Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/17298806221108603
Zhiyu Zhou, Jiangfei Ji, Yaming Wang, Zefei Zhu, Ji Chen
To solve the problems of slow convergence speed, poor robustness, and complex calculation of image Jacobian matrix in image-based visual servo system, a hybrid regression model based on multiple adaptive regression spline and online sequential extreme learning machine is proposed to predict the product of pseudo inverse of image Jacobian matrix and image feature error and online sequential extreme learning machine is proposed to predict the product of pseudo inverse of image Jacobian matrix and image feature error. In MOS-ELM, MARS is used to evaluate the importance of input features and select specific features as the input features of online sequential extreme learning machine, so as to obtain better generalization performance and increase the stability of regression model. Finally, the method is applied to the speed predictive control of the manipulator end effector controlled by image-based visual servo and the prediction of machine learning data sets. Experimental results show that the algorithm has high prediction accuracy on machine learning data sets and good control performance in image-based visual servo.
{"title":"Hybrid regression model via multivariate adaptive regression spline and online sequential extreme learning machine and its application in vision servo system","authors":"Zhiyu Zhou, Jiangfei Ji, Yaming Wang, Zefei Zhu, Ji Chen","doi":"10.1177/17298806221108603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221108603","url":null,"abstract":"To solve the problems of slow convergence speed, poor robustness, and complex calculation of image Jacobian matrix in image-based visual servo system, a hybrid regression model based on multiple adaptive regression spline and online sequential extreme learning machine is proposed to predict the product of pseudo inverse of image Jacobian matrix and image feature error and online sequential extreme learning machine is proposed to predict the product of pseudo inverse of image Jacobian matrix and image feature error. In MOS-ELM, MARS is used to evaluate the importance of input features and select specific features as the input features of online sequential extreme learning machine, so as to obtain better generalization performance and increase the stability of regression model. Finally, the method is applied to the speed predictive control of the manipulator end effector controlled by image-based visual servo and the prediction of machine learning data sets. Experimental results show that the algorithm has high prediction accuracy on machine learning data sets and good control performance in image-based visual servo.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45771741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/17298806221098506
Jing Yang, Haozhe Li, Zhou Jiang, Dong Zhang, Xiaoli Yue, S. Du
Point cloud semantic segmentation based on deep learning methods is still a challenge due to the irregularity of structures and uncertainty of sampling. Color information often contains a lot of prior information, whereas the existing methods do not attach more importance to it. To deal with this problem, we propose a novel hard attention mechanism, named color-guided convolution. This convolution operator learns the correlation between geometric and color information by reordering the local points with color-indicated vectors. In addition, the global feature fusion is proposed to rectify features selected by the feature selecting unit. Experimental results and comparisons with recent methods demonstrate the superiority of our approach.
{"title":"Color guided convolutional network for point cloud semantic segmentation","authors":"Jing Yang, Haozhe Li, Zhou Jiang, Dong Zhang, Xiaoli Yue, S. Du","doi":"10.1177/17298806221098506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221098506","url":null,"abstract":"Point cloud semantic segmentation based on deep learning methods is still a challenge due to the irregularity of structures and uncertainty of sampling. Color information often contains a lot of prior information, whereas the existing methods do not attach more importance to it. To deal with this problem, we propose a novel hard attention mechanism, named color-guided convolution. This convolution operator learns the correlation between geometric and color information by reordering the local points with color-indicated vectors. In addition, the global feature fusion is proposed to rectify features selected by the feature selecting unit. Experimental results and comparisons with recent methods demonstrate the superiority of our approach.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46997482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/17298806221081643
Xia Li, Bin Zhang, Hongying Zhang, Ronghua Xu, Yalei Bai
The present study envisages the development of an improved line features method to accurately estimate the attitude of the airdrop cargo platform during airdrop landing. Therefore, this article uses the geometric characteristics of the line features to improve the traditional line features extraction and removes the locally dense line features in the image, which greatly reduces the number of line features in the image. Then, the improved random sample consensus is used to remove the mismatching of line features, which improves the real-time performance of the algorithm and the accuracy of the attitude angle, and makes up for the problem of difficult extraction of point features or low matching accuracy in the airdrop environment. Finally, a constraint equation is established for the line features that are successfully matched, and using homography to obtain attitude of the airdrop cargo platform. This article also meets the requirements of accurate calculation attitude of airdrop cargo platform. The experiment shows the significance and feasibility of the airdrop cargo platform heading and attitude calculation technology based on the line feature, and it has a good application prospect.
