Hierarchical Salient Object Detection for Assisted Grasping

Visual scene decomposition into semantic entities is one of the major challenges when creating a reliable object grasping system. Recently, we introduced a bottom-up hierarchical clustering approach which is able to segment objects and parts in a scene. In this paper, we introduce a transform from such a segmentation into a corresponding, hierarchical saliency function. In comprehensive experiments we demonstrate its ability to detect salient objects in a scene. Furthermore, this hierarchical saliency defines a most salient corresponding region (scale) for every point in an image. Based on this, an easy-to-use pick and place manipulation system was developed and tested exemplarily.Comment: Accepted for ICRA 201

Survey on the use of robots / unmanned systems in scenarios involving radiological or nuclear threats - ERNCIP Thematic Group for Radiological and Nuclear Threats to Critical Infrastructure, Task 3 deliverable 3

This is the third deliverable of task three of our ERNCIP thematic group for radiological and nuclear threats to critical infrastructure. This is the only report for this year in this task about remote controlled radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems. We made up questions for a survey with experts from the RN and from the robotics communities that we circulated through different channels like mailing lists and professional social media groups. In this report, we present the questionnaire and then discuss the outcome of the survey that we held this year to raise public interest in this topic and to get more insights and additional views from experts in this field and related subjects. One further aim was to extract information out of the experts and to bring the different communities of roboticists and RN experts together. We succeeded in getting information from scientists especially from the robotics community, as they are well represented in the answers, but we lack of answers from industries and end-user communities. Most of the answerers agreed on the scenarios that we identified in “Possible scenarios for radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems” - EUR 27225. About additional sensors, most people suggested to include position and time to radiation measurements. The answers on bottlenecks and future topics points to robot’s manoeuvrability, autonomy and communication as well as decontamination and human robot interaction.JRC.G.5-Security technology assessmen

Possible scenarios for radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems: ERNCIP thematic group Radiological and nuclear threats to critical infrastructure - Task 3 deliverable 2

There is a significant potential in the use of unmanned remote controlled vehicles in sampling and measuring radiological events. No attempts to standardise sampling and measurement methods using these types of vehicles have been made so far. Common standards would simplify the use of remote controlled vehicles in an emergency scenario and would thus be very valuable in Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). The main advantage of using unmanned systems in radiological events is the protection of the involved human personnel. This document focuses on possible scenarios for remote controlled radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems. We identified scenarios that can be separated in two categories. First, there are prevention scenarios, where unmanned systems can be used for prevention of incidents involving radioactive material and deterrence. Second, there are response scenarios, where unmanned systems can be used to gather information after incidents with radioactive material have occurred. We further condensed three main tasks (spatial mapping, search of sources and sampling) for unmanned systems in the identified scenarios. Additionally, this report summarises possible standards for unmanned systems. A very widely known standard collection of software frameworks for robot software development is the Robot Operating System (ROS). Additional important standards concerning communication with robots and control of unmanned systems are Battle Management Language (BML), Interoperability Profile (IOP) and Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS).JRC.G.5-Security technology assessmen

Current state of the art of unmanned systems with potential to be usedfor radiation measurements and sampling : ERNCIP thematic group Radiological and nuclear threats to critical infrastructure Task 3 deliverable 1

There is a significant potential in the use of unmanned remote controlled vehicles in sampling and measuring radiological events. No attempts to standardise sampling and measurement methods using these types of vehicles have yet been made. Common standards would simplify the use of remote controlled vehicles in an emergency scenario and would thus be very valuable in critical infrastructure protection (CIP). The main advantage of using unmanned systems in radiological events is the protection of the human personnel involved. This report is about current state-of-the-art of unmanned systems that have potential to be used for radiation measurements and sampling. It is believed that search and rescue robotics is the domain that is closest to the robots applicable to the radiation measurement scenarios. Therefore, a definition for search and rescue robots and outlines of their major subsystems are given. This is followed by a review of deployment scenarios for search and rescue robots outlining case studies of major emergencies at which robots have been deployed — with an assessment of their value to the emergency services. Additionally, research and development in search and rescue robotics, including current projects, testing environments and search and rescue robotics competitions, is outlined. Furthermore, this report shows unmanned robots and concepts for sensor systems capable of radiation detection based on state-of-the-art radiation sampling using unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles with rotary wings or unmanned aerial vehicles with fixed wings