LMSCNet: Lightweight Multiscale 3D Semantic Completion

We introduce a new approach for multiscale 3D semantic scene completion from sparse 3D occupancy grid like voxelized LiDAR scans. As opposed to the literature, we use a 2D UNet backbone with comprehensive multiscale skip connections to enhance feature flow, along with 3D segmentation heads. On the SemanticKITTI benchmark, our method performs on par on semantic completion and better on completion than all other published methods - while being significantly lighter and faster. As such it provides a great performance/speed trade-off for mobile-robotics applications. The ablation studies demonstrate our method is robust to lower density inputs, and that it enables very high speed semantic completion at the coarsest level. Qualitative results of our approach are provided at http://tiny.cc/lmscnet.Comment: For a demo video, see http://tiny.cc/lmscne

PlaNeRF: SVD Unsupervised 3D Plane Regularization for NeRF Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) enable 3D scene reconstruction from 2D images and camera poses for Novel View Synthesis (NVS). Although NeRF can produce photorealistic results, it often suffers from overfitting to training views, leading to poor geometry reconstruction, especially in low-texture areas. This limitation restricts many important applications which require accurate geometry, such as extrapolated NVS, HD mapping and scene editing. To address this limitation, we propose a new method to improve NeRF's 3D structure using only RGB images and semantic maps. Our approach introduces a novel plane regularization based on Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), that does not rely on any geometric prior. In addition, we leverage the Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) in our loss design to properly initialize the volumetric representation of NeRF. Quantitative and qualitative results show that our method outperforms popular regularization approaches in accurate geometry reconstruction for large-scale outdoor scenes and achieves SoTA rendering quality on the KITTI-360 NVS benchmark.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

MOISST: Multimodal Optimization of Implicit Scene for SpatioTemporal calibration

With the recent advances in autonomous driving and the decreasing cost of LiDARs, the use of multimodal sensor systems is on the rise. However, in order to make use of the information provided by a variety of complimentary sensors, it is necessary to accurately calibrate them. We take advantage of recent advances in computer graphics and implicit volumetric scene representation to tackle the problem of multi-sensor spatial and temporal calibration. Thanks to a new formulation of the Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) optimization, we are able to jointly optimize calibration parameters along with scene representation based on radiometric and geometric measurements. Our method enables accurate and robust calibration from data captured in uncontrolled and unstructured urban environments, making our solution more scalable than existing calibration solutions. We demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of our method in urban scenes typically encountered in autonomous driving scenarios.Comment: Accepted at IROS2023 Project site: https://qherau.github.io/MOISST

Investment project analysis and financial incentives: The fleet reneweal of a passenger transportation company

Relatório de Estágio do Mestrado em Gestão apresentado à Faculdade de EconomiaThe present report was done as a part of the Master in Business of the Economics Faculty of the University of Coimbra and it has as it main purpose the presentation of the thematic concerning the creation and valuation of investment projects and it´s connection with the financial incentives currently available, by exemplifying through a real case study of an application to a Portugal 2020 financial incentive. During my internship at Abilis – Consultores de Empresas, Lda., a company that offers a multidisciplinary service to its clients, namely in Consulting, Taxation and Accounting, one of my challenges was to participate in the elaboration of strategic analysis and of diverse financial elements in the context of different applications to the current European Union financial incentives – Portugal 2020.Is was in this context that it was chosen to present a case study developed along the internship, about an application to an incentive regarding the renewal of a diesel bus fleet to a natural gas fueled one by a passenger public transport company to the Environment end resource Efficient Fund.The report includes in the first chapter the presentation of the fostering entity while in the second we review the main theoretical concepts regarding the creation and valuation of investment projects. The third chapter consists of a presentation of the main incentive funds available in the Portugal 2020, and we explore in greater detail the conditions of the application that gave origin to the investment project that will be presented as a case study in the fourth chapter. Finally, in the fifth and sixth chapters we develop a critical analysis of the internship and present the conclusion of the report.O presente relatório foi realizado no âmbito do Mestrado em Gestão da Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra e tem como principal objetivo a apresentação da temática da criação e avaliação de projetos de investimento e a sua ligação com os sistemas de incentivos em vigor, exemplificando, através da exposição de um caso de estudo real de uma candidatura efetuada a um incentivo enquadrado no Portugal 2020.No decorrer do estágio curricular na Abilis – Consultores de Empresas, Lda, empresa que presta um serviço multidisciplinar aos seus clientes na área da Consultoria, Fiscalidade e Contabilidade, um dos desafios colocados foi a participação na elaboração de análises estratégicas e de elementos financeiros diversos no âmbito de candidaturas ao abrigo do atual quadro de comunitário de apoio - Portugal 2020. Foi nesse contexto que se optou por apresentar um caso prático desenvolvido ao longo do estágio, sobre a candidatura a um sistema de incentivos para renovação de uma frota de autocarros movidos a gasóleo por uma frota movida a gás natural, de uma empresa de transportes públicos de passageiros, ao abrigo da linha de apoio do Programa Operacional Sustentabilidade e Eficiência no uso de Recursos (POSEUR).O relatório inclui no primeiro capítulo a apresentação da entidade de acolhimento, enquanto que no segundo é feita uma revisão de literatura sobre a temática da criação e avaliação de projetos de investimento. O terceiro capítulo consiste num enquadramento das principais linhas de apoio disponíveis no Portugal 2020, e em particular detalhe são explicadas as condições do concurso que deu origem à candidatura do projeto de investimento e que será apresentado como caso prático no quarto capítulo. Finalmente, no quinto e sexto capítulo é desenvolvida uma análise critica do estágio e uma apresentação da conclusão do relatório