{"title":"Research on solving heading attitude of airdrop cargo platform based on line features","authors":"Xia Li, Bin Zhang, Hongying Zhang, Ronghua Xu, Yalei Bai","doi":"10.1177/17298806221081643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221081643","url":null,"abstract":"The present study envisages the development of an improved line features method to accurately estimate the attitude of the airdrop cargo platform during airdrop landing. Therefore, this article uses the geometric characteristics of the line features to improve the traditional line features extraction and removes the locally dense line features in the image, which greatly reduces the number of line features in the image. Then, the improved random sample consensus is used to remove the mismatching of line features, which improves the real-time performance of the algorithm and the accuracy of the attitude angle, and makes up for the problem of difficult extraction of point features or low matching accuracy in the airdrop environment. Finally, a constraint equation is established for the line features that are successfully matched, and using homography to obtain attitude of the airdrop cargo platform. This article also meets the requirements of accurate calculation attitude of airdrop cargo platform. The experiment shows the significance and feasibility of the airdrop cargo platform heading and attitude calculation technology based on the line feature, and it has a good application prospect.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47126272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/17298806221103710
Yilmaz Serhat
The design of underwater unmanned vehicles is an interdisciplinary study that includes several fields, such as computational fluid dynamics, modeling and control of systems, robotics, image processing, and electronic card design. The operational cost of such vehicles is high because it is dependent on variable fluid properties like salinity and high pressure while its’ mobility must be resistant to environmental conditions such as undersea. The study describes an operating platform, called Lucky Fin, on which the students can develop various control algorithms and can test and extract hydrodynamic parameters of the underwater vehicle. The platform consists of an underwater vehicle and two testing tanks. The control card, the user control program interface, and a manipulator’s arm are designed to be used for a series of control applications such as depth, heading, target tracking, and capturing. The results of several tests are illustrated in this article.
{"title":"Development stages of a semi-autonomous underwater vehicle experiment platform","authors":"Yilmaz Serhat","doi":"10.1177/17298806221103710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221103710","url":null,"abstract":"The design of underwater unmanned vehicles is an interdisciplinary study that includes several fields, such as computational fluid dynamics, modeling and control of systems, robotics, image processing, and electronic card design. The operational cost of such vehicles is high because it is dependent on variable fluid properties like salinity and high pressure while its’ mobility must be resistant to environmental conditions such as undersea. The study describes an operating platform, called Lucky Fin, on which the students can develop various control algorithms and can test and extract hydrodynamic parameters of the underwater vehicle. The platform consists of an underwater vehicle and two testing tanks. The control card, the user control program interface, and a manipulator’s arm are designed to be used for a series of control applications such as depth, heading, target tracking, and capturing. The results of several tests are illustrated in this article.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43079971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/17298806221104906
Ziyue Li, Xianju Yuan, Chuyan Wang
The excellent performance of fruit and vegetable picking robots is usually contributed by the reasonable structure of end-effector and recognition–localization methods with high accuracy. As a result, efforts are focused on two aspects, and diverse structures of end-effector, target recognition methods as well as their combinations are yielded continuously. A good understanding for the working principle, advantages, limitations, and the adaptability in respective fields is helpful to design picking robots. Therefore, depending on different grasping ways, separating methods, structures, materials, and driving modes, main characteristics existing in traditional schemes will be depicted firstly. According to technical routes, advantages, potential applications, and challenges, underactuated manipulators and soft manipulators representing future development are then summarized systematically. Secondly, partial recognition and localization methods are also demonstrated. Specifically, current recognition manners adopting the single-feature, multi-feature fusion and deep learning are explained in view of their advantages, limitations, and successful instances. In the field of 3D localization, active vision based on the structured light, laser scanning, time of flight, and radar is reflected through the respective applications. Also, another 3D localization method called passive vision is also evaluated by advantages, limitations, the degree of automation, reconstruction effects, and the application scenario, such as monocular vision, binocular vision, and multiocular vision. Finally portrayed from structural development, recognition, and localization methods, it is possible to develop future end-effectors for fruit and vegetable picking robots with superior characteristics containing the less driving element, rigid–flexible–bionic coupling soft manipulators, simple control program, high efficiency, low damage, low cost, high versatility, and high recognition accuracy in all-season picking tasks.
