Detail Enhancing Denoising of Digitized 3D Models from a Mobile Scanning System

The acquisition process of digitizing a large-scale environment produces an enormous amount of raw geometry data. This data is corrupted by system noise, which leads to 3D surfaces that are not smooth and details that are distorted. Any scanning system has noise associate with the scanning hardware, both digital quantization errors and measurement inaccuracies, but a mobile scanning system has additional system noise introduced by the pose estimation of the hardware during data acquisition. The combined system noise generates data that is not handled well by existing noise reduction and smoothing techniques. This research is focused on enhancing the 3D models acquired by mobile scanning systems used to digitize large-scale environments. These digitization systems combine a variety of sensors – including laser range scanners, video cameras, and pose estimation hardware – on a mobile platform for the quick acquisition of 3D models of real world environments. The data acquired by such systems are extremely noisy, often with significant details being on the same order of magnitude as the system noise. By utilizing a unique 3D signal analysis tool, a denoising algorithm was developed that identifies regions of detail and enhances their geometry, while removing the effects of noise on the overall model. The developed algorithm can be useful for a variety of digitized 3D models, not just those involving mobile scanning systems. The challenges faced in this study were the automatic processing needs of the enhancement algorithm, and the need to fill a hole in the area of 3D model analysis in order to reduce the effect of system noise on the 3D models. In this context, our main contributions are the automation and integration of a data enhancement method not well known to the computer vision community, and the development of a novel 3D signal decomposition and analysis tool. The new technologies featured in this document are intuitive extensions of existing methods to new dimensionality and applications. The totality of the research has been applied towards detail enhancing denoising of scanned data from a mobile range scanning system, and results from both synthetic and real models are presented

Extrinisic Calibration of a Camera-Arm System Through Rotation Identification

Determining extrinsic calibration parameters is a necessity in any robotic system composed of actuators and cameras. Once a system is outside the lab environment, parameters must be determined without relying on outside artifacts such as calibration targets. We propose a method that relies on structured motion of an observed arm to recover extrinsic calibration parameters. Our method combines known arm kinematics with observations of conics in the image plane to calculate maximum-likelihood estimates for calibration extrinsics. This method is validated in simulation and tested against a real-world model, yielding results consistent with ruler-based estimates. Our method shows promise for estimating the pose of a camera relative to an articulated arm's end effector without requiring tedious measurements or external artifacts. Index Terms: robotics, hand-eye problem, self-calibration, structure from motio

Analysis of infrared polarisation signatures for vehicle detection

Thermal radiation emitted from objects within a scene tends to be partially polarised in a direction parallel to the surface normal, to an extent governed by properties of the surface material. This thesis investigates whether vehicle detection algorithms can be improved by the additional measurement of polarisation state as well as intensity in the long wave infrared. Knowledge about the polarimetric properties of scenes guides the development of histogram based and cluster based descriptors which are used in a traditional classification framework. The best performing histogram based method, the Polarimetric Histogram, which forms a descriptor based on the polarimetric vehicle signature is shown to outperform the standard Histogram of Oriented Gradients descriptor which uses intensity imagery alone. These descriptors then lead to a novel clustering algorithm which, at a false positive rate of 10−2 is shown to improve upon the Polarimetric Histogram descriptor, increasing the true positive rate from 0.19 to 0.63. In addition, a multi-modal detection framework which combines thermal intensity hotspot and polarimetric hotspot detections with a local motion detector is presented. Through the combination of these detectors, the false positive rate is shown to be reduced when compared to the result of individual detectors in isolation

Vision-based navigation for autonomous underwater vehicles

This thesis investigates the use of vision sensors in Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) navigation, which is typically performed using a combination of dead-reckoning and external acoustic positioning systems. Traditional dead-reckoning sensors such els Doppler Velocity Logs (DVLs) or inertial systems are expensive and result in drifting trajectory estimates. Acoustic positioning systems can be used to correct dead-reckoning drift, however they are time consuming to deploy and have a limited range of operation. Occlusion and multipath problems may also occur when a vehicle operates near the seafloor, particularly in environments such as reefs, ridges and canyons, which are the focus of many AUV applications. Vision-based navigation approaches have the potential to improve the availability and performance of AUVs in a wide range of applications. Visual odometry may replace expensive dead-reckoning sensors in small and low-cost vehicles. Using onboard cameras to correct dead-reckoning drift will allow AUVs to navigate accurately over long distances, without the limitations of acoustic positioning systems. This thesis contains three principal contributions. The first is an algorithm to estimate the trajectory of a vehicle by fusing observations from sonar and monocular vision sensors. The second is a stereo-vision motion estimation approach that can be used on its own to provide odometry estimation, or fused with additional sensors in a Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM) framework. The third is an efficient SLAM algorithm that uses visual observations to correct drifting trajectory estimates. Results of this work are presented in simulation and using data collected during several deployments of underwater vehicles in coral reef environments. Trajectory estimation is demonstrated for short transects using the sonar and vision fusion and stereo-vision approaches. Navigation over several kilometres is demonstrated using the SLAM algorithm, where stereo-vision is shown to improve the estimated trajectory produced by a DVL

