Journal of Field Robotics最新文献

{"title":"Improved Target Detection in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Search and Rescue via V-Circular Trajectory Optimization","authors":"ShuangShuang He,&nbsp;KaiYu Wang,&nbsp;ZhanZhan Shi,&nbsp;HongYing Qin,&nbsp;Guo Huang","doi":"10.1002/rob.70191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70191","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become indispensable in search and rescue (SAR) operations during emergencies such as natural disasters and maritime accidents, owing to their extended visual range and operational flexibility. However, UAV-captured images of ground targets are often subject to false positives and false negatives due to suboptimal image quality and target occlusion. In target detection models, detection accuracy is primarily reflected by detection confidence. While improving detection algorithms remains a common approach, this paper emphasizes the significant impact of flight trajectory on detection performance. Specifically, it addresses the trade-off between achieving a wide field of view at high altitudes and obtaining high-resolution images at low altitudes. By analyzing image data collected through circular and oblique descending trajectories, we investigate the effects of flight altitude and viewing angles on detection confidence and establish a Gaussian-based mathematical model to characterize its spatial distribution. To mitigate the probabilities of false negatives and false positives during detection, we propose an optimized flight trajectory planning method termed the V-circular. This approach involves the UAV descending obliquely toward a potential target, conducting circular flights at the lowest altitude to capture high-quality images from multiple viewing angles, and then ascending obliquely to rejoin its predefined trajectory. The V-circular method not only enhances image quality and detection confidence but also enhances the stability of recognition performance. Simulation and experiment results demonstrate that, compared to conventional flight trajectories, the V-circular significantly improves target detection accuracy and shortens SAR time. These advantages are particularly pronounced in missions demanding high precision. Consequently, the V-circular presents an innovative solution for enhancing UAV rescue performance in complex environments.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3264-3275"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148532848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Supernumerary Robotic Limbs: A Quantitative Analysis and Review of Design, Embodiment, and Future Challenges","authors":"Shufang Zheng,&nbsp;Min Li,&nbsp;Yang Zheng,&nbsp;Tangfei Tao,&nbsp;Jun Xie,&nbsp;Guanghua Xu","doi":"10.1002/rob.70185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70185","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Supernumerary robotic limbs are a new approach to field-oriented human augmentation, in which extra robotic limbs are attached to the human body to extend its workspace, add degrees of freedom, and support tasks beyond natural human abilities. In contrast to existing reviews that primarily focus on qualitative descriptions, this work provides a comprehensive, quantitative analysis of SRLs design and employment. For the first time, this review examines the interrelationships among SRL applications, targeted limbs, actuation, human movement intention recognition, environmental perception, feedback methods, and control strategies. The analysis adopts dual perspectives of application-driven and limb-targeted design, offering actionable insights for both laboratory research and field deployment. Additionally, methods for integrating SRLs into the human body schema are comprehensively explored. Finally, based on this quantitative analysis, this review identifies emerging trends and challenges, offering critical insights poised to accelerate the next wave of SRL development and push the boundaries of human augmentation.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3120-3145"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148534322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Novel Global Path Planning Algorithm for Underwater Vehicle Engineering Applications","authors":"Qiongxiao Liu,&nbsp;Xiaoting Xu,&nbsp;Qi Wang,&nbsp;Miao Wang,&nbsp;Bo He","doi":"10.1002/rob.70182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70182","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper presents an intelligent global path planning technology aimed at safely and intelligently navigating autonomous underwater vehicles to the operational area in specific engineering application scenarios, and reducing the cost of manual remote control. Firstly, a novel environment modeling method named SDS-DNP, which consists of the Satellite Map Semantic Segmentation Network (SatDeepSeg) and the Distance Normalization Processing Algorithm (DistNormProc), is introduced. This method swiftly converts satellite maps into high-precision safety factor maps, providing accurate environmental information for AUVs. Secondly, the AIW-CE-SMO (Adaptive Weight and Cooperative Evolution Spider Monkey Optimization) algorithm is proposed for global optimal path search. The simulation and lake experiment results show that the SDS-DNP method can accurately model the environment even when the contrast between islands and lakes in satellite maps is low. In addition, the proposed method takes only 0.84 s, while the grid method takes 3.96 s, which is based on the premise of selecting a larger grid. Its efficiency is 78.84% higher than the grid method. Compared with traditional intelligent algorithms, the AIW-CE-SMO algorithm proposed in this paper has an optimal path length standard deviation between 0.55 and 5.99, and a running time between 10 and 15 s, which proves the stability and high efficiency of the algorithm. In addition, the actual experiment in the lake proves the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3245-3263"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148532657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Virtual Elastic Tether: A New Approach for Multi-Agent Navigation in Confined Aquatic Environments","authors":"Kanzhong Yao,&nbsp;Xueliang Cheng,&nbsp;Keir Groves,&nbsp;Barry Lennox,&nbsp;Ognjen Marjanovic,&nbsp;Simon Watson","doi":"10.1002/rob.70195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70195","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Underwater