Robotic sound source mapping using microphone arrays

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The auditory system constitutes a significant perceptual input for humans and animals. While it is legitimate to say that it ranks behind other senses such as vision or haptics whose understanding has experienced significant advances in the context of computational intelligence and robotics, it is intuitive to assume that service and field robotic systems working closely with humans would benefit from incorporating compelling sound analysis capabilities in the pursuit of accomplishing human-robot collaborative tasks. Within the broad area of robotic audition, one of the most relevant research topics has been identifying and locating multiple sound sources that may be present in the vicinity of the robot at an instant in time. Robotic systems equipped with such ability would gain the faculty to better monitor acoustic events such as a conversation, a ringing alarm or a call for help, for example in a search and rescue scenario, effectively responding to people's needs in a more natural way. Mapping stationary sound sources using a robot equipped with an on-board microphone array is thus the main focus of this thesis

Improved Cross-Ratio Invariant-Based Intrinsic Calibration of A Hyperspectral Line-Scan Camera

Hyperspectral line-scan cameras are increasingly being deployed on mobile platforms operating in unstructured environments. To generate geometrically accurate hyperspectral composites, the intrinsic parameters of these cameras must be resolved. This article describes a method for determining the intrinsic parameters of a hyperspectral line-scan camera. The proposed method is based on a cross-ratio invariant calibration routine and is able to estimate the focal length, principal point, and radial distortion parameters in a hyperspectral line-scan camera. Compared to previous methods that use similar calibration targets, our approach extends the camera model to include radial distortion. It is able to utilize calibration data recorded from multiple camera view angles by optimizing the re-projection error of all calibration data jointly. The proposed method also includes an additional signal processing step that automatically detects calibration points in hyperspectral imagery of the calibration target. These contributions result in accurate estimates of the intrinsic parameters with minimal supervision. The proposed method is validated through comprehensive simulation and demonstrated on real hyperspectral line-scans

Improved Cross-Ratio Invariant-Based Intrinsic Calibration of A Hyperspectral Line-Scan Camera

Hyperspectral line-scan cameras are increasingly being deployed on mobile platforms operating in unstructured environments. To generate geometrically accurate hyperspectral composites, the intrinsic parameters of these cameras must be resolved. This article describes a method for determining the intrinsic parameters of a hyperspectral line-scan camera. The proposed method is based on a cross-ratio invariant calibration routine and is able to estimate the focal length, principal point, and radial distortion parameters in a hyperspectral line-scan camera. Compared to previous methods that use similar calibration targets, our approach extends the camera model to include radial distortion. It is able to utilize calibration data recorded from multiple camera view angles by optimizing the re-projection error of all calibration data jointly. The proposed method also includes an additional signal processing step that automatically detects calibration points in hyperspectral imagery of the calibration target. These contributions result in accurate estimates of the intrinsic parameters with minimal supervision. The proposed method is validated through comprehensive simulation and demonstrated on real hyperspectral line-scans

Robust Online Obstacle Detection and Tracking for Collision-free Navigation of Multirotor UAVs in Complex Environments

Object detection and tracking is a challenging task, especially for unmanned aerial robots in complex environments where both static and dynamic objects are present. It is, however, essential for ensuring safety of the robot during navigation in such environments. In this work we present a practical online approach which is based on a 2D LIDAR. Unlike common approaches in the literature of modeling the environment as 2D or 3D occupancy grids, our approach offers a fast and robust method to represent the objects in the environment in a compact form, which is significantly more efficient in terms of both memory and computation in comparison with the former. Our approach is also capable of classifying objects into categories such as static and dynamic, and tracking dynamic objects as well as estimating their velocities with reasonable accuracy

" Modelling In-Pipe Acoustic Signal Propagation for Condition Assessment of Multi-Layer Water Pipelines

Abstract-A solution to the condition assessment of fluidfilled conduits based on the analysis of in-pipe acoustic signal propagation is presented in this paper. The sensor arrangement consists of an acoustic emitter from which a known sonic pulse is generated, and a collocated hydrophone receiver that records the arrival acoustic wave at a high sampling rate. The proposed method exploits the influence of the surrounding environment on the propagation of an acoustic wave to estimate the condition of the pipeline. Specifically, the propagation speed of an acoustic wave is influenced by the hoop stiffness of the surrounding materials, a fact that has been exploited in the analysis of boreholes in the literature. In this work, this finding is extended to validate the analytical expression derived to infer the condition of uniform, axis-symmetric lined waterworks, a first step to ultimately be able to predict the remaining active life (timeto-failure) of pipelines with arbitrary geometries through finite element analysis (FEA). An investigation of the various aspects of the proposed methodology with typical pipe material and structures is presented to appreciate the advantages of modelling acoustic waves behaviours in fluid-filled cylindrical cavities for condition assessment of water pipelines