Multi-Agent Active Search using Realistic Depth-Aware Noise Model
Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学计算机科学学院机器人研究所）；School of Earth Sciences, Ohio State University（俄亥俄州立大学地球科学学院）
Ramina Ghods, William J. Durkin, Jeff Schneider
备注：
To appear at the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), extended version
The active search for objects of interest in an unknown environment has many robotics applications including search and rescue, detecting gas leaks or locating animal poachers. Existing algorithms often prioritize the location accuracy of objects of interest while other practical issues such as the reliability of object detection as a function of distance and lines of sight remain largely ignored. Additionally, in many active search scenarios, communication infrastructure may be unreliable or unestablished, making centralized control of multiple agents impractical. We present an algorithm called Noise-Aware Thompson Sampling (NATS) that addresses these issues for multiple ground-based robots performing active search considering two sources of sensory information from monocular optical imagery and depth maps. By utilizing Thompson Sampling, NATS allows for decentralized coordination among multiple agents. NATS also considers object detection uncertainty from depth as well as environmental occlusions and operates while remaining agnostic of the number of objects of interest. Using simulation results, we show that NATS significantly outperforms existing methods such as information-greedy policies or exhaustive search. We demonstrate the real-world viability of NATS using a pseudo-realistic environment created in the Unreal Engine 4 game development platform with the AirSim plugin.
ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；MPI-IS（马克斯·普朗克智能系统研究所）；KU Leuven（鲁汶大学）
Lidar is a vital sensor for estimating the depth of a scene. Typical spinning lidars emit pulses arranged in several horizontal lines and the monetary cost of the sensor increases with the number of these lines. In this work, we present the new problem of optimizing the positioning of lidar lines to find the most effective configuration for the depth completion task. We propose a solution to reduce the number of lines while retaining the up-to-the-mark quality of depth completion. Our method consists of two components, (1) line selection based on the marginal contribution of a line computed vi…
University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学苏州高等研究院）；Suzhou Institute of Intelligent Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院苏州智能计算技术研究院）
Robotic-assisted surgery allows surgeons to conduct precise surgical operations with stereo vision and flexible motor control. However, the lack of 3D spatial perception limits situational awareness during procedures and hinders mastering surgical skills in the narrow abdominal space. Depth estimation, as a representative perception task, is typically defined as an image reconstruction problem. In this work, we show that depth estimation can be reformed from a 3D surface perspective. We propose a loss function for depth estimation that integrates the surface-aware constraints, leading to a fas…
Epson Research（爱普生研究院）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）
Depth completion aims at inferring a dense depth image from sparse depth measurement since glossy, transparent or distant surface cannot be scanned properly by the sensor. Most of existing methods directly interpolate the missing depth measurements based on pixel-wise image content and the corresponding neighboring depth values. Consequently, this leads to blurred boundaries or inaccurate structure of object. To address these problems, we propose a novel self-guided instance-aware network (SG-IANet) that: (1) utilize self-guided mechanism to extract instance-level features that is needed for d…
Graz University of Technology（格拉茨技术大学）；University of Klagenfurt（克拉根福大学）
In this paper, we present a novel deep neural network architecture for joint class-agnostic object segmentation and grasp detection for robotic picking tasks using a parallel-plate gripper. We introduce depth-aware Coordinate Convolution (CoordConv), a method to increase accuracy for point proposal based object instance segmentation in complex scenes without adding any additional network parameters or computation complexity. Depth-aware CoordConv uses depth data to extract prior information about the location of an object to achieve highly accurate object instance segmentation. These resulting…
Visual Place Recognition in Forests with Depth-Aware Distillation
CSIRO Robotics, Brisbane, Australia（澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组织机器人实验室，布里斯班，澳大利亚）；University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia（昆士兰大学，布里斯班，澳大利亚）；Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia（昆士兰科技大学，布里斯班，澳大利亚）
Uber Advanced Technologies Group（优步先进技术集团）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Techonology（麻省理工学院）
Scalable sensor simulation is an important yet challenging open problem for safety-critical domains such as self-driving. Current works in image simulation either fail to be photorealistic or do not model the 3D environment and the dynamic objects within, losing high-level control and physical realism. In this paper, we present GeoSim, a geometry-aware image composition process which synthesizes novel urban driving scenarios by augmenting existing images with dynamic objects extracted from other scenes and rendered at novel poses. Towards this goal, we first build a diverse bank of 3D objects …
Autonomous navigation of drones using computer vision has achieved promising performance. Nano-sized drones based on edge computing platforms are lightweight, flexible, and cheap, thus suitable for exploring narrow spaces. However, due to their extremely limited computing power and storage, vision algorithms designed for high-performance GPU platforms cannot be used for nano drones. To address this issue this paper presents a lightweight CNN depth estimation network deployed on nano drones for obstacle avoidance. Inspired by Knowledge Distillation (KD), a Channel-Aware Distillation Transformer…
A Multimodal Depth-Aware Method For Embodied Reference Understanding
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）；KIT Campus Transfer GmbH (KCT)（KIT校园转移有限公司）；Istanbul Technical University（伊斯坦布尔技术大学）；Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）
Instituto de Investigación en Ingeniería de Aragón (I3A)（阿拉贡工程研究所）；Universidad de Zaragoza（萨拉戈萨大学）
We present a generic framework for scale-aware direct monocular odometry based on depth prediction from a deep neural network. In contrast with previous methods where depth information is only partially exploited, we formulate a novel depth prediction residual which allows us to incorporate multi-view depth information. In addition, we propose to use a truncated robust cost function which prevents considering inconsistent depth estimations. The photometric and depth-prediction measurements are integrated into a tightly-coupled optimization leading to a scale-aware monocular system which does n…
University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；Nuro Inc.（Nuro公司）；Columbia University（哥伦比亚大学）；Scale AI
We present Uncertainty-aware Cascaded Stereo Network (UCS-Net) for 3D reconstruction from multiple RGB images. Multi-view stereo (MVS) aims to reconstruct fine-grained scene geometry from multi-view images. Previous learning-based MVS methods estimate per-view depth using plane sweep volumes with a fixed depth hypothesis at each plane; this generally requires densely sampled planes for desired accuracy, and it is very hard to achieve high-resolution depth. In contrast, we propose adaptive thin volumes (ATVs); in an ATV, the depth hypothesis of each plane is spatially varying, which adapts to t…
CylindTrack: Depth-Aware Cylindrical Motion Modeling for Panoramic Multi-Object Tracking
School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and the National Engineering Research Center of Robot Visual Perception and Control Technology, Hunan University, China（人工智能与机器人学院及机器人视觉感知与控制技术国家工程研究中心，湖南大学，中国）；School of Advanced Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China（先进技术学院，西安交通大学利物浦大学，中国）；Suzhou VSDeep Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., China（苏州VSDeep智能科技有限公司，中国）；BWTON Technology Co., Ltd., China（BWTON科技有限公司，中国）
Institute for Systems and Robotics（系统与机器人研究所）；Université de Toulon（土伦大学）；Aix Marseille University（阿维尼翁-马赛大学）；CNRS（国家科学研究中心）；LIS Toulon, France（土伦法国实验室）
GAA-TSO: Geometry-Aware Assisted Depth Completion for Transparent and Specular Objects
College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University（东北大学信息科学与工程学院）；National Frontiers Science Center for Industrial Intelligence and Systems Optimization（工业智能与系统优化国家前沿科学中心）
