47,839 research outputs found
RUR53: an Unmanned Ground Vehicle for Navigation, Recognition and Manipulation
This paper proposes RUR53: an Unmanned Ground Vehicle able to autonomously
navigate through, identify, and reach areas of interest; and there recognize,
localize, and manipulate work tools to perform complex manipulation tasks. The
proposed contribution includes a modular software architecture where each
module solves specific sub-tasks and that can be easily enlarged to satisfy new
requirements. Included indoor and outdoor tests demonstrate the capability of
the proposed system to autonomously detect a target object (a panel) and
precisely dock in front of it while avoiding obstacles. They show it can
autonomously recognize and manipulate target work tools (i.e., wrenches and
valve stems) to accomplish complex tasks (i.e., use a wrench to rotate a valve
stem). A specific case study is described where the proposed modular
architecture lets easy switch to a semi-teleoperated mode. The paper
exhaustively describes description of both the hardware and software setup of
RUR53, its performance when tests at the 2017 Mohamed Bin Zayed International
Robotics Challenge, and the lessons we learned when participating at this
competition, where we ranked third in the Gran Challenge in collaboration with
the Czech Technical University in Prague, the University of Pennsylvania, and
the University of Lincoln (UK).Comment: This article has been accepted for publication in Advanced Robotics,
published by Taylor & Franci
Feature-Guided Black-Box Safety Testing of Deep Neural Networks
Despite the improved accuracy of deep neural networks, the discovery of
adversarial examples has raised serious safety concerns. Most existing
approaches for crafting adversarial examples necessitate some knowledge
(architecture, parameters, etc.) of the network at hand. In this paper, we
focus on image classifiers and propose a feature-guided black-box approach to
test the safety of deep neural networks that requires no such knowledge. Our
algorithm employs object detection techniques such as SIFT (Scale Invariant
Feature Transform) to extract features from an image. These features are
converted into a mutable saliency distribution, where high probability is
assigned to pixels that affect the composition of the image with respect to the
human visual system. We formulate the crafting of adversarial examples as a
two-player turn-based stochastic game, where the first player's objective is to
minimise the distance to an adversarial example by manipulating the features,
and the second player can be cooperative, adversarial, or random. We show that,
theoretically, the two-player game can con- verge to the optimal strategy, and
that the optimal strategy represents a globally minimal adversarial image. For
Lipschitz networks, we also identify conditions that provide safety guarantees
that no adversarial examples exist. Using Monte Carlo tree search we gradually
explore the game state space to search for adversarial examples. Our
experiments show that, despite the black-box setting, manipulations guided by a
perception-based saliency distribution are competitive with state-of-the-art
methods that rely on white-box saliency matrices or sophisticated optimization
procedures. Finally, we show how our method can be used to evaluate robustness
of neural networks in safety-critical applications such as traffic sign
recognition in self-driving cars.Comment: 35 pages, 5 tables, 23 figure
A hybrid model for capturing implicit spatial knowledge
This paper proposes a machine learning-based approach for capturing rules embedded in usersâ movement paths while navigating in Virtual Environments (VEs). It is argued that this methodology and the set of navigational rules which it provides should be regarded as a starting point for designing adaptive VEs able to provide navigation support. This is a major contribution of this work, given that the up-to-date adaptivity for navigable VEs has been primarily delivered through the manipulation of navigational cues with little reference to the user model of navigation
Whole-Body MPC for a Dynamically Stable Mobile Manipulator
Autonomous mobile manipulation offers a dual advantage of mobility provided
by a mobile platform and dexterity afforded by the manipulator. In this paper,
we present a whole-body optimal control framework to jointly solve the problems
of manipulation, balancing and interaction as one optimization problem for an
inherently unstable robot. The optimization is performed using a Model
Predictive Control (MPC) approach; the optimal control problem is transcribed
at the end-effector space, treating the position and orientation tasks in the
MPC planner, and skillfully planning for end-effector contact forces. The
proposed formulation evaluates how the control decisions aimed at end-effector
tracking and environment interaction will affect the balance of the system in
the future. We showcase the advantages of the proposed MPC approach on the
example of a ball-balancing robot with a robotic manipulator and validate our
controller in hardware experiments for tasks such as end-effector pose tracking
and door opening
Encoderless Gimbal Calibration of Dynamic Multi-Camera Clusters
Dynamic Camera Clusters (DCCs) are multi-camera systems where one or more
cameras are mounted on actuated mechanisms such as a gimbal. Existing methods
for DCC calibration rely on joint angle measurements to resolve the
time-varying transformation between the dynamic and static camera. This
information is usually provided by motor encoders, however, joint angle
measurements are not always readily available on off-the-shelf mechanisms. In
this paper, we present an encoderless approach for DCC calibration which
simultaneously estimates the kinematic parameters of the transformation chain
as well as the unknown joint angles. We also demonstrate the integration of an
encoderless gimbal mechanism with a state-of-the art VIO algorithm, and show
the extensions required in order to perform simultaneous online estimation of
the joint angles and vehicle localization state. The proposed calibration
approach is validated both in simulation and on a physical DCC composed of a
2-DOF gimbal mounted on a UAV. Finally, we show the experimental results of the
calibrated mechanism integrated into the OKVIS VIO package, and demonstrate
successful online joint angle estimation while maintaining localization
accuracy that is comparable to a standard static multi-camera configuration.Comment: ICRA 201
Secure Position-Based Routing for VANETs
Vehicular communication (VC) systems have the potential to improve road safety and driving comfort. Nevertheless, securing the operation is a prerequisite for deployment. So far, the security of VC applications has mostly drawn the attention of research efforts, while comprehensive solutions to protect the network operation have not been developed. In this paper, we address this problem: we provide a scheme that secures geographic position-based routing, which has been widely accepted as the appropriate one for VC. Moreover, we focus on the scheme currently chosen and evaluated in the Car2Car Communication Consortium (C2C-CC). We integrate security mechanisms to protect the position-based routing functionality and services (beaconing, multi-hop forwarding, and geo-location discovery), and enhance the network robustness. We propose defense mechanisms, relying both on cryptographic primitives, and plausibility checks mitigating false position injection. Our implementation and initial measurements show that the security overhead is low and the proposed scheme deployable
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