Event-Based Algorithms For Geometric Computer Vision

Event cameras are novel bio-inspired sensors which mimic the function of the human retina. Rather than directly capturing intensities to form synchronous images as in traditional cameras, event cameras asynchronously detect changes in log image intensity. When such a change is detected at a given pixel, the change is immediately sent to the host computer, where each event consists of the x,y pixel position of the change, a timestamp, accurate to tens of microseconds, and a polarity, indicating whether the pixel got brighter or darker. These cameras provide a number of useful benefits over traditional cameras, including the ability to track extremely fast motions, high dynamic range, and low power consumption. However, with a new sensing modality comes the need to develop novel algorithms. As these cameras do not capture photometric intensities, novel loss functions must be developed to replace the photoconsistency assumption which serves as the backbone of many classical computer vision algorithms. In addition, the relative novelty of these sensors means that there does not exist the wealth of data available for traditional images with which we can train learning based methods such as deep neural networks. In this work, we address both of these issues with two foundational principles. First, we show that the motion blur induced when the events are projected into the 2D image plane can be used as a suitable substitute for the classical photometric loss function. Second, we develop self-supervised learning methods which allow us to train convolutional neural networks to estimate motion without any labeled training data. We apply these principles to solve classical perception problems such as feature tracking, visual inertial odometry, optical flow and stereo depth estimation, as well as recognition tasks such as object detection and human pose estimation. We show that these solutions are able to utilize the benefits of event cameras, allowing us to operate in fast moving scenes with challenging lighting which would be incredibly difficult for traditional cameras

Uncertainty Minimization in Robotic 3D Mapping Systems Operating in Dynamic Large-Scale Environments

This dissertation research is motivated by the potential and promise of 3D sensing technologies in safety and security applications. With specific focus on unmanned robotic mapping to aid clean-up of hazardous environments, under-vehicle inspection, automatic runway/pavement inspection and modeling of urban environments, we develop modular, multi-sensor, multi-modality robotic 3D imaging prototypes using localization/navigation hardware, laser range scanners and video cameras. While deploying our multi-modality complementary approach to pose and structure recovery in dynamic real-world operating conditions, we observe several data fusion issues that state-of-the-art methodologies are not able to handle. Different bounds on the noise model of heterogeneous sensors, the dynamism of the operating conditions and the interaction of the sensing mechanisms with the environment introduce situations where sensors can intermittently degenerate to accuracy levels lower than their design specification. This observation necessitates the derivation of methods to integrate multi-sensor data considering sensor conflict, performance degradation and potential failure during operation. Our work in this dissertation contributes the derivation of a fault-diagnosis framework inspired by information complexity theory to the data fusion literature. We implement the framework as opportunistic sensing intelligence that is able to evolve a belief policy on the sensors within the multi-agent 3D mapping systems to survive and counter concerns of failure in challenging operating conditions. The implementation of the information-theoretic framework, in addition to eliminating failed/non-functional sensors and avoiding catastrophic fusion, is able to minimize uncertainty during autonomous operation by adaptively deciding to fuse or choose believable sensors. We demonstrate our framework through experiments in multi-sensor robot state localization in large scale dynamic environments and vision-based 3D inference. Our modular hardware and software design of robotic imaging prototypes along with the opportunistic sensing intelligence provides significant improvements towards autonomous accurate photo-realistic 3D mapping and remote visualization of scenes for the motivating applications

