A Survey on Natural Inspired Computing (NIC): Algorithms and Challenges

Nature employs interactive images to incorporate end users2019; awareness and implication aptitude form inspirations into statistical/algorithmic information investigation procedures. Nature-inspired Computing (NIC) is an energetic research exploration field that has appliances in various areas, like as optimization, computational intelligence, evolutionary computation, multi-objective optimization, data mining, resource management, robotics, transportation and vehicle routing. The promising playing field of NIC focal point on managing substantial, assorted and self-motivated dimensions of information all the way through the incorporation of individual opinion by means of inspiration as well as communication methods in the study practices. In addition, it is the permutation of correlated study parts together with Bio-inspired computing, Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning that revolves efficient diagnostics interested in a competent pasture of study. This article intend at given that a summary of Nature-inspired Computing, its capacity and concepts and particulars the most significant scientific study algorithms in the field

Integrasjon av et minimalistisk sett av sensorer for kartlegging og lokalisering av landbruksroboter

Robots have recently become ubiquitous in many aspects of daily life. For in-house applications there is vacuuming, mopping and lawn-mowing robots. Swarms of robots have been used in Amazon warehouses for several years. Autonomous driving cars, despite being set back by several safety issues, are undeniably becoming the standard of the automobile industry. Not just being useful for commercial applications, robots can perform various tasks, such as inspecting hazardous sites, taking part in search-and-rescue missions. Regardless of end-user applications, autonomy plays a crucial role in modern robots. The essential capabilities required for autonomous operations are mapping, localization and navigation. The goal of this thesis is to develop a new approach to solve the problems of mapping, localization, and navigation for autonomous robots in agriculture. This type of environment poses some unique challenges such as repetitive patterns, large-scale sparse features environments, in comparison to other scenarios such as urban/cities, where the abundance of good features such as pavements, buildings, road lanes, traffic signs, etc., exists. In outdoor agricultural environments, a robot can rely on a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to determine its whereabouts. It is often limited to the robot's activities to accessible GNSS signal areas. It would fail for indoor environments. In this case, different types of exteroceptive sensors such as (RGB, Depth, Thermal) cameras, laser scanner, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and proprioceptive sensors such as Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), wheel-encoders can be fused to better estimate the robot's states. Generic approaches of combining several different sensors often yield superior estimation results but they are not always optimal in terms of cost-effectiveness, high modularity, reusability, and interchangeability. For agricultural robots, it is equally important for being robust for long term operations as well as being cost-effective for mass production. We tackle this challenge by exploring and selectively using a handful of sensors such as RGB-D cameras, LiDAR and IMU for representative agricultural environments. The sensor fusion algorithms provide high precision and robustness for mapping and localization while at the same time assuring cost-effectiveness by employing only the necessary sensors for a task at hand. In this thesis, we extend the LiDAR mapping and localization methods for normal urban/city scenarios to cope with the agricultural environments where the presence of slopes, vegetation, trees render the traditional approaches to fail. Our mapping method substantially reduces the memory footprint for map storing, which is important for large-scale farms. We show how to handle the localization problem in dynamic growing strawberry polytunnels by using only a stereo visual-inertial (VI) and depth sensor to extract and track only invariant features. This eliminates the need for remapping to deal with dynamic scenes. Also, for a demonstration of the minimalistic requirement for autonomous agricultural robots, we show the ability to autonomously traverse between rows in a difficult environment of zigzag-liked polytunnel using only a laser scanner. Furthermore, we present an autonomous navigation capability by using only a camera without explicitly performing mapping or localization. Finally, our mapping and localization methods are generic and platform-agnostic, which can be applied to different types of agricultural robots. All