12,243 research outputs found
Active SLAM for autonomous underwater exploration
Exploration of a complex underwater environment without an a priori map is beyond the state of the art for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Despite several efforts regarding simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and view planning, there is no exploration framework, tailored to underwater vehicles, that faces exploration combining mapping, active localization, and view planning in a unified way. We propose an exploration framework, based on an active SLAM strategy, that combines three main elements: a view planner, an iterative closest point algorithm (ICP)-based pose-graph SLAM algorithm, and an action selection mechanism that makes use of the joint map and state entropy reduction. To demonstrate the benefits of the active SLAM strategy, several tests were conducted with the Girona 500 AUV, both in simulation and in the real world. The article shows how the proposed framework makes it possible to plan exploratory trajectories that keep the vehicle’s uncertainty bounded; thus, creating more consistent maps.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Autonomous 3D Exploration of Large Structures Using an UAV Equipped with a 2D LIDAR
This paper addressed the challenge of exploring large, unknown, and unstructured
industrial environments with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The resulting system combined
well-known components and techniques with a new manoeuvre to use a low-cost 2D laser to measure
a 3D structure. Our approach combined frontier-based exploration, the Lazy Theta* path planner, and
a flyby sampling manoeuvre to create a 3D map of large scenarios. One of the novelties of our system
is that all the algorithms relied on the multi-resolution of the octomap for the world representation.
We used a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HitL) simulation environment to collect accurate measurements
of the capability of the open-source system to run online and on-board the UAV in real-time. Our
approach is compared to different reference heuristics under this simulation environment showing
better performance in regards to the amount of explored space. With the proposed approach, the UAV
is able to explore 93% of the search space under 30 min, generating a path without repetition that
adjusts to the occupied space covering indoor locations, irregular structures, and suspended obstaclesUnión Europea Marie Sklodowska-Curie 64215Unión Europea MULTIDRONE (H2020-ICT-731667)Uniión Europea HYFLIERS (H2020-ICT-779411
Deep Generative Modeling of LiDAR Data
Building models capable of generating structured output is a key challenge
for AI and robotics. While generative models have been explored on many types
of data, little work has been done on synthesizing lidar scans, which play a
key role in robot mapping and localization. In this work, we show that one can
adapt deep generative models for this task by unravelling lidar scans into a 2D
point map. Our approach can generate high quality samples, while simultaneously
learning a meaningful latent representation of the data. We demonstrate
significant improvements against state-of-the-art point cloud generation
methods. Furthermore, we propose a novel data representation that augments the
2D signal with absolute positional information. We show that this helps
robustness to noisy and imputed input; the learned model can recover the
underlying lidar scan from seemingly uninformative dataComment: Presented at IROS 201
Active Image-based Modeling with a Toy Drone
Image-based modeling techniques can now generate photo-realistic 3D models
from images. But it is up to users to provide high quality images with good
coverage and view overlap, which makes the data capturing process tedious and
time consuming. We seek to automate data capturing for image-based modeling.
The core of our system is an iterative linear method to solve the multi-view
stereo (MVS) problem quickly and plan the Next-Best-View (NBV) effectively. Our
fast MVS algorithm enables online model reconstruction and quality assessment
to determine the NBVs on the fly. We test our system with a toy unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) in simulated, indoor and outdoor experiments. Results show that
our system improves the efficiency of data acquisition and ensures the
completeness of the final model.Comment: To be published on International Conference on Robotics and
Automation 2018, Brisbane, Australia. Project Page:
https://huangrui815.github.io/active-image-based-modeling/ The author's
personal page: http://www.sfu.ca/~rha55
Localization in Unstructured Environments: Towards Autonomous Robots in Forests with Delaunay Triangulation
Autonomous harvesting and transportation is a long-term goal of the forest
industry. One of the main challenges is the accurate localization of both
vehicles and trees in a forest. Forests are unstructured environments where it
is difficult to find a group of significant landmarks for current fast
feature-based place recognition algorithms. This paper proposes a novel
approach where local observations are matched to a general tree map using the
Delaunay triangularization as the representation format. Instead of point cloud
based matching methods, we utilize a topology-based method. First, tree trunk
positions are registered at a prior run done by a forest harvester. Second, the
resulting map is Delaunay triangularized. Third, a local submap of the
autonomous robot is registered, triangularized and matched using triangular
similarity maximization to estimate the position of the robot. We test our
method on a dataset accumulated from a forestry site at Lieksa, Finland. A
total length of 2100\,m of harvester path was recorded by an industrial
harvester with a 3D laser scanner and a geolocation unit fixed to the frame.
Our experiments show a 12\,cm s.t.d. in the location accuracy and with
real-time data processing for speeds not exceeding 0.5\,m/s. The accuracy and
speed limit is realistic during forest operations
Streaming Monte Carlo Pose Estimation for Autonomous Object Modeling
This work contributes the optimization of a streaming pose estimation particle filter and its integration into an autonomous object modeling approach. The particle filter is advanced by an additional pose optimization in the particle weighting step. By integrating the method into the autonomous object modeling approach, the repositioning of objects is enabled, which is often necessary in order to acquire complete models. Experiments show that the usage of iterative closest point is too restrictive for general transformations. The used Monte Carlo method enables a robust pose estimation without loss of time and with high precision. Further, it is shown that the overall modeling results are improved clearly
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