Developing a person guidance module for hospital robots

This dissertation describes the design and implementation of the Person Guidance Module (PGM) that enables the IWARD (Intelligent Robot Swarm for attendance, Recognition, Cleaning and delivery) base robot to offer route guidance service to the patients or visitors inside the hospital arena. One of the common problems encountered in huge hospital buildings today is foreigners not being able to find their way around in the hospital. Although there are a variety of guide robots currently existing on the market and offering a wide range of guidance and related activities, they do not fit into the modular concept of the IWARD project. The PGM features a robust and foolproof non-hierarchical sensor fusion approach of an active RFID, stereovision and cricket mote sensor for guiding a patient to the X-ray room, or a visitor to a patient’s ward in every possible scenario in a complex, dynamic and crowded hospital environment. Moreover, the speed of the robot can be adjusted automatically according to the pace of the follower for physical comfort using this system. Furthermore, the module performs these tasks in any unconstructed environment solely from a robot’s onboard perceptual resources in order to limit the hardware installation costs and therefore the indoor setting support. Similar comprehensive solution in one single platform has remained elusive in existing literature. The finished module can be connected to any IWARD base robot using quick-change mechanical connections and standard electrical connections. The PGM module box is equipped with a Gumstix embedded computer for all module computing which is powered up automatically once the module box is inserted into the robot. In line with the general software architecture of the IWARD project, all software modules are developed as Orca2 components and cross-complied for Gumstix’s XScale processor. To support standardized communication between different software components, Internet Communications Engine (Ice) has been used as middleware. Additionally, plug-and-play capabilities have been developed and incorporated so that swarm system is aware at all times of which robot is equipped with PGM. Finally, in several field trials in hospital environments, the person guidance module has shown its suitability for a challenging real-world application as well as the necessary user acceptance

Face recognition for vehicle personalization

The objective of this dissertation is to develop a system of practical technologies to implement an illumination robust, consumer grade biometric system based on face recognition to be used in the automotive market. Most current face recognition systems are compromised in accuracy by ambient illumination changes. Especially outdoor applications including vehicle personalization pose the most challenging environment for face recognition. The point of this research is to investigate practical face recognition used for identity management in order to minimize algorithmic complexity while making the system robust to ambient illumination changes. We start this dissertation by proposing an end-to-end face recognition system using near infrared (NIR) spectrum. The advantage of NIR over visible light is that it is invisible to the human eyes while most CCD and CMOS imaging devices show reasonable response to NIR. Therefore, we can build an unobtrusive night-time vision system with active NIR illumination. In day time the active NIR illumination provides more controlled illumination condition. Next, we propose an end-to-end system with active NIR image differencing which takes the difference between successive image frames, one illuminated and one not illuminated, to make the system more robust on illumination changes. Furthermore, we addresses several aspects of the problem in active NIR image differencing which are motion artifact and noise in the difference frame, namely how to efficiently and more accurately align the illuminated frame and ambient frame, and how to combine information in the difference frame and the illuminated frame. Finally, we conclude the dissertation by citing the contributions of the research and discussing the avenues for future work.Ph.D

Recent Advances in Signal Processing

The signal processing task is a very critical issue in the majority of new technological inventions and challenges in a variety of applications in both science and engineering fields. Classical signal processing techniques have largely worked with mathematical models that are linear, local, stationary, and Gaussian. They have always favored closed-form tractability over real-world accuracy. These constraints were imposed by the lack of powerful computing tools. During the last few decades, signal processing theories, developments, and applications have matured rapidly and now include tools from many areas of mathematics, computer science, physics, and engineering. This book is targeted primarily toward both students and researchers who want to be exposed to a wide variety of signal processing techniques and algorithms. It includes 27 chapters that can be categorized into five different areas depending on the application at hand. These five categories are ordered to address image processing, speech processing, communication systems, time-series analysis, and educational packages respectively. The book has the advantage of providing a collection of applications that are completely independent and self-contained; thus, the interested reader can choose any chapter and skip to another without losing continuity

Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS 1994), volume 1

The AIAA/NASA Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS '94) was originally proposed because of the strong belief that America's problems of global economic competitiveness and job creation and preservation can partly be solved by the use of intelligent robotics, which are also required for human space exploration missions. Individual sessions addressed nuclear industry, agile manufacturing, security/building monitoring, on-orbit applications, vision and sensing technologies, situated control and low-level control, robotic systems architecture, environmental restoration and waste management, robotic remanufacturing, and healthcare applications

Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions

Welcome to ROBOTICA 2009. This is the 9th edition of the conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions, the third time with IEEE‐Robotics and Automation Society Technical Co‐Sponsorship. Previous editions were held since 2001 in Guimarães, Aveiro, Porto, Lisboa, Coimbra and Algarve. ROBOTICA 2009 is held on the 7th May, 2009, in Castelo Branco , Portugal. ROBOTICA has received 32 paper submissions, from 10 countries, in South America, Asia and Europe. To evaluate each submission, three reviews by paper were performed by the international program committee. 23 papers were published in the proceedings and presented at the conference. Of these, 14 papers were selected for oral presentation and 9 papers were selected for poster presentation. The global acceptance ratio was 72%. After the conference, eighth papers will be published in the Portuguese journal Robótica, and the best student paper will be published in IEEE Multidisciplinary Engineering Education Magazine. Three prizes will be awarded in the conference for: the best conference paper, the best student paper and the best presentation. The last two, sponsored by the IEEE Education Society ‐ Student Activities Committee. We would like to express our thanks to all participants. First of all to the authors, whose quality work is the essence of this conference. Next, to all the members of the international program committee and reviewers, who helped us with their expertise and valuable time. We would also like to deeply thank the invited speaker, Jean Paul Laumond, LAAS‐CNRS France, for their excellent contribution in the field of humanoid robots. Finally, a word of appreciation for the hard work of the secretariat and volunteers. Our deep gratitude goes to the Scientific Organisations that kindly agreed to sponsor the Conference, and made it come true. We look forward to seeing more results of R&D work on Robotics at ROBOTICA 2010, somewhere in Portugal

Recent Application in Biometrics

In the recent years, a number of recognition and authentication systems based on biometric measurements have been proposed. Algorithms and sensors have been developed to acquire and process many different biometric traits. Moreover, the biometric technology is being used in novel ways, with potential commercial and practical implications to our daily activities. The key objective of the book is to provide a collection of comprehensive references on some recent theoretical development as well as novel applications in biometrics. The topics covered in this book reflect well both aspects of development. They include biometric sample quality, privacy preserving and cancellable biometrics, contactless biometrics, novel and unconventional biometrics, and the technical challenges in implementing the technology in portable devices. The book consists of 15 chapters. It is divided into four sections, namely, biometric applications on mobile platforms, cancelable biometrics, biometric encryption, and other applications. The book was reviewed by editors Dr. Jucheng Yang and Dr. Norman Poh. We deeply appreciate the efforts of our guest editors: Dr. Girija Chetty, Dr. Loris Nanni, Dr. Jianjiang Feng, Dr. Dongsun Park and Dr. Sook Yoon, as well as a number of anonymous reviewers

Pedestrian Detection by Computer Vision.

This document describes work aimed at determining whether the detection, bycomputer vision, of pedestrians waiting at signal-controlled road crossings could bemade sufficiently reliable and affordable, using currently available technology, so asto be suitable for widespread use in traffic control systems.The work starts by examining the need for pedestrian detection in traffic controlsystems and then goes onto look at the specific problems of applying a vision systemto the detection task. The most important distinctive features of the pedestriandetection task addressed in this work are:• The operating conditions are an outdoor environment with no constraints onfactors such as variation in illumination, presence of shadows and the effects ofadverse weather.• Pedestrians may be moving or static and are not limited to certain orientations orto movement in a single direction.• The number of pedestrians to be monitored is not restricted such that the visionsystem must cope with the monitoring of multiple targets concurrently.• The background scene is complex and so contains image features that tend todistract a vision system from the successful detection of pedestrians.• Pedestrian attire is unconstrained so detection must occur even when details ofpedestrian shape are hidden by items such as coats and hats.• The camera's position is such that assumptions commonly used by vision systemsto avoid the effects of occlusion, perspective and viewpoint variation are not valid.•The implementation cost of the system, in moderate volumes, must be realistic forwidespread installation.A review of relevant prior art in computer vision with respect to the above demands ispresented. Thereafter techniques developed by the author to overcome thesedifficulties are developed and evaluated over an extensive test set of image sequencesrepresentative of the range of conditions found in the real world.The work has resulted in the development of a vision system which has been shown toattain a useful level of performance under a wide range of environmental andtransportation conditions. This was achieved, in real-time, using low-cost processingand sensor components so demonstrating the viability of developing the results of thiswork into a practical detector