contributions presented in this thesis have been tested and validated on real robots in real agricultural environments. All approaches have been published or submitted in peer-reviewed conference papers and journal articles.Roboter har nylig blitt standard i mange deler av hverdagen. I hjemmet har vi støvsuger-, vaske- og gressklippende roboter. Svermer med roboter har blitt brukt av Amazons varehus i mange år. Autonome selvkjørende biler, til tross for å ha vært satt tilbake av sikkerhetshensyn, er udiskutabelt på vei til å bli standarden innen bilbransjen. Roboter har mer nytte enn rent kommersielt bruk. Roboter kan utføre forskjellige oppgaver, som å inspisere farlige områder og delta i leteoppdrag. Uansett hva sluttbrukeren velger å gjøre, spiller autonomi en viktig rolle i moderne roboter. De essensielle egenskapene for autonome operasjoner i landbruket er kartlegging, lokalisering og navigering. Denne type miljø gir spesielle utfordringer som repetitive mønstre og storskala miljø med få landskapsdetaljer, sammenlignet med andre steder, som urbane-/bymiljø, hvor det finnes mange landskapsdetaljer som fortau, bygninger, trafikkfelt, trafikkskilt, etc. I utendørs jordbruksmiljø kan en robot bruke Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) til å navigere sine omgivelser. Dette begrenser robotens aktiviteter til områder med tilgjengelig GNSS signaler. Dette vil ikke fungere i miljøer innendørs. I ett slikt tilfelle vil reseptorer mot det eksterne miljø som (RGB-, dybde-, temperatur-) kameraer, laserskannere, «Light detection and Ranging» (LiDAR) og propriopsjonære detektorer som treghetssensorer (IMU) og hjulenkodere kunne brukes sammen for å bedre kunne estimere robotens tilstand. Generisk kombinering av forskjellige sensorer fører til overlegne estimeringsresultater, men er ofte suboptimale med hensyn på kostnadseffektivitet, moduleringingsgrad og utbyttbarhet. For landbruksroboter så er det like viktig med robusthet for lang tids bruk som kostnadseffektivitet for masseproduksjon. Vi taklet denne utfordringen med å utforske og selektivt velge en håndfull sensorer som RGB-D kameraer, LiDAR og IMU for representative landbruksmiljø. Algoritmen som kombinerer sensorsignalene gir en høy presisjonsgrad og robusthet for kartlegging og lokalisering, og gir samtidig kostnadseffektivitet med å bare bruke de nødvendige sensorene for oppgaven som skal utføres. I denne avhandlingen utvider vi en LiDAR kartlegging og lokaliseringsmetode normalt brukt i urbane/bymiljø til å takle landbruksmiljø, hvor hellinger, vegetasjon og trær gjør at tradisjonelle metoder mislykkes. Vår metode reduserer signifikant lagringsbehovet for kartlagring, noe som er viktig for storskala gårder. Vi viser hvordan lokaliseringsproblemet i dynamisk voksende jordbær-polytuneller kan løses ved å bruke en stereo visuel inertiel (VI) og en dybdesensor for å ekstrahere statiske objekter. Dette eliminerer behovet å kartlegge på nytt for å klare dynamiske scener. I tillegg demonstrerer vi de minimalistiske kravene for autonome jordbruksroboter. Vi viser robotens evne til å bevege seg autonomt mellom rader i ett vanskelig miljø med polytuneller i sikksakk-mønstre ved bruk av kun en laserskanner. Videre presenterer vi en autonom navigeringsevne ved bruk av kun ett kamera uten å eksplisitt kartlegge eller lokalisere. Til slutt viser vi at kartleggings- og lokaliseringsmetodene er generiske og platform-agnostiske, noe som kan brukes med flere typer jordbruksroboter. Alle bidrag presentert i denne avhandlingen har blitt testet og validert med ekte roboter i ekte landbruksmiljø. Alle forsøk har blitt publisert eller sendt til fagfellevurderte konferansepapirer og journalartikler

A Survey on Natural Inspired Computing (NIC): Algorithms and Challenges

Nature employs interactive images to incorporate end users’ awareness and implication aptitude form inspirations into statistical/algorithmic information investigation procedures. Nature-inspired Computing (NIC) is an energetic research exploration field that has appliances in various areas, like as optimization, computational intelligence, evolutionary computation, multi-objective optimization, data mining, resource management, robotics, transportation and vehicle routing. The promising playing field of NIC focal point on managing substantial, assorted and self-motivated dimensions of information all the way through the incorporation of individual opinion by means of inspiration as well as communication methods in the study practices. In addition, it is the permutation of correlated study parts together with Bio-inspired computing, Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning that revolves efficient diagnostics interested in a competent pasture of study. This article intend at given that a summary of Nature-inspired Computing, its capacity and concepts and particulars the most significant scientific study algorithms in the field

