T. A. Ciarfuglia, G. Costante, P. Valigi, E. Ricci
{"title":"A discriminative approach for appearance based loop closing","authors":"T. A. Ciarfuglia, G. Costante, P. Valigi, E. Ricci","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6385654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6385654","url":null,"abstract":"The place recognition module is a fundamental component in SLAM systems, as incorrect loop closures may result in severe errors in trajectory estimation. In the case of appearance-based methods the bag-of-words approach is typically employed for recognizing locations. This paper introduces a novel algorithm for improving loop closures detection performance by adopting a set of visual words weights, learned offline accordingly to a discriminative criterion. The proposed weights learning approach, based on the large margin paradigm, can be used for generic similarity functions and relies on an efficient online leaning algorithm in the training phase. As the computed weights are usually very sparse, a gain in terms of computational cost at recognition time is also obtained. Our experiments, conducted on publicly available datasets, demonstrate that the discriminative weights lead to loop closures detection results that are more accurate than the traditional bag-of-words method and that our place recognition approach is competitive with state-of-the-art methods.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"10 1","pages":"3837-3843"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82872751","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":"Natural feature based localization in forested environments","authors":"Meng Song, Fengchi Sun, K. Iagnemma","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6385542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6385542","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a new feature based scan matching method for solving 6D localization problem in forested environments. The proposed registration process includes two steps. First, the largest group of approximately parallel tree trunk features is utilized to align successive scans along the five dimensions except z direction. Tree correspondences are established by matching point patterns which are abstracted from the position relationships of trees. The optimal 5D transformation is thus determined based on the axes of two key tree pairs which are selected by evaluating their ability of tree alignment. Second, we assign the ground points of two scans into a grid of cells, and minimize z-direction difference of points in shared cells. The experimental results on data collected in real forested environments have demonstrated the effectiveness of this method.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"26 1","pages":"3384-3390"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82800316","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}
Carlo Masone, A. Franchi, H. Bülthoff, P. Giordano
{"title":"Interactive planning of persistent trajectories for human-assisted navigation of mobile robots","authors":"Carlo Masone, A. Franchi, H. Bülthoff, P. Giordano","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6386171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6386171","url":null,"abstract":"This work extends the framework of bilateral shared control of mobile robots with the aim of increasing the robot autonomy and decreasing the operator commitment. We consider persistent autonomous behaviors where a cyclic motion must be executed by the robot. The human operator is in charge of modifying online some geometric properties of the desired path. This is then autonomously processed by the robot in order to produce an actual path guaranteeing: i) tracking feasibility, ii) collision avoidance with obstacles, iii) closeness to the desired path set by the human operator, and iv) proximity to some points of interest. A force feedback is implemented to inform the human operator of the global deformation of the path rather than using the classical mismatch between desired and executed motion commands. Physically-based simulations, with human/hardware-in-the-loop and a quadrotor UAV as robotic platform, demonstrate the feasibility of the method.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"101 1","pages":"2641-2648"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86775648","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}
S. Niekum, Sarah Osentoski, G. Konidaris, A. Barto
{"title":"Learning and generalization of complex tasks from unstructured demonstrations","authors":"S. Niekum, Sarah Osentoski, G. Konidaris, A. Barto","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6386006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6386006","url":null,"abstract":"We present a novel method for segmenting demonstrations, recognizing repeated skills, and generalizing complex tasks from unstructured demonstrations. This method combines many of the advantages of recent automatic segmentation methods for learning from demonstration into a single principled, integrated framework. Specifically, we use the Beta Process Autoregressive Hidden Markov Model and Dynamic Movement Primitives to learn and generalize a multi-step task on the PR2 mobile manipulator and to demonstrate the potential of our framework to learn a large library of skills over time.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"79 1","pages":"5239-5246"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89060823","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}
Takahide Sato, Takeshi Kano, R. Kobayashi, A. Ishiguro
{"title":"Snake-like robot driven by decentralized control scheme for scaffold-based locomotion","authors":"Takahide Sato, Takeshi Kano, R. Kobayashi, A. Ishiguro","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6385930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6385930","url":null,"abstract":"Snakes actively utilize terrain irregularities and attain propulsion force by pushing their bodies against scaffolds. The objective of this study is to understand the mechanism underlying this locomotion on the basis of a synthetic approach. Our previous control scheme of a snake-like robot, in which the curvature derivative control method is combined with a reflexive mechanism using local pressures on the body wall, could not fully reproduce innate behavior of real snakes. In this study, we improve our previous control scheme. We show that the locomotion of a simulated robot with the improved control scheme is surprisingly in good agreement with the locomotion of a real snake. We also present a physical robot that we are currently developing.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"61 1","pages":"132-138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91486457","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}
Chengzhi Hu, C. Tercero, S. Ikeda, T. Fukuda, M. Nakajima, F. Arai, M. Negoro