{"title":"A review on structural development and recognition–localization methods for end-effector of fruit–vegetable picking robots","authors":"Ziyue Li, Xianju Yuan, Chuyan Wang","doi":"10.1177/17298806221104906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221104906","url":null,"abstract":"The excellent performance of fruit and vegetable picking robots is usually contributed by the reasonable structure of end-effector and recognition–localization methods with high accuracy. As a result, efforts are focused on two aspects, and diverse structures of end-effector, target recognition methods as well as their combinations are yielded continuously. A good understanding for the working principle, advantages, limitations, and the adaptability in respective fields is helpful to design picking robots. Therefore, depending on different grasping ways, separating methods, structures, materials, and driving modes, main characteristics existing in traditional schemes will be depicted firstly. According to technical routes, advantages, potential applications, and challenges, underactuated manipulators and soft manipulators representing future development are then summarized systematically. Secondly, partial recognition and localization methods are also demonstrated. Specifically, current recognition manners adopting the single-feature, multi-feature fusion and deep learning are explained in view of their advantages, limitations, and successful instances. In the field of 3D localization, active vision based on the structured light, laser scanning, time of flight, and radar is reflected through the respective applications. Also, another 3D localization method called passive vision is also evaluated by advantages, limitations, the degree of automation, reconstruction effects, and the application scenario, such as monocular vision, binocular vision, and multiocular vision. Finally portrayed from structural development, recognition, and localization methods, it is possible to develop future end-effectors for fruit and vegetable picking robots with superior characteristics containing the less driving element, rigid–flexible–bionic coupling soft manipulators, simple control program, high efficiency, low damage, low cost, high versatility, and high recognition accuracy in all-season picking tasks.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44488708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/17298806221081325
Tyrell Lewis, Kiran Bhaganagar
In hazardous situations involving the dispersion of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear pollutants, timely containment of the emission is critical. A contaminant disperses as a dynamically evolving plume into the atmosphere, introducing complex difficulties in predicting the dispersion trajectory and potential evacuation sites. Strategies for predictive modeling of rapid contaminant dispersion demand localization of the emission source, a task performed effectively via unmanned mobile-sensing platforms. With vast possibilities in sensor configurations and source-seeking algorithms, platform deployment in real-world applications involves much uncertainty alongside opportunity. This work aims to develop a plume source detection simulator to offer a reliable comparison of source-seeking approaches and performance testing of ground-based mobile-sensing platform configurations prior to experimental field testing. Utilizing ROS, Gazebo, MATLAB, and Simulink, a virtual environment is developed for an unmanned ground vehicle with a configurable array of sensors capable of measuring plume dispersion model data mapped into the domain. For selected configurations, gradient-based and adaptive exploration algorithms were tested for source localization using Gaussian dispersion models in addition to large eddy simulation models incorporating the effects of atmospheric turbulence. A unique global search algorithm was developed to locate the true source with overall success allowing for further evaluation in field experiments. From the observations obtained in simulation, it is evident that source-seeking performance can improve drastically by designing algorithms for global exploration while incorporating measurements of meteorological parameters beyond solely concentration (e.g. wind velocity and vorticity) made possible by the inclusion of high-resolution large eddy simulation plume data.
