanding the role of
feedback in the stability (or change) of dynamical systems. It provides a
framework for understanding any system with feedback regulation, including
biological ones such as regulatory gene networks, cellular metabolic systems,
sensorimotor dynamics of moving animals, and even ecological or evolutionary
dynamics of organisms and populations. Here we focus on four case studies of
the sensorimotor dynamics of animals, each of which involves the application of
principles from control theory to probe stability and feedback in an organism's
response to perturbations. We use examples from aquatic (electric fish station
keeping and jamming avoidance), terrestrial (cockroach wall following) and
aerial environments (flight control in moths) to highlight how one can use
control theory to understand how feedback mechanisms interact with the physical
dynamics of animals to determine their stability and response to sensory inputs
and perturbations. Each case study is cast as a control problem with sensory
input, neural processing, and motor dynamics, the output of which feeds back to
the sensory inputs. Collectively, the interaction of these systems in a closed
loop determines the behavior of the entire system.Comment: Submitted to Integr Comp Bio
Optical techniques for 3D surface reconstruction in computer-assisted laparoscopic surgery
One of the main challenges for computer-assisted surgery (CAS) is to determine the intra-opera- tive morphology and motion of soft-tissues. This information is prerequisite to the registration of multi-modal patient-specific data for enhancing the surgeon’s navigation capabilites by observ- ing beyond exposed tissue surfaces and for providing intelligent control of robotic-assisted in- struments. In minimally invasive surgery (MIS), optical techniques are an increasingly attractive approach for in vivo 3D reconstruction of the soft-tissue surface geometry. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art methods for optical intra-operative 3D reconstruction in laparoscopic surgery and discusses the technical challenges and future perspectives towards clinical translation. With the recent paradigm shift of surgical practice towards MIS and new developments in 3D opti- cal imaging, this is a timely discussion about technologies that could facilitate complex CAS procedures in dynamic and deformable anatomical regions
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