{"title":"Magnetic sugar particles for particulate leaching in fabrication of sheet-like scaffold","authors":"Chengzhi Hu, C. Tercero, S. Ikeda, T. Fukuda, M. Nakajima, F. Arai, M. Negoro","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6386023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6386023","url":null,"abstract":"Magnetic field has been used for manipulation of micro-robots; in this research we use it for scaffold fabrication. Magnetic sugar particle (MSP) was used as porogen to control pore size, pore structure and pore density in the scaffold. We studied the influence of the strength of magnetic fields for controlling the coating thickness of unmagnetized MSPs during the fabrication of sheet-like scaffolds. The experimental relationship between magnetic flux density and the thickness of MSP layer was illustrated. Furthermore we investigated the infiltration capacity of poly(L-lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) (PLCL) which was used as scaffold material on the MSP clusters. 5% and 10% PLCL solutions were employed in the experiments. After polymer casting and removal of the sugar template, spherical pores were generated inside scaffold, the thickness evaluation of a single layer scaffold was carried out and the cytocompatibility experiment of NdFeB powder used in fabrication of MSP was confirmed with human umbilical vein endothelial cells.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"46 7","pages":"3229-3234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91503977","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":"Six degree-of-freedom haptic simulation of sharp geometric features using a hybrid sphere-tree model","authors":"Ge Yu, Dangxiao Wang, Yuru Zhang, Xin Zhang","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6386129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6386129","url":null,"abstract":"Subtle force feelings caused by contacts at sharp geometric features are necessary to achieve high-fidelity haptic rendering. It is a challenging problem to achieve six degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) haptic simulation with sharp features for multi-region contacts scenario. We propose a configuration-based optimization method using a hybrid sphere-tree model to compute constraint-based collision response. Based on the variance of dihedral angle between adjacent triangles, an original triangle mesh of the simulated object is segmented into a hybrid sphere-tree model, i.e. a hierarchical sphere-tree for global shape and several linear-lists of spheres for local areas with sharp features. In each local area with sharp features, we first identify those spheres which radius is larger than a pre-defined perceptual threshold. Then these spheres are divided into a linear list of smaller spheres by a splitting method. The experiment results on a sphere-cube interaction and a spline-shaped peg-hole interaction validate that the proposed method can simulate a subtle force direction change when sliding contact occurs across the sharp edges. Non-penetration between the two objects can be maintained for multi-region contacts scenario. The haptic rendering rate is over 1kHz and the interaction is stable.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"54 1","pages":"3314-3319"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90059737","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":"Trajectory optimization for domains with contacts using inverse dynamics","authors":"Tom Erez, E. Todorov","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6386181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6386181","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents an algorithm for direct trajectory optimization in domains with contact. Since contacts and other unilateral constraints may introduce non-smooth dynamics, many standard algorithms of optimal control and reinforcement learning cannot be directly applied to such domains. We use a smooth contact model that can compute inverse dynamics through the contact, thereby avoiding hybrid representation of the non-smooth contact state. This allows us to formulate an unconstrained, continuous trajectory optimization problem, which can be solved using standard optimization tools. We demonstrate our approach by optimizing a running gait for a 31-dimensional simulated humanoid. The resulting gait is demonstrated in a movie attached as supplementary material. The optimization result exhibits a synchronous motion of the arm and the opposite leg, eliminating undesired angular momentum; this is a key feature of bipedal running, and its emergence attests to the power of the optimization process.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"32 1","pages":"4914-4919"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90189597","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":"Multi-robot exploration and rendezvous on graphs","authors":"Malika Meghjani, G. Dudek","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6386049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6386049","url":null,"abstract":"We address the problem of arranging a meeting (or rendezvous) between two or more robots in an unknown bounded topological environment, starting at unknown locations, without any communication. The goal is to rendezvous in minimum time such that the robots can share resources for performing any global task. We specifically consider a global exploration task executed by two or more robots. Each robot explores the environment simultaneously, for a specified time, then selects potential rendezvous locations, where it expects to find other robots, and visits them. We propose a ranking criterion for selecting the order in which potential rendezvous locations will be visited. This ranking criterion associates a cost for visiting a rendezvous location and gives an expected reward of finding other agents. We evaluate the time taken to rendezvous by varying a set of conditions including: world size, number of robots, starting location of each robot and the presence of sensor noise. We present simulation results to quantify the effect of the aforementioned factors on the rendezvous time.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"106 1","pages":"5270-5276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90477963","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":"Passive quadrupedal bounding with a segmented flexible torso","authors":"Qu Cao, I. Poulakakis","doi":"10.1109/IROS.2012.6386183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6386183","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the effect of torso flexibility on the dynamics of quadrupedal running with a bounding gait. A reduced-order passive and conservative model with a segmented flexible torso and compliant legs is introduced to study torso-leg coordination. Numerical return map studies reveal that a large variety of cyclic bounding motions can be realized passively, as a natural mode of the system. Despite the simplicity of the model, the resulting motions correspond to torso bending movements that resemble those in galloping mammals without explicit reliance on the fine structural and morphological details. This way, the proposed model offers a unifying description of the task-level locomotion behavior, and can be used to inform feedback control synthesis by serving as a behavioral target for the control system.","PeriodicalId":6358,"journal":{"name":"2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems","volume":"5 1","pages":"2484-2489"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80733129","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}