navigation is a challenging area in the field of mobile robotics due to inherent constraints in self-localization and communication in underwater environments. Some of these challenges can be mitigated by using collaborative multi-agent teams. However, when applied underwater, the robustness of traditional multi-agent collaborative control approaches is highly limited due to the unavailability of reliable measurements. In this paper, the concept of a Virtual Elastic Tether (VET) is introduced. VET introduces the concept of a virtualised tether to connect multiple robots by innovatively using dual camera views for two-sided visual servoing. This enables individual robots to perform autonomous maneuvers while maintaining mutual proximity. The concept of VET is formulated and validated through an AUV-ASV multi-agent underwater system. Within this framework, a vision-based leader-follower approach for an autonomous underwater vehicle and an autonomous surface vehicle is developed. The proposed system has been tested in both simulation and physical experiments, with performance benchmarks against the traditional single Image-Based Visual Servoing approach. Results indicate that while the leader-follower formation of the baseline system failed under external perturbations, the VET-enhanced system's formation recovered to its pre-perturbation state within 5 s. Moreover, the VET-enhanced system successfully navigated a confined water pond where the baseline approach failed to perform adequately.</p>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3332-3350"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/rob.70195","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148532653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Single-Master Bimanual-Slaves Cooperative Teleoperation With Modified Damping Zeroing Neurodynamics","authors":"Chengzhi Wei,&nbsp;Peng Yu,&nbsp;Shuai Zhao,&nbsp;Ning Tan","doi":"10.1002/rob.70186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70186","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper proposes a modified-damping-zeroing-neurodynamics-based single-master bimanual-slaves cooperative teleoperation system with autonomous orientation regulation and an efficient and operator-friendly coordination strategy. The first contribution of this paper is to extend damping-zeroing-neurodynamics (DampZND) to orientation regulation and for the first time to integrate the model-less modified DampZND to single-master bimanual-slaves teleoperation system. The second contribution is to propose a single-master bimanual-slaves cooperative teleoperation system to enable the operators to teleoperate bimanual-slaves synchronously to achieve cooperative motion while operating a single-master and monitoring a single slave. The effectiveness of the proposed bimanual teleoperation system has been demonstrated in simulation and experiment with respect to trajectory tracking, autonomous orientation regulation and coordination strategy.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3103-3119"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148534507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Key Components Fault Diagnosis Method Based on Multisource Information Multilevel Fusion With Fault Feature Exchange","authors":"Tianhao Gao,&nbsp;Ke Zhang,&nbsp;Xu Bai,&nbsp;Shijie Wang","doi":"10.1002/rob.70181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70181","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In order to enhance the accuracy and stability of fault diagnosis in autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), this paper proposes an AUV fault diagnosis method based on multisource information multilevel fusion with fault feature exchange. This method consists of three main components. First, multiple convolutional neural networks (CNN) are used to extract and analyze the fault features contained in the multisource signals to obtain the judgment of each signal source for various types of faults, namely the credibility value of the evidence body. Second, an fusion module is designed innovatively to share and combine generic fault features from multiple signal sources, facilitating mutual correction and supplementation of fault features from different branches, thus improving comprehensive fault recognition, and the fusion module is trained using a meta-learning approach, where reinforcement learning (policy gradient) is incorporated to optimize the controller and adaptively obtain the optimal fusion coefficients, thereby enhancing the adaptability and performance of the model. Finally, the weighted Dempster-Shafer evidence theory is proposed to fuse the belief values of various pieces of evidence to obtain the final decision result. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high precision and stability in AUV fault detection and exhibits strong fault tolerance in the presence of data missing.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3062-3079"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148534171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Enabling Under Ice Glider Operations: A Backseat Driver Approach","authors":"Yaomei Wang,&nbsp;Benjamin Allsup,&nbsp;Georgios Salavasidis,&nbsp;Stephen Woodward,&nbsp;Adeniyi Adenaya,&nbsp;Mike Smart,&nbsp;Alexis Johnson,&nbsp;Felipe Marques Dos Santos,&nbsp;Jake Ludgate,&nbsp;Daniel Matterson,&nbsp;Alvaro Lorenzo,&nbsp;J. Alexander Brearley,&nbsp;Alexander Brian Phillips","doi":"10.1002/rob.70193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70193","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Polar Oceans are key locations for forcing global ocean circulation, influencing both global climate and biogeochemical cycles. Due to restricted access to these seasonally and perennially ice-covered regions, these areas are severely undersampled. As such, there is an ongoing demand to expand the capabilities of marine robotics to enable observations here, especially during the winter months when many of the most important climate processes (e.g., dense water formation and carbon sequestration) occur. Underwater gliders are increasingly required to operate in ice-covered regions, both for short-term missions lasting days and long-term excursions extending over several months. The standard control system of Slocum gliders, while equipped with ice coping behaviors, is not designed for deliberate under-ice missions. To enhance the capabilities of Slocum gliders, the authors present a backseat driver system coupled with an upward-looking altimeter designed to enable more complex missions and ensure safe surfacing clear of the ice. The backseat driver is an additional control system that enables advanced decision-making using a combination of the glider's own state information and scientific sensor measurements. This backseat driver allows gliders to (1) change heading adaptively, (2) sense the presence of and avoid collisions with ice, (3) customize surfacing considering ice extent, and (4) trigger contingency behaviors in the event of faults beneath the ice. The developed backseat driver was tested through lab and field trials and has been deployed for a long-term deployment in the Weddell Sea as part of the UK's National Capability BIOPOLE program, with short-duration under-ice missions.