An Illumination Identification System for the AIBO Robot

The Four Legged League is a division of the RoboCup initiative that uses Sony AIBOTM robots to further robotics research. Most participants implement vision systems that use the color of objects to perform identification. Calibration of the color classification system must be done and any changes to the lighting of the environment after calibration reduces the accuracy of the system, often to a point at which the robot is effectively blind. This study investigates the relationships in the color data of image pixels between lighting conditions in an effort to identify trends that can be used as the basis of a rule-based system. The aim of the system is to identify the current lighting level as one of a set of known conditions. The proposed systems uses the color data of image pixels and information about the AIBO’s location and orientation to identify lighting levels, allowing a vision system to switch to an appropriate pre-configured calibratio

From locomotion to cognition: Bridging the gap between reactive and cognitive behavior in a quadruped robot

The cognitivistic paradigm, which states that cognition is a result of computation with symbols that represent the world, has been challenged by many. The opponents have primarily criticized the detachment from direct interaction with the world and pointed to some fundamental problems (for instance the symbol grounding problem). Instead, they emphasized the constitutive role of embodied interaction with the environment. This has motivated the advancement of synthetic methodologies: the phenomenon of interest (cognition) can be studied by building and investigating whole brain-body-environment systems. Our work is centered around a compliant quadruped robot equipped with a multimodal sensory set. In a series of case studies, we investigate the structure of the sensorimotor space that the application of different actions in different environments by the robot brings about. Then, we study how the agent can autonomously abstract the regularities that are induced by the different conditions and use them to improve its behavior. The agent is engaged in path integration, terrain discrimination and gait adaptation, and moving target following tasks. The nature of the tasks forces the robot to leave the ``here-and-now'' time scale of simple reactive stimulus-response behaviors and to learn from its experience, thus creating a ``minimally cognitive'' setting. Solutions to these problems are developed by the agent in a bottom-up fashion. The complete scenarios are then used to illuminate the concepts that are believed to lie at the basis of cognition: sensorimotor contingencies, body schema, and forward internal models. Finally, we discuss how the presented solutions are relevant for applications in robotics, in particular in the area of autonomous model acquisition and adaptation, and, in mobile robots, in dead reckoning and traversability detection

Methods for the automatic alignment of colour histograms

Colour provides important information in many image processing tasks such as object identification and tracking. Different images of the same object frequently yield different colour values due to undesired variations in lighting and the camera. In practice, controlling the source of these fluctuations is difficult, uneconomical or even impossible in a particular imaging environment. This thesis is concerned with the question of how to best align the corresponding clusters of colour histograms to reduce or remove the effect of these undesired variations. We introduce feature based histogram alignment (FBHA) algorithms that enable flexible alignment transformations to be applied. The FBHA approach has three steps, 1) feature detection in the colour histograms, 2) feature association and 3) feature alignment. We investigate the choices for these three steps on two colour databases : 1) a structured and labeled database of RGB imagery acquired under controlled camera, lighting and object variation and 2) grey-level video streams from an industrial inspection application. The design and acquisition of the RGB image and grey-level video databases are a key contribution of the thesis. The databases are used to quantitatively compare the FBHA approach against existing methodologies and show it to be effective. FBHA is intended to provide a generic method for aligning colour histograms, it only uses information from the histograms and therefore ignores spatial information in the image. Spatial information and other context sensitive cues are deliberately avoided to maintain the generic nature of the algorithm; by ignoring some of this important information we gain useful insights into the performance limits of a colour alignment algorithm that works from the colour histogram alone, this helps understand the limits of a generic approach to colour alignment

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

Autonomous robot systems and competitions: proceedings of the 12th International Conference

This is the 2012’s edition of the scientific meeting of the Portuguese Robotics Open (ROBOTICA’ 2012). It aims to disseminate scientific contributions and to promote discussion of theories, methods and experiences in areas of relevance to Autonomous Robotics and Robotic Competitions. All accepted contributions are included in this proceedings book. The conference program has also included an invited talk by Dr.ir. Raymond H. Cuijpers, from the Department of Human Technology Interaction of Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands.The conference is kindly sponsored by the IEEE Portugal Section / IEEE RAS ChapterSPR-Sociedade Portuguesa de Robótic