Towards Autonomous Selective Harvesting: A Review of Robot Perception, Robot Design, Motion Planning and Control

This paper provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in selective harvesting robots (SHRs) and their potential for addressing the challenges of global food production. SHRs have the potential to increase productivity, reduce labour costs, and minimise food waste by selectively harvesting only ripe fruits and vegetables. The paper discusses the main components of SHRs, including perception, grasping, cutting, motion planning, and control. It also highlights the challenges in developing SHR technologies, particularly in the areas of robot design, motion planning and control. The paper also discusses the potential benefits of integrating AI and soft robots and data-driven methods to enhance the performance and robustness of SHR systems. Finally, the paper identifies several open research questions in the field and highlights the need for further research and development efforts to advance SHR technologies to meet the challenges of global food production. Overall, this paper provides a starting point for researchers and practitioners interested in developing SHRs and highlights the need for more research in this field.Comment: Preprint: to be appeared in Journal of Field Robotic

Viewpoint Optimization for Autonomous Strawberry Harvesting with Deep Reinforcement Learning

Autonomous harvesting may provide a viable solution to mounting labor pressures in the United States\u27 strawberry industry. However, due to bottlenecks in machine perception and economic viability, a profitable and commercially adopted strawberry harvesting system remains elusive. In this research, we explore the feasibility of using deep reinforcement learning to overcome these bottlenecks and develop a practical algorithm to address the sub-objective of viewpoint optimization, or the development of a control policy to direct a camera to favorable vantage points for autonomous harvesting. We evaluate the algorithm\u27s performance in a custom, open-source simulated environment and observe affirmative results. Our trained agent yields 8.7 times higher returns than random actions and 8.8 percent faster exploration than our best baseline policy, which uses visual servoing. Visual investigation shows the agent is able to fixate on favorable viewpoints, despite having no explicit means to propagate information through time. Overall, we conclude that deep reinforcement learning is a promising area of research to advance the state of the art in autonomous strawberry harvesting

Sustainable Agriculture and Advances of Remote Sensing (Volume 2)

Agriculture, as the main source of alimentation and the most important economic activity globally, is being affected by the impacts of climate change. To maintain and increase our global food system production, to reduce biodiversity loss and preserve our natural ecosystem, new practices and technologies are required. This book focuses on the latest advances in remote sensing technology and agricultural engineering leading to the sustainable agriculture practices. Earth observation data, in situ and proxy-remote sensing data are the main source of information for monitoring and analyzing agriculture activities. Particular attention is given to earth observation satellites and the Internet of Things for data collection, to multispectral and hyperspectral data analysis using machine learning and deep learning, to WebGIS and the Internet of Things for sharing and publication of the results, among others

Influence of training dataset selection on the performance of a machine learning model

To observe the growth dynamics of the canola flowers during the blooming season and estimate the harvest forecast of the Canola crops, an application called ‘Flower Counter’ has been developed by the researchers of P2IRC located at the University of Saskatchewan. The model has been developed using Deep Learning (DL) based Multi-column Convolutional Neural Network (MCNN) algorithm and TensorFlow framework. This is an object counting model, that counts the Canola flowers from the images based on the learning from a given set of training images, called ‘ground-truths’. This work proposes to compose a good training dataset that would give good accuracy with a robust object detection model by using different training and testing combinations. Various evaluation techniques have been used in this work to check the impact of the training dataset, on the testing results of the model and generalizability. The primary goal of this research work is to define a good training dataset composition having diversity. A good composition also consists of different characteristics present in the dataset, that can impact the testing results and can help in creating a robust object counting model. Different characteristics of the training datasets and testing datasets are used to evaluate the most prominent characteristics and features that impact the test results. The objective is also to evaluate the impact of training dataset selection on testing results produced by the ML model in terms of accuracy. This work would help the researchers and plant scientists gain knowledge about the diversity of characteristics for the composition of a training dataset. This can give insights to reduce the manual effort which is required to create ground truth for training models by identifying the characteristics that impact testing results. Since the entire training of the model depends on the datasets collected during diverse weather conditions, there could be factors that could impact some of the experimental results. The research area for training dataset selection has not been explored much, and this research work will give good insights about model generalization capability and scopes for manual work utilization for getting a robust object counting model