No abstract

In this paper, a novel approach for an automatic object detection and localisation on aerial images is proposed. Proposed model does not use ground control points (GCPs) and consists of three major phases. In the first phase, optimal flight route is planned in order to capture the area of interest and aerial images are acquired using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), followed by creating a mosaic of collected images to obtained larger field-of-view panoramic image of the area of interest and using the obtained image mosaic to create georeferenced map. The image mosaic is then also used to detect objects of interest using the approach based on convolutional neural networks.

When a mobile robotic manipulator interacts with other robots, people, or the environment in general, the end-effector forces need to be measured to assess if a task has been completed successfully. Traditionally used force or torque estimation methods are usually based on observers, which require knowledge of the robot dynamics. Contrary to this, our approach involves two methods based on deep neural networks: robot end-effector force estimation and joint torque estimation. These methods require no knowledge of robot dynamics and are computationally effective but require a force sensor under the robot base. Several different architectures were considered for the tasks, and the best ones were identified among those tested. First, the data for training the networks were obtained in simulation. The trained networks showed reasonably good performance, especially using the LSTM architecture (with a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.1533 N for end-effector force estimation and 0.5115 Nm for joint torque estimation). Afterward, data were collected on a real Franka Emika Panda robot and then used to train the same networks for joint torque estimation. The obtained results are slightly worse than in simulation (0.5115 Nm vs. 0.6189 Nm, according to the RMSE metric) but still reasonably good, showing the validity of the proposed approach.

The paper proposes and analyses performance of a fuzzy-based mediator with showcase examples in robot navigation. The mediator receives outputs from two controllers and uses estimated collision probability for adapting the signal proportions in the final output. The approach was implemented and tested in simulation and on real robots with different footprints. The task complexity during testing varied from single obstacle avoidance to a realistic navigation in real environments. The obtained results showed that this approach is simple but effective.

This paper proposes and implements a self-supervised simulation-driven approach to data collection used for training of perception-based shallow neural networks for mobile robot obstacle avoidance. In the approach, a 2D LiDAR sensor was used as an information source for training neural networks. The paper analyzes neural network performance in terms of numbers of layers and neurons, as well as the amount of data needed for reliable robot operation. Once the best architecture is identified, it is trained using only data obtained in simulation and then implemented and tested on a real robot (Turtlebot 2) in several simulations and real-world scenarios. Based on obtained results it is shown that this fast and simple approach is very powerful with good results in a variety of challenging environments, with both static and dynamic obstacles.