{"title":"Configurable simulation strategies for testing pollutant plume source localization algorithms using autonomous multisensor mobile robots","authors":"Tyrell Lewis, Kiran Bhaganagar","doi":"10.1177/17298806221081325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221081325","url":null,"abstract":"In hazardous situations involving the dispersion of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear pollutants, timely containment of the emission is critical. A contaminant disperses as a dynamically evolving plume into the atmosphere, introducing complex difficulties in predicting the dispersion trajectory and potential evacuation sites. Strategies for predictive modeling of rapid contaminant dispersion demand localization of the emission source, a task performed effectively via unmanned mobile-sensing platforms. With vast possibilities in sensor configurations and source-seeking algorithms, platform deployment in real-world applications involves much uncertainty alongside opportunity. This work aims to develop a plume source detection simulator to offer a reliable comparison of source-seeking approaches and performance testing of ground-based mobile-sensing platform configurations prior to experimental field testing. Utilizing ROS, Gazebo, MATLAB, and Simulink, a virtual environment is developed for an unmanned ground vehicle with a configurable array of sensors capable of measuring plume dispersion model data mapped into the domain. For selected configurations, gradient-based and adaptive exploration algorithms were tested for source localization using Gaussian dispersion models in addition to large eddy simulation models incorporating the effects of atmospheric turbulence. A unique global search algorithm was developed to locate the true source with overall success allowing for further evaluation in field experiments. From the observations obtained in simulation, it is evident that source-seeking performance can improve drastically by designing algorithms for global exploration while incorporating measurements of meteorological parameters beyond solely concentration (e.g. wind velocity and vorticity) made possible by the inclusion of high-resolution large eddy simulation plume data.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42212434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/17298814211017728
Guoxian Zhang, H. Moyes, Yangquan Chen
This article focuses on a novel three-dimensional reconstruction system that maps large archeological caves using data collected by a small unmanned aircraft system with red, green, and blue-depth cameras. Cave sites often contain the best-preserved material in the archeological record. Yet few sites are fully mapped. Large caves environment usually contains complex geometric structures and objects, which must be scanned with long overlapped camera trajectories for better coverage. Due to the error in camera tracking of such scanning, reconstruction results often contain flaws and mismatches. To solve this problem, we propose a framework for surface loop closure, where loops are detected with a compute unified device architecture accelerated point cloud registration algorithm. After a loop is detected, a novel surface loop filtering method is proposed for robust loop optimization. This loop filtering method is robust to different scan patterns and can cope with tracking failure recovery so that there is more flexibility for unmanned aerial vehicles to fly and record data. We run experiments on public data sets and our cave data set for analysis and robustness tests. Experiments show that our system produces improved results on baseline methods.
