A New Approach to Visual-Based Sensory System for Navigation into Orange Groves

One of the most important parts of an autonomous robot is to establish the path by which it should navigate in order to successfully achieve its goals. In the case of agricultural robotics, a procedure that determines this desired path can be useful. In this paper, a new virtual sensor is introduced in order to classify the elements of an orange grove. This proposed sensor will be based on a color CCD camera with auto iris lens which is in charge of doing the captures of the real environment and an ensemble of neural networks which processes the capture and differentiates each element of the image. Then, the Hough’s transform and other operations will be applied in order to extract the desired path from the classification performed by the virtual sensory system. With this approach, the robotic system can correct its deviation with respect to the desired path. The results show that the sensory system properly classifies the elements of the grove and can set trajectory of the robot

Two-stage procedure based on smoothed ensembles of neural networks applied to weed detection in orange groves

The potential impacts of herbicide utilization compel producers to use new methods of weed control. The problem of how to reduce the amount of herbicide and yet maintain crop production has stimulated many researchers to study selective herbicide application. The key of selective herbicide application is how to discriminate the weed areas efficiently. We introduce a procedure for weed detection in orange groves which consists of two different stages. In the first stage, the main features in an image of the grove are determined (Trees, Trunks, Soil and Sky). In the second, the weeds are detected only in those areas which were determined as Soil in the first stage. Due to the characteristics of weed detection (changing weather and light conditions), we introduce a new training procedure with noisy patterns for ensembles of neural networks. In the experiments, a comparison of the new noisy learning was successfully performed with a set of well-known classification problems from the machine learning repository published by the University of California, Irvine. This first comparison was performed to determine the general behavior and performance of the noisy ensembles. Then, the new noisy ensembles were applied to images from orange groves to determine where weeds are located using the proposed two-stage procedure. Main results of this contribution show that the proposed system is suitable for weed detection in orange, and similar, groves

Combining Satellite Images and Cadastral Information for Outdoor Autonomous Mapping and Navigation: A Proof-of-Concept Study in Citric Groves

The development of robotic applications for agricultural environments has several problems which are not present in the robotic systems used for indoor environments. Some of these problems can be solved with an efficient navigation system. In this paper, a new system is introduced to improve the navigation tasks for those robots which operate in agricultural environments. Concretely, the paper focuses on the problem related to the autonomous mapping of agricultural parcels (i.e., an orange grove). The map created by the system will be used to help the robots navigate into the parcel to perform maintenance tasks such as weed removal, harvest, or pest inspection. The proposed system connects to a satellite positioning service to obtain the real coordinates where the robotic system is placed. With these coordinates, the parcel information is downloaded from an online map service in order to autonomously obtain a map of the parcel in a readable format for the robot. Finally, path planning is performed by means of Fast Marching techniques using the robot or a team of two robots. This paper introduces the proof-of-concept and describes all the necessary steps and algorithms to obtain the path planning just from the initial coordinates of the robot

La inserción del notorio arraigo en la regulación matrimonial del Código civil español

The purpose of this work is present some reflections on what the introduction of the concept of significant ingraining in Spain; has meant in the Spanish Civil Code following the changes introduced by the Law of Voluntary Jurisdiction in matters of marriage in a religious for

El estatuto jurídico de las entidades religiosas con notorio arraigo en España

El objeto del presente trabajo lo constituye la exposición y análisis de las consecuencias jurídicas aparejadas a la consecución de la declaración de “notorio arraigo en España” para una entidad religiosa

Advances in indoor positioning and indoor navigation

Locating devices in indoor environments has become a key issue for many emerging location-based applications and intelligent spaces in different fields [...]This work was supported by European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska Curie grant agreement No. 813278 (A-WEAR: A network for dynamic WEarable Applications with pRivacy constraints)

A new HLA-based distributed control architecture for agricultural teams of robots in hybrid applications with real and simulated devices or environments