</p>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3292-3311"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/rob.70193","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148532851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Coverage Route Planner of Ground Rovers Considering Hilly Terrains","authors":"Jonghoek Kim","doi":"10.1002/rob.70190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70190","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper considers the exploration of a ground rover in a hilly workspace cluttered with untraversable obstacles. Let coverage route planning indicate the route planning of the ground rover, so that it moves to visit all traversable points in the given cluttered workspace. The coverage route planner is required for performing autonomous search operations, such as intruder search. A ground rover cannot cross obstacles (e.g., steep valleys or lakes), and the rover can become unstable while consuming a large energy, as it moves on a hill that is too steep. Thus, low-slope coverage route planning considering terrain information is necessary. It is desirable that the rover covers the given hilly workspace as wide as possible. For instance, considering a ground rover for search operation, it is desirable that the rover covers a wide area including the top of a mountain. To the best of our knowledge, our study is novel in addressing a low-slope coverage route planner for covering a given cluttered workspace as wide as possible, while considering terrain information. Through MATLAB-based simulations, this study verifies the efficacy of the proposed coverage route plan method.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3162-3174"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148534324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mimic Grasping: A Modular and Flexible Programming-by-Demonstration Robotic Grasping Solution","authors":"João P. C. de Souza,&nbsp;Luís F. Rocha,&nbsp;A. Paulo Moreira,&nbsp;José Boaventura-Cunha","doi":"10.1002/rob.70188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70188","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Industry 5.0 concept guides the industry to the premise of sustainability, resilience and human-centric solutions. The last related pillar tries to create solutions to empower the people in production line processes since solutions should be designed to be easy to use and easy to learn without discarding the working people. In this regard, it's natural that robots become closer to humans in industrial applications where it is possible to absorb human-machine qualities. Robotic grasping has widespread application with a wide range of applicability. However, engineers and shop-floor operators spend time finding a fast response solution when the production demand changes. Aiming to create a tool to help this procedure in a human-centred fashion, the current paper proposes a programming-by-demonstration solution that is easy to use, reuse, adapt, and increment with its modular design.</p>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3175-3191"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/rob.70188","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148534447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Underwater Image Enhancement Based on Accelerated Conditional Diffusion Probabilistic Model","authors":"Baizhong Chen,&nbsp;Chonglei Wang,&nbsp;Chunyu Guo,&nbsp;Yumin Su","doi":"10.1002/rob.70192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.70192","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Underwater images often suffer from significant color distortion and blurred features due to optical loss and dispersion. This degradation can hinder tasks such as underwater object detection. To address this issue, this study proposes an underwater image enhancement (UIE) model based on an accelerated conditional diffusion probabilistic model (UW-DDPM). This model is a rapid denoising diffusion probabilistic model designed specifically for UIE. The UW-DDPM directly establishes a diffusion generation relationship between degraded and reference images based on the conditional diffusion probabilistic model (CDDPM) redesigning an implicit accuracy diffusion model for direct image translation, which not only improves the quality of image enhancement but also addresses the slow sampling speed issue of the CDDPM. Simultaneously, speed-UIE was designed for processing training on conditional images, which is a lightweight model network. Specifically, we combined a pre-trained diffusion model with a lightweight UIE algorithm, using speed-UIE to guide conditional generation. The diffusion prior mitigates the drawbacks of poor-quality synthetic images, whereas the lightweight model addresses the issue of the diffusion model lacking high-quality prior conditions, resulting in higher-quality images. Ablation experiments demonstrate that enhancing the conditional images before inputting them improves the visual quality of the output images. Extensive experiments on publicly available UIE datasets have verified that the UW-DDPM outperforms existing traditional and deep learning-based methods in terms of full-reference, no-reference image quality assessment metrics, and generation speed. The UW-DDPM and other state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods are used to compare the image enhancement experiments of underwater robots in the field. The UW-DDPM still demonstrated excellent robustness in practical applications.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"43 5","pages":"3276-3291"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148532651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}