{"title":"Smart three-dimensional processing of unconstrained cave scans using small unmanned aerial systems and red, green, and blue-depth cameras","authors":"Guoxian Zhang, H. Moyes, Yangquan Chen","doi":"10.1177/17298814211017728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298814211017728","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on a novel three-dimensional reconstruction system that maps large archeological caves using data collected by a small unmanned aircraft system with red, green, and blue-depth cameras. Cave sites often contain the best-preserved material in the archeological record. Yet few sites are fully mapped. Large caves environment usually contains complex geometric structures and objects, which must be scanned with long overlapped camera trajectories for better coverage. Due to the error in camera tracking of such scanning, reconstruction results often contain flaws and mismatches. To solve this problem, we propose a framework for surface loop closure, where loops are detected with a compute unified device architecture accelerated point cloud registration algorithm. After a loop is detected, a novel surface loop filtering method is proposed for robust loop optimization. This loop filtering method is robust to different scan patterns and can cope with tracking failure recovery so that there is more flexibility for unmanned aerial vehicles to fly and record data. We run experiments on public data sets and our cave data set for analysis and robustness tests. Experiments show that our system produces improved results on baseline methods.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44323108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The unstructured, dynamic marine environmental information and the cooperative obstacle avoidance problem greatly challenge the online path planner for unmanned surface vehicles. Efficiency and optimization are crucial for online path planning schemes. Thus, we proposed an algorithmic combination of the optimal rapidly exploring random tree and artificial potential field methods. First, we built a repulsive potential field by considering the relative velocity and position of the unmanned surface vehicle to obstacles and the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea, wherein we designed a repulsive force calculation method using radar readings to avoid irregular obstacles. Then, we guided the sampling process of rapidly exploring random tree using the potential field to accelerate the convergence rate of rapidly exploring random tree to low-cost obstacle avoidance paths. Finally, we planned for multiple paths based on the leader–follower architecture with the guidance of a cooperative potential field. In the experiments, the proposed method consistently outperformed the benchmark methods. We also verified the effectiveness of the algorithmic modifications by conducting ablation experiments.
{"title":"Online paths planning method for unmanned surface vehicles based on rapidly exploring random tree and a cooperative potential field","authors":"Naifeng Wen, Lingling Zhao, Ru-Bo Zhang, Shuai Wang, Guanqun Liu, Junwei Wu, Liyuan Wang","doi":"10.1177/17298806221089777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221089777","url":null,"abstract":"The unstructured, dynamic marine environmental information and the cooperative obstacle avoidance problem greatly challenge the online path planner for unmanned surface vehicles. Efficiency and optimization are crucial for online path planning schemes. Thus, we proposed an algorithmic combination of the optimal rapidly exploring random tree and artificial potential field methods. First, we built a repulsive potential field by considering the relative velocity and position of the unmanned surface vehicle to obstacles and the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea, wherein we designed a repulsive force calculation method using radar readings to avoid irregular obstacles. Then, we guided the sampling process of rapidly exploring random tree using the potential field to accelerate the convergence rate of rapidly exploring random tree to low-cost obstacle avoidance paths. Finally, we planned for multiple paths based on the leader–follower architecture with the guidance of a cooperative potential field. In the experiments, the proposed method consistently outperformed the benchmark methods. We also verified the effectiveness of the algorithmic modifications by conducting ablation experiments.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49157758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Complete coverage, which is integral to many robotic applications, aims to cover an area as quickly as possible. In such tasks, employing multiple robots can reduce the overall coverage time by appropriate task allocation. Several multi-robot coverage approaches divide the environment into balanced subareas and minimize the maximum subarea of all robots. However, balanced coverage in many situations, such as in the cases of robots with different velocities and heterogeneous multi-robot systems, may have inefficient results. This study addresses the unbalanced complete coverage problem of multiple robots with different velocities for a known environment. First, we propose a novel credit model to transform the unbalanced coverage problem into a set of single-objective optimization problems, which can find a combinational optimal solution by optimizing each separate objective function of the single-objective optimization problem to alleviate the computational complexity. Then, we propose a credit-based algorithm composed of a cyclic region growth algorithm and a region fine-tuning algorithm. The cyclic region growth algorithm finds an initial solution to the single-objective optimization problems set by a regional growth strategy with multiple restricts, whereas the region fine-tuning algorithm reallocates the tasks of the partitions with too many tasks to the partitions with too few tasks by constructing a search tree, thereby converging the initial solution to the optimal solution. Simulation results indicate that compared with conventional multi-robot complete coverage problem algorithms, the credit-based algorithm can obtain the optimal solution with the increased number of robots and enlarged size of the mission environment.