The control architecture is one of the most important part of agricultural robotics and other robotic systems. Furthermore its importance increases when the system involves a group of heterogeneous robots that should cooperate to achieve a global goal. A new control architecture is introduced in this paper for groups of robots in charge of doing maintenance tasks in agricultural environments. Some important features such as scalability, code reuse, hardware abstraction and data distribution have been considered in the design of the new architecture. Furthermore, coordination and cooperation among the different elements in the system is allowed in the proposed control system. By integrating a network oriented device server Player, Java Agent Development Framework (JADE) and High Level Architecture (HLA), the previous concepts have been considered in the new architecture presented in this paper. HLA can be considered the most important part because it not only allows the data distribution and implicit communication among the parts of the system but also allows to simultaneously operate with simulated and real entities, thus allowing the use of hybrid systems in the development of applications

Indoor positioning technologies for academic libraries: towards the smart library

Se presenta un caso de uso de la aplicación de tecnologías geoespaciales en una biblioteca universitaria. En concreto, se han desarrollado dos aplicaciones capaces de obtener la localización de los ejemplares buscados por los usuarios, una para dispositivos móviles con sistema operativo Android y la otra para su uso en navegadores web. Dichas aplicaciones permiten dibujar la ruta desde el punto en el que el usuario se sitúa hasta la estantería donde se encuentran los ejemplares, mejorando así la experiencia del usuario. Adicionalmente, el artículo investiga las posibilidades de aplicación de sistemas de información geográfica (SIG) y tecnologías geoespaciales para la mejora de los servicios ofrecidos por la biblioteca.This article is a case study of the application of geospatial technologies in an academic library. More specifically, two applications were developed to assist users in finding the location of books, one for Android mobile devices and the other for web browsers. These applications provide users with the ability to plot the path from the point where the user is located to the shelf where the items are found, thereby improving the user experience. Additionally, this article investigates the possibility of applying geographic information systems (GIS) and geospatial technologies to library services

A Meta-Review of Indoor Positioning Systems

An accurate and reliable Indoor Positioning System (IPS) applicable to most indoor scenarios has been sought for many years. The number of technologies, techniques, and approaches in general used in IPS proposals is remarkable. Such diversity, coupled with the lack of strict and verifiable evaluations, leads to difficulties for appreciating the true value of most proposals. This paper provides a meta-review that performed a comprehensive compilation of 62 survey papers in the area of indoor positioning. The paper provides the reader with an introduction to IPS and the different technologies, techniques, and some methods commonly employed. The introduction is supported by consensus found in the selected surveys and referenced using them. Thus, the meta-review allows the reader to inspect the IPS current state at a glance and serve as a guide for the reader to easily find further details on each technology used in IPS. The analyses of the meta-review contributed with insights on the abundance and academic significance of published IPS proposals using the criterion of the number of citations. Moreover, 75 works are identified as relevant works in the research topic from a selection of about 4000 works cited in the analyzed surveys

Influence of measured radio map interpolation on indoor positioning algorithms

Indoor positioning and navigation increasingly has become popular and there are many different approaches, using different technologies. In nearly all of the approaches the locational accuracy depends on signal propagation characteristics of the environment. What makes many of these approaches similar is the requirement of creating a signal propagation Radio Map (RM) by analysing the environment. As this is usually done on a regular grid, the collection of Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) data at every Reference Point (RP) of a RM is a time consuming task. With indoor positioning being in the focus of the research community, the reduction in time required for collection of RMs is very useful as it allows researchers to spend more time with research instead of data collection. In this paper we analyse the options for reducing the time required for the acquisition of RSSI information. We approach this by collecting initial RMs of Wi-Fi signal strength using 5 ESP32 micro controllers working in monitoring mode and placed around our office. We then analyse the influence the approximation of RSSI values in unreachable places has, by using linear interpolation and Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) to find balance between final positioning accuracy, computing complexity, and time requirements for the initial data collection. We conclude that the computational requirements can be significantly lowered, while not affecting the positioning error, by using RM with a single sample per RP generated considering many measurements.- (undefined