{"title":"Efficient Surfel-Based SLAM using 3D Laser Range Data in Urban Environments","authors":"J. Behley, C. Stachniss","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.016","url":null,"abstract":"—Accurate and reliable localization and mapping is a fundamental building block for most autonomous robots. For this purpose, we propose a novel, dense approach to laser- based mapping that operates on three-dimensional point clouds obtained from rotating laser sensors. We construct a surfel-based map and estimate the changes in the robot’s pose by exploiting the projective data association between the current scan and a rendered model view from that surfel map. For detection and verification of a loop closure, we leverage the map representation to compose a virtual view of the map before a potential loop closure, which enables a more robust detection even with low overlap between the scan and the already mapped areas. Our approach is efficient and enables real-time capable registration. At the same time, it is able to detect loop closures and to perform map updates in an online fashion. Our experiments show that we are able to estimate globally consistent maps in large scale environments solely based on point cloud data.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127112201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Push-Net: Deep Planar Pushing for Objects with Unknown Physical Properties","authors":"Jueya Li, Wee Sun Lee, David Hsu","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.024","url":null,"abstract":"This paper introduces Push-Net, a deep recurrent neural network model, which enables a robot to push objects of unknown physical properties for re-positioning and re-orientation, using only visual camera images as input. The unknown physical properties is a major challenge for pushing. Push-Net overcomes the challenge by tracking a history of push interactions with an LSTM module and training an auxiliary objective function that estimates an object’s center of mass. We trained Push-Net entirely in simulation and tested it extensively on many different objects in both simulation and on two real robots, a Fetch arm and a Kinova MICO arm. Experiments suggest that Push-Net is robust and efficient. It achieved over 97% success rate in simulation on average and succeeded in all real robot experiments with a small number of pushes.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131888348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dual-Speed MR Safe Pneumatic Stepper Motors","authors":"V. Groenhuis, F. Siepel, S. Stramigioli","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.030","url":null,"abstract":"In breast cancer detection it is essential to perform precise interventions to determine the diagnosis. Robotic systems actuated by MR safe pneumatic stepper motors could improve accuracy to target the tumor. The achievable accuracy or speed is limited due to long pneumatic tubes connecting the motors to the electromagnetic valves in the control room. This paper presents the design of two dual-speed stepper motors in order to solve this limitation. The linear motor measures 50x32x14 mm (excluding racks) and has step sizes 1.7 mm and 0.3 mm. The maximum speed under load is 20 mm/s, measured force is 24 N and positioning accuracy is 0.1 mm. The rotational motor measures O30x32 mm (excluding axles) and has step sizes 10° and 12.9°. Under load its maximum angular speed is 229 °/s or 38.2 RPM, maximum torque is 74 N mm and positioning accuracy is 1°. By operating the valves in a coordinated way high-speed and precise position control can be achieved. With these specifications the motors have high potential to actuate MR safe surgical robots.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"85 37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130915931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creating Foldable Polyhedral Nets Using Evolution Control","authors":"Y. Hao, Yunhyeong Kim, Zhonghua Xi, Jyh-Ming Lien","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115849824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Petter Nilsson, S. Haesaert, Rohan Thakker, K. Otsu, C. Vasile, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, R. Murray, A. Ames
{"title":"Toward Specification-Guided Active Mars Exploration for Cooperative Robot Teams","authors":"Petter Nilsson, S. Haesaert, Rohan Thakker, K. Otsu, C. Vasile, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, R. Murray, A. Ames","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.047","url":null,"abstract":"As a step towards achieving autonomy in space exploration missions, we consider a cooperative robotics system consisting of a copter and a rover. The goal of the copter is to explore an unknown environment so as to maximize knowledge about a science mission expressed in linear temporal logic that is to be executed by the rover. We model environmental uncertainty as a belief space Markov decision process and formulate the problem as a two-step stochastic dynamic program that we solve in a way that leverages the decomposed nature of the overall system. We demonstrate in simulations that the robot team makes intelligent decisions in the face of uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125161137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Autonomous Adaptive Modification of Unstructured Environments","authors":"M. Saboia, Vivek Thangavelu, W. Gosrich, N. Napp","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.070","url":null,"abstract":"We present and validate a property-driven autonomous system that modifies its environment to achieve and maintain navigability over a highly irregular 3-dimensional terrain. In our approach we use decision procedures that tie building actions to the terrain model, giving rise to adaptive and robust building behavior. The building algorithm is driven by continuous evaluation and reaction to terrain properties, rather than relying on a structure blueprint. This capability is essential in robotic systems that operate in unstructured outdoor or remote environments, either on their own or as part of a team. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by running a lowcost robot system that can build with compliant bags in a variety of irregular terrains.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"259 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115259964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Handling implicit and explicit constraints in manipulation planning","authors":"F. Lamiraux, Joseph Mirabel","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.018","url":null,"abstract":"This paper deals with manipulation planning. The problem consists in automatically computing paths for a system composed of one or several robots, with one or several grippers and one or several objects that can be grasped and moved by the robots. The problem gives rise to constraints that can be either explicit – an object is in a gripper – or implicit – an object is hold by two different grippers. This paper proposes an algorithm that handles such sets of constraints and solves them in an explicit way as much as possible. When all constraints cannot be made explicit, substitution is operated between variables to make the resulting implicit constraint with as few variables as possible. The manipulation planning problem is modelled as a constraint graph that stores all the constraints of the problem.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127296154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Grady Williams, Brian Goldfain, P. Drews, Kamil Saigol, James M. Rehg, Evangelos A. Theodorou
{"title":"Robust Sampling Based Model Predictive Control with Sparse Objective Information","authors":"Grady Williams, Brian Goldfain, P. Drews, Kamil Saigol, James M. Rehg, Evangelos A. Theodorou","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.042","url":null,"abstract":"—We present an algorithmic framework for stochastic model predictive control that is able to optimize non-linear systems with cost functions that have sparse, discontinuous gradient information. The proposed framework combines the benefits of sampling-based model predictive control with linearization-based trajectory optimization methods. The resulting algorithm consists of a novel utilization of Tube-based model predictive control. We demonstrate robust algorithmic performance on a variety of simulated tasks","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"247 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114004577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael Watterson, Sikang Liu, Ke Sun, Trey Smith, Vijay R. Kumar
{"title":"Trajectory Optimization On Manifolds with Applications to SO(3) and R3XS2","authors":"Michael Watterson, Sikang Liu, Ke Sun, Trey Smith, Vijay R. Kumar","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.023","url":null,"abstract":"Manifolds are used in almost all robotics applications even if they are not explicitly modeled. We propose a differential geometric approach for optimizing trajectories on a Riemannian manifold with obstacles. The optimization problem depends on a metric and collision function specific to a manifold. We then propose our Safe Corridor on Manifolds (SCM) method of computationally optimizing trajectories for robotics applications via a constrained optimization problem. Our method does not need equality constraints, which eliminates the need to project back to a feasible manifold during optimization. We then demonstrate how this algorithm works on an example problem on SO(3) and a perception-aware planning example for visualinertially guided robots navigating in 3 dimensions. Formulating field of view constraints naturally results in modeling with the manifold R × S which cannot be modeled as a Lie group.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133994193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
E. Kayacan, Zhong-Zhong Zhang, Girish V. Chowdhary
{"title":"Embedded High Precision Control and Corn Stand Counting Algorithms for an Ultra-Compact 3D Printed Field Robot","authors":"E. Kayacan, Zhong-Zhong Zhang, Girish V. Chowdhary","doi":"10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15607/RSS.2018.XIV.036","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents embedded high precision control and corn stands counting algorithms for a low-cost, ultracompact 3D printed and autonomous field robot for agricultural operations. Currently, plant traits, such as emergence rate, biomass, vigor and stand counting are measured manually. This is highly labor intensive and prone to errors. The robot, termed TerraSentia, is designed to automate the measurement of plant traits for efficient phenotyping as an alternative to manual measurements. In this paper, we formulate a Nonlinear Moving Horizon Estimator (NMHE) that identifies key terrain parameters using onboard robot sensors and a learning-based Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) that ensures high precision path tracking in the presence of unknown wheel-terrain interaction. Moreover, we develop a machine vision algorithm to enable TerraSentia to count corn stands by driving through the fields autonomously. We present results of an extensive field-test study that shows that (i) the robot can track paths precisely with less than 5 cm error so that the robot is less likely to damage plants, and (ii) the machine vision algorithm is robust against interferences from leaves and weeds, and the system has been verified in corn fields at the growth stage of V4, V6, VT, R2, and R6 from five different locations. The robot predictions agree well with the ground truth with countrobot = 0.96× counthuman + 0.85 and correlation coefficient R = 0.96.","PeriodicalId":447707,"journal":{"name":"Robotics: Science and Systems XIV","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123699372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}