Vision And Navigation

This book presents a variety of perspectives on vision-based applications. These contributions are focused on optoelectronic sensors, 3D & 2D machine vision technologies, robot navigation, control schemes, motion controllers, intelligent algorithms and vision systems. The authors focus on applications of unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous and mobile robots, industrial inspection applications and structural health monitoring. Recent advanced research in measurement and others areas where 3D & 2D machine vision and machine control play an important role, as well as surveys and reviews about vision-based applications. These topics are of interest to readers from diverse areas, including electrical, electronics and computer engineering, technologists, students and non-specialist readers. • Presents current research in image and signal sensors, methods, and 3D & 2D technologies in vision-based theories and applications; • Discusses applications such as daily use devices including robotics, detection, tracking and stereoscopic vision systems, pose estimation, avoidance of objects, control and data exchange for navigation, and aerial imagery processing; • Includes research contributions in scientific, industrial, and civil applications.

This monograph is devoted to the theory and development of autonomous navigation of mobile robots using computer vision based sensing mechanism. The conventional robot navigation systems, utilizing traditional sensors like ultrasonic, IR, GPS, laser sensors etc., suffer several drawbacks related to either the physical limitations of the sensor or incur high cost. Vision sensing has emerged as a popular alternative where cameras can be used to reduce the overall cost, maintaining high degree of intelligence, flexibility and robustness. This book includes a detailed description of several new approaches for real life vision based autonomous navigation algorithms and SLAM. It presents the concept of how subgoal based goal-driven navigation can be carried out using vision sensing. The development concept of vision based robots for path/line tracking using fuzzy logic is presented, as well as how a low-cost robot can be indigenously developed in the laboratory with microcontroller based sensor systems. The book describes successful implementation of integration of low-cost, external peripherals, with off-the-shelf procured robots. An important highlight of the book is that it presents a detailed, step-by-step sample demonstration of how vision-based navigation modules can be actually implemented in real life, under 32-bit Windows environment. The book also discusses the concept of implementing vision based SLAM employing a two camera based system.

Mobile robots are playing an increasingly important role in our world. Remotely operated vehicles are in everyday use for hazardous tasks such as charting and cleaning up hazardous waste spills, construction work of tunnels and high rise buildings, and underwater inspection of oil drilling platforms in the ocean. A whole host of further applications, however, beckons robots capable of autonomous operation without or with very little intervention of human operators. Such robots of the future will explore distant planets, map the ocean floor, study the flow of pollutants and carbon dioxide through our atmosphere and oceans, work in underground mines, and perform other jobs we cannot even imagine; perhaps even drive our cars and walk our dogs. The biggest technical obstacles to building mobile robots are vision and navigation-enabling a robot to see the world around it, to plan and follow a safe path through its environment, and to execute its tasks. At the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, we are studying those problems both in isolation and by building complete systems. Since 1980, we have developed a series of small indoor mobile robots, some experimental, and others for practical applicationr Our outdoor autonomous mobile robot research started in 1984, navigating through the campus sidewalk network using a small outdoor vehicle called the Terregator. In 1985, with the advent of DARPA's Autonomous Land Vehicle Project, we constructed a computer controlled van with onboard sensors and researchers. In the fall of 1987, we began the development of a six-legged Planetary Rover.

How the shift from montage to navigation alters the way images--and art--operate as models of political action and modes of political intervention. Navigation begins where the map becomes indecipherable. Navigation operates on a plane of immanence in constant motion. Instead of framing or representing the world, the art of navigation continuously updates and adjusts multiple frames from viewpoints within and beyond the world. Navigation is thus an operational practice of synthesizing various orders of magnitude. Only a few weeks prior to his untimely death in 2014, Harun Farocki briefly referred to navigation as a contemporary challenge to montage--editing distinct sections of film into a continuous sequence--as the dominant paradigm of techno-political visuality. For Farocki, the computer-animated, navigable images that constitute the twenty-first century's "ruling class of images" call for new tools of analysis, prompting him to ask: How does the shift from montage to navigation alter the way images--and art--operate as models of political action and modes of political intervention? Contributors Ramon Amaro, James Bridle, Maïté Chénière, Kodwo Eshun, Anselm Franke, Jennifer Gabrys, Tom Holert, Inhabitants, Doreen Mende, Matteo Pasquinelli, Laura Lo Presti, Patricia Reed, Nikolay Smirnov, Hito Steyerl, Oraib Toukan, and Brian Kuan Wood.

Quad Rotorcraft Control develops original control methods for the navigation and hovering flight of an autonomous mini-quad-rotor robotic helicopter. These methods use an imaging system and a combination of inertial and altitude sensors to localize and guide the movement of the unmanned aerial vehicle relative to its immediate environment. The history, classification and applications of UAVs are introduced, followed by a description of modelling techniques for quad-rotors and the experimental platform itself. A control strategy for the improvement of attitude stabilization in quad-rotors is then proposed and tested in real-time experiments. The strategy, based on the use low-cost components and with experimentally-established robustness, avoids drift in the UAV’s angular position by the addition of an internal control loop to each electronic speed controller ensuring that, during hovering flight, all four motors turn at almost the same speed. The quad-rotor’s Euler angles being very close to the origin, other sensors like GPS or image-sensing equipment can be incorporated to perform autonomous positioning or trajectory-tracking tasks. Two vision-based strategies, each designed to deal with a specific kind of mission, are introduced and separately tested. The first stabilizes the quad-rotor over a landing pad on the ground; it extracts the 3-dimensional position using homography estimation and derives translational velocity by optical flow calculation. The second combines colour-extraction and line-detection algorithms to control the quad-rotor’s 3-dimensional position and achieves forward velocity regulation during a road-following task. In order to estimate the translational-dynamical characteristics of the quad-rotor (relative position and translational velocity) as they evolve within a building or other unstructured, GPS-deprived environment, imaging, inertial and altitude sensors are combined in a state observer. The text give the reader a current view of the problems encountered in UAV control, specifically those relating to quad-rotor flying machines and it will interest researchers and graduate students working in that field. The vision-based control strategies presented help the reader to a better understanding of how an imaging system can be used to obtain the information required for performance of the hovering and navigation tasks ubiquitous in rotored UAV operation.

The International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) is a series of bi-annual meetings which are organized in a rotating fashion around North America, Europe and Asia/Oceania. The goal of ISER is to provide a forum for research in robotics that focuses on the novelty of theoretical contributions validated by experimental results. This unique reference presents the latest advances in robotics, with ideas that are conceived conceptually and have been explored experimentally.

Using a fail-safe compass, Scott led his team of adventurers to the end of the earth and to inglorious deaths. They would have lived if only he, their leader, had known the Law of Navigation.

This monograph is motivated by a significant number of vision based algorithms for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) that were developed during research and development projects. Vision information is utilized in various applications like visual surveillance, aim systems, recognition systems, collision-avoidance systems and navigation. This book presents practical applications, examples and recent challenges in these mentioned application fields. The aim of the book is to create a valuable source of information for researchers and constructors of solutions utilizing vision from UAV. Scientists, researchers and graduate students involved in computer vision, image processing, data fusion, control algorithms, mechanics, data mining, navigation and IC can find many valuable, useful and practical suggestions and solutions. The latest challenges for vision based systems are also presented.