Digital Multispectral Map Reconstruction Using Aerial Imagery

Advances made in the computer vision field allowed for the establishment of faster and more accurate photogrammetry techniques. Structure from Motion(SfM) is a photogrammetric technique focused on the digital spatial reconstruction of objects based on a sequence of images. The benefit of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms allowed the ability to acquire high fidelity imagery intended for environmental mapping. This way, UAV platforms became a heavily adopted method of survey. The combination of SfM and the recent improvements of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms granted greater flexibility and applicability, opening a new path for a new remote sensing technique aimed to replace more traditional and laborious approaches often associated with high monetary costs. The continued development of digital reconstruction software and advances in the field of computer processing allowed for a more affordable and higher resolution solution when compared to the traditional methods. The present work proposed a digital reconstruction algorithm based on images taken by a UAV platform inspired by the work made available by the open-source project OpenDroneMap. The aerial images are inserted in the computer vision program and several operations are applied to them, including detection and matching of features, point cloud reconstruction, meshing, and texturing, which results in a final product that represents the surveyed site. Additionally, from the study, it was concluded that an implementation which addresses the processing of thermal images was not integrated in the works of OpenDroneMap. By this point, their work was altered to allow for the reconstruction of thermal maps without sacrificing the resolution of the final model. Standard methods to process thermal images required a larger image footprint (or area of ground capture in a frame), the reason for this is that these types of images lack the presence of invariable features and by increasing the image’s footprint, the number of features present in each frame also rises. However, this method of image capture results in a lower resolution of the final product. The algorithm was developed using open-source libraries. In order to validate the obtained results, this model was compared to data obtained from commercial products, like Pix4D. Furthermore, due to circumstances brought about by the current pandemic, it was not possible to conduct a field study for the comparison and assessment of our results, as such the validation of the models was performed by verifying if the geographic location of the model was performed correctly and by visually assessing the generated maps.Avanços no campo da visão computacional permitiu o desenvolvimento de algoritmos mais eficientes de fotogrametria. Structure from Motion (SfM) é uma técnica de fotogrametria que tem como objetivo a reconstrução digital de objectos no espaço derivados de uma sequência de imagens. A característica importante que os Veículos Aérios não-tripulados (UAV) conseguem fornecer, a nível de mapeamento, é a sua capacidade de obter um conjunto de imagens de alta resolução. Devido a isto, UAV tornaram-se num dos métodos adotados no estudo de topografia. A combinação entre SfM e recentes avanços nos UAV permitiram uma melhor flexibilidade e aplicabilidade, permitindo deste modo desenvolver um novo método de Remote Sensing. Este método pretende substituir técnicas tradicionais, as quais estão associadas a mão-de-obra intensiva e a custos monetários elevados. Avanços contínuos feitos em softwares de reconstrução digital e no poder de processamento resultou em modelos de maior resolução e menos dispendiosos comparando a métodos tradicionais. O presente estudo propõe um algoritmo de reconstrução digital baseado em imagens obtidas através de UAV inspiradas no estudo disponibilizado pela OpenDroneMap. Estas imagens são inseridas no programa de visão computacional, onde várias operações são realizadas, incluindo: deteção e correspondência de caracteristicas, geração da point cloud, meshing e texturação dos quais resulta o produto final que representa o local em estudo. De forma complementar, concluiu-se que o trabalho da OpenDroneMap não incluia um processo de tratamento de imagens térmicas. Desta forma, alterações foram efetuadas que permitissem a criação de mapas térmicos sem sacrificar resolução do produto final, pois métodos típicos para processamento de imagens térmicas requerem uma área de captura maior, devido à falta de características invariantes neste tipo de imagens, o que leva a uma redução de resolução. Desta forma, o programa proposto foi desenvolvido através de bibliotecas open-source e os resultados foram comparados com modelos gerados através de software comerciais. Além do mais, devido à situação pandémica atual, não foi possível efetuar um estudo de campo para validar os modelos obtidos, como tal esta verificação foi feita através da correta localização geográfica do modelo, bem como avaliação visual dos modelos criados

Towards Robust Visual Localization in Challenging Conditions

Visual localization is a fundamental problem in computer vision, with a multitude of applications in robotics, augmented reality and structure-from-motion. The basic problem is to, based on one or more images, figure out the position and orientation of the camera which captured these images relative to some model of the environment. Current visual localization approaches typically work well when the images to be localized are captured under similar conditions compared to those captured during mapping. However, when the environment exhibits large changes in visual appearance, due to e.g. variations in weather, seasons, day-night or viewpoint, the traditional pipelines break down. The reason is that the local image features used are based on low-level pixel-intensity information, which is not invariant to these transformations: when the environment changes, this will cause a different set of keypoints to be detected, and their descriptors will be different, making the long-term visual localization problem a challenging one. In this thesis, four papers are included, which present work towards solving the problem of long-term visual localization. Three of the articles present ideas for how semantic information may be included to aid in the localization process: one approach relies only on the semantic information for visual localization, another shows how the semantics can be used to detect outlier feature correspondences, while the third presents a sequential localization algorithm which relies on the consistency of the reprojection of a semantic model, instead of traditional features. The final article is a benchmark paper, where we present three new benchmark datasets aimed at evaluating localization algorithms in the context of long-term visual localization