Outdoor navigation of mobile robots

AGVs in the manufacturing industry currently constitute the largest application area for mobile robots. Other applications have been gradually emerging, including various transporting tasks in demanding environments, such as mines or harbours. Most of the new potential applications require a free-ranging navigation system, which means that the path of a robot is no longer bound to follow a buried inductive cable. Moreover, changing the route of a robot or taking a new working area into use must be as effective as possible. These requirements set new challenges for the navigation systems of mobile robots. One of the basic methods of building a free ranging navigation system is to combine dead reckoning navigation with the detection of beacons at known locations. This approach is the backbone of the navigation systems in this study. The study describes research and development work in the area of mobile robotics including the applications in forestry, agriculture, mining, and transportation in a factory yard. The focus is on describing navigation sensors and methods for position and heading estimation by fusing dead reckoning and beacon detection information. A Kalman filter is typically used here for sensor fusion. Both cases of using either artificial or natural beacons have been covered. Artificial beacons used in the research and development projects include specially designed flat objects to be detected using a camera as the detection sensor, GPS satellite positioning system, and passive transponders buried in the ground along the route of a robot. The walls in a mine tunnel have been used as natural beacons. In this case, special attention has been paid to map building and using the map for positioning. The main contribution of the study is in describing the structure of a working navigation system, including positioning and position control. The navigation system for mining application, in particular, contains some unique features that provide an easy-to-use procedure for taking new production areas into use and making it possible to drive a heavy mining machine autonomously at speed comparable to an experienced human driver.reviewe

Indoor Localization Solutions for a Marine Industry Augmented Reality Tool

In this report are described means for indoor localization in special, challenging circum-stances in marine industry. The work has been carried out in MARIN project, where a tool based on mobile augmented reality technologies for marine industry is developed. The tool can be used for various inspection and documentation tasks and it is aimed for improving the efficiency in design and construction work by offering the possibility to visualize the newest 3D-CAD model in real environment. Indoor localization is needed to support the system in initialization of the accurate camera pose calculation and auto-matically finding the right location in the 3D-CAD model. The suitability of each indoor localization method to the specific environment and circumstances is evaluated.Siirretty Doriast

Satellite applications to marine geodesy

Potential use of satellites for enhancing positioning capabilities and for marine geodetic contro

Optical Synchronization of Time-of-Flight Cameras

Time-of-Flight (ToF)-Kameras erzeugen Tiefenbilder (3D-Bilder), indem sie Infrarotlicht aussenden und die Zeit messen, bis die Reflexion des Lichtes wieder empfangen wird. Durch den Einsatz mehrerer ToF-Kameras können ihre vergleichsweise geringere Auflösungen überwunden, das Sichtfeld vergrößert und Verdeckungen reduziert werden. Der gleichzeitige Betrieb birgt jedoch die Möglichkeit von Störungen, die zu fehlerhaften Tiefenmessungen führen. Das Problem der gegenseitigen Störungen tritt nicht nur bei Mehrkamerasystemen auf, sondern auch wenn mehrere unabhängige ToF-Kameras eingesetzt werden. In dieser Arbeit wird eine neue optische Synchronisation vorgestellt, die keine zusätzliche Hardware oder Infrastruktur erfordert, um ein Zeitmultiplexverfahren (engl. Time-Division Multiple Access, TDMA) für die Anwendung mit ToF-Kameras zu nutzen, um so die Störungen zu vermeiden. Dies ermöglicht es einer Kamera, den Aufnahmeprozess anderer ToF-Kameras zu erkennen und ihre Aufnahmezeiten schnell zu synchronisieren, um störungsfrei zu arbeiten. Anstatt Kabel zur Synchronisation zu benötigen, wird nur die vorhandene Hardware genutzt, um eine optische Synchronisation zu erreichen. Dazu wird die Firmware der Kamera um das Synchronisationsverfahren erweitert. Die optische Synchronisation wurde konzipiert, implementiert und in einem Versuchsaufbau mit drei ToF-Kameras verifiziert. Die Messungen zeigen die Wirksamkeit der vorgeschlagenen optischen Synchronisation. Während der Experimente wurde die Bildrate durch das zusätzliche Synchronisationsverfahren lediglich um etwa 1 Prozent reduziert.Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras produce depth images (three-dimensional images) by measuring the time between the emission of infrared light and the reception of its reflection. A setup of multiple ToF cameras may be used to overcome their comparatively low resolution, increase the field of view, and reduce occlusion. However, the simultaneous operation of multiple ToF cameras introduces the possibility of interference resulting in erroneous depth measurements. The problem of interference is not only related to a collaborative multicamera setup but also to multiple ToF cameras operating independently. In this work, a new optical synchronization for ToF cameras is presented, requiring no additional hardware or infrastructure to utilize a time-division multiple access (TDMA) scheme to mitigate interference. It effectively enables a camera to sense the acquisition process of other ToF cameras and rapidly synchronizes its acquisition times to operate without interference. Instead of requiring cables to synchronize, only the existing hardware is utilized to enable an optical synchronization. To achieve this, the camera’s firmware is extended with the synchronization procedure. The optical synchronization has been conceptualized, implemented, and verified with an experimental setup deploying three ToF cameras. The measurements show the efficacy of the proposed optical synchronization. During the experiments, the frame rate was reduced by only about 1% due to the synchronization procedure

NASA to Launch Geodetic Satellite, First of Its Type

Properties and instrumentation of new geodetic Explorer satellite GEOS-

Observing Exoplanets with High-Dispersion Coronagraphy. II. Demonstration of an Active Single-Mode Fiber Injection Unit

High-dispersion coronagraphy (HDC) optimally combines high contrast imaging techniques such as adaptive optics/wavefront control plus coronagraphy to high spectral resolution spectroscopy. HDC is a critical pathway towards fully characterizing exoplanet atmospheres across a broad range of masses from giant gaseous planets down to Earth-like planets. In addition to determining the molecular composition of exoplanet atmospheres, HDC also enables Doppler mapping of atmosphere inhomogeneities (temperature, clouds, wind), as well as precise measurements of exoplanet rotational velocities. Here, we demonstrate an innovative concept for injecting the directly-imaged planet light into a single-mode fiber, linking a high-contrast adaptively-corrected coronagraph to a high-resolution spectrograph (diffraction-limited or not). Our laboratory demonstration includes three key milestones: close-to-theoretical injection efficiency, accurate pointing and tracking, on-fiber coherent modulation and speckle nulling of spurious starlight signal coupling into the fiber. Using the extreme modal selectivity of single-mode fibers, we also demonstrated speckle suppression gains that outperform conventional image-based speckle nulling by at least two orders of magnitude.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted by Ap

Proceedings of the GEOS Program Review Meeting. Volume 2 - Geometric and gravimetric investigations with GEOS-1

Geometric and gravimetric studies by various investigators using Explorer 29 /GEOS 1/ dat

Cost-effective robot for steep slope crops monitoring

This project aims to develop a low cost, simple and robust robot able to autonomously monitorcrops using simple sensors. It will be required do develop robotic sub-systems and integrate them with pre-selected mechanical components, electrical interfaces and robot systems (localization, navigation and perception) using ROS, for wine making regions and maize fields

Lunar navigation study, sections 1 through 7 Final report, Jun. 1964 - May 1965

Lunar navigation analysis using passive nongyro, inertial navigation, and radio frequency technolog