{"title":"Complete coverage problem of multiple robots with different velocities","authors":"Lin Li, Dian-xi Shi, Songchang Jin, Ying Kang, Chao Xue, Xing Zhou, Hengzhu Liu, Xiaoxiao Yu","doi":"10.1177/17298806221091685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221091685","url":null,"abstract":"Complete coverage, which is integral to many robotic applications, aims to cover an area as quickly as possible. In such tasks, employing multiple robots can reduce the overall coverage time by appropriate task allocation. Several multi-robot coverage approaches divide the environment into balanced subareas and minimize the maximum subarea of all robots. However, balanced coverage in many situations, such as in the cases of robots with different velocities and heterogeneous multi-robot systems, may have inefficient results. This study addresses the unbalanced complete coverage problem of multiple robots with different velocities for a known environment. First, we propose a novel credit model to transform the unbalanced coverage problem into a set of single-objective optimization problems, which can find a combinational optimal solution by optimizing each separate objective function of the single-objective optimization problem to alleviate the computational complexity. Then, we propose a credit-based algorithm composed of a cyclic region growth algorithm and a region fine-tuning algorithm. The cyclic region growth algorithm finds an initial solution to the single-objective optimization problems set by a regional growth strategy with multiple restricts, whereas the region fine-tuning algorithm reallocates the tasks of the partitions with too many tasks to the partitions with too few tasks by constructing a search tree, thereby converging the initial solution to the optimal solution. Simulation results indicate that compared with conventional multi-robot complete coverage problem algorithms, the credit-based algorithm can obtain the optimal solution with the increased number of robots and enlarged size of the mission environment.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41343984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/17298806221086431
B. Sababha, Amjed Al-mousa, Remah Baniyounisse, Jawad Bdour
Unmanned aircraft or drones as they are sometimes called are continuing to become part of more real-life applications. The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles in public airspace is becoming an important issue that should be addressed. As the number of unmanned aerial vehicles and their applications are largely increasing, air traffic with more unmanned aircraft has to be given more attention to prevent collisions and maintain safe skies. Unmanned aerial vehicle air traffic integration and regulation has become a priority to different regulatory agencies and has become of greater interest for many researchers all around the world. In this research, a sampling-based air traffic integration, path planning, and collision avoidance approach is presented. The proposed algorithm expands an existing 2D sampling-based approach. The original 2D approach deals with only two unmanned aircraft. Each of the two aircraft shares location information with a ground-based path planner computer, which would send back the avoidance waypoints after performing the 2D sampling. The algorithm proposed in this article can handle any number of drones in the 3D space by performing either 2D or 3D sampling. The proposed work shows a 10-fold enhancement in terms of the number of unmanned aerial vehicle collisions. The presented results also contribute to enabling a better understanding of what is expected of integrating more drones in dense skies.
{"title":"Sampling-based unmanned aerial vehicle air traffic integration, path planning, and collision avoidance","authors":"B. Sababha, Amjed Al-mousa, Remah Baniyounisse, Jawad Bdour","doi":"10.1177/17298806221086431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17298806221086431","url":null,"abstract":"Unmanned aircraft or drones as they are sometimes called are continuing to become part of more real-life applications. The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles in public airspace is becoming an important issue that should be addressed. As the number of unmanned aerial vehicles and their applications are largely increasing, air traffic with more unmanned aircraft has to be given more attention to prevent collisions and maintain safe skies. Unmanned aerial vehicle air traffic integration and regulation has become a priority to different regulatory agencies and has become of greater interest for many researchers all around the world. In this research, a sampling-based air traffic integration, path planning, and collision avoidance approach is presented. The proposed algorithm expands an existing 2D sampling-based approach. The original 2D approach deals with only two unmanned aircraft. Each of the two aircraft shares location information with a ground-based path planner computer, which would send back the avoidance waypoints after performing the 2D sampling. The algorithm proposed in this article can handle any number of drones in the 3D space by performing either 2D or 3D sampling. The proposed work shows a 10-fold enhancement in terms of the number of unmanned aerial vehicle collisions. The presented results also contribute to enabling a better understanding of what is expected of integrating more drones in dense skies.","PeriodicalId":50343,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45780942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}