Visual place recognition is a challenging problem due to the vast range of ways in which the appearance of real-world places can vary. In recent years, improvements in visual sensing capabilities, an ever-increasing focus on long-term mobile robot autonomy, and the ability to draw on state-of-the-art research in other disciplines—particularly recognition in computer vision and animal navigation in neuroscience—have all contributed to significant advances in visual place recognition systems. This paper presents a survey of the visual place recognition research landscape. We start by introducing the concepts behind place recognition—the role of place recognition in the animal kingdom, how a “place” is defined in a robotics context, and the major components of a place recognition system. Long-term robot operations have revealed that changing appearance can be a significant factor in visual place recognition failure; therefore, we discuss how place recognition solutions can implicitly or explicitly account for appearance change within the environment. Finally, we close with a discussion on the future of visual place recognition, in particular with respect to the rapid advances being made in the related fields of deep learning, semantic scene understanding, and video description.

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Visual Place Recognition: A Survey

This book primarily discusses issues related to the mining aspects of data streams and it is unique in its primary focus on the subject This volume covers mining aspects of data streams comprehensively: each contributed chapter contains a survey on the topic, the key ideas in the field for that particular topic, and future research directions The book is intended for a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry This book is also appropriate for advanced-level students in computer science

Data Streams: Models and Algorithms

Simultaneous localization, mapping and moving object tracking (SLAMMOT) involves both simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in dynamic environments and detecting and tracking these dynamic objects. In this paper, a mathematical framework is established to integrate SLAM and moving object tracking. Two solutions are described: SLAM with generalized objects, and SLAM with detection and tracking of moving objects (DATMO). SLAM with generalized objects calculates a joint posterior over all generalized objects and the robot. Such an approach is similar to existing SLAM algorithms, but with additional structure to allow for motion modeling of generalized objects. Unfortunately, it is computationally demanding and generally infeasible. SLAM with DATMO decomposes the estimation problem into two separate estimators. By maintaining separate posteriors for stationary objects and moving objects, the resulting estimation problems are much lower dimensional than SLAM with generalized objects. Both SLAM and moving object tracking from a moving vehicle in crowded urban areas are daunting tasks. Based on the SLAM with DATMO framework, practical algorithms are proposed which deal with issues of perception modeling, data association, and moving object detection. The implementation of SLAM with DATMO was demonstrated using data collected from the CMU Navlab11 vehicle at high speeds in crowded urban environments. Ample experimental results shows the feasibility of the proposed theory and algorithms.

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Simultaneous Localization, Mapping and Moving Object Tracking

Wireless sensor networks produce a large amount of data that needs to be processed, delivered, and assessed according to the application objectives. The way these data are manipulated by the sensor nodes is a fundamental issue. Information fusion arises as a response to process data gathered by sensor nodes and benefits from their processing capability. By exploiting the synergy among the available data, information fusion techniques can reduce the amount of data traffic, filter noisy measurements, and make predictions and inferences about a monitored entity. In this work, we survey the current state-of-the-art of information fusion by presenting the known methods, algorithms, architectures, and models of information fusion, and discuss their applicability in the context of wireless sensor networks.

https://www.eecs.ucf.edu/~dcm/Teaching/COT4810-Fall%202012/Literature/InformationFusionInSensorNetworks.pdf

Information fusion for wireless sensor networks: Methods, models, and classifications

Perception system design is a vital step in the development of an autonomous vehicle (AV). With the vast selection of available off-the-shelf schemes and seemingly endless options of sensor systems implemented in research and commercial vehicles, it can be difficult to identify the optimal system for one’s AV application. This article presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art AV perception technology available today. It provides up-to-date information about the advantages, disadvantages, limits, and ideal applications of specific AV sensors; the most prevalent sensors in current research and commercial AVs; autonomous features currently on the market; and localization and mapping methods currently implemented in AV research. This information is useful for newcomers to the AV field to gain a greater understanding of the current AV solution landscape and to guide experienced researchers towards research areas requiring further development. Furthermore, this paper highlights future research areas and draws conclusions about the most effective methods for AV perception and its effect on localization and mapping. Topics discussed in the Perception and Automotive Sensors section focus on the sensors themselves, whereas topics discussed in the Localization and Mapping section focus on how the vehicle perceives where it is on the road, providing context for the use of the automotive sensors. By improving on current state-of-the-art perception systems, AVs will become more robust, reliable, safe, and accessible, ultimately providing greater efficiency, mobility, and safety benefits to the public.

Autonomous vehicle perception: The technology of today and tomorrow

In the ICEBERG project at UC Berkeley, we are developing an Internet-based integration of telephony and data services spanning diverse access networks. Our primary goals are extensibility, scalability, robustness, and personalized communication. We leverage the Internet's low cost of entry for service creation, provision, deployment, and integration. We present our solutions to signaling, easy service creation, resource reservation, admission control, billing, and security in the ICEBERG network architecture.

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~zmao/Papers/iceberg.pdf

ICEBERG: an Internet core network architecture for integrated communications

We propose an occupancy grid mapping algorithm for mobile robots operating in environments where objects change their locations over time Our approach uses a straightforward map differencing technique to detect changes in an environment over time It employs the expectation maximization algorithm to learn models of non-stationary objects, and to determine the location of such objects in individual occupancy grid maps built at different points in time By combining data from multiple maps when learning object models, the resulting models have higher fidelity than could be obtained from any single map A Bayesian complexity measure is applied to determine the number of different objects in the model, making it possible to apply the approach to situations where not all objects are present at all times in the map

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Towards object mapping in non-stationary environments with mobile robots

Building models, or maps, of robot environments is a highly active research area; however, most existing techniques construct unstructured maps and assume static environments. In this paper, we present an algorithm for learning object models of non-stationary objects found in office-type environments. Our algorithm exploits the fact that many objects found in office environments look alike (e.g., chairs, recycling bins). It does so through a two-level hierarchical representation, which links individual objects with generic shape templates of object classes. We derive an approximate EM algorithm for learning shape pararneters at both levels of the hierarchy, using local occupancy grid maps for representing shape. Additionally, we develop a Bayesian model selection algorithm that enables the robot to estimate the total number of objects and object templates in the environment. Experimental results using a real robot equipped with a laser range finder indicate that our approach performs well at learning object-based maps of simple office environments. The approach outperforms a previously developed non-hierarchical algorithm that models objects jects but lacks class templates.

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Learning hierarchical object maps of non-stationary environments with mobile robots

Sensor networks present the opportunity to accurately localize the phenomena of interest. To be able to do so however, sensor nodes, need themselves to be accurately localized. We present an algorithm to do this based on uncontrolled environmental sounds observed by each of the sensor nodes. A probabilistic generative model is presented and it is shown that the sensor node localization problem is equivalent to maximum likelihood estimation in the model. Experimental results are presented for both simulated sensor nodes and Crossbow MICA2 sensor nodes.

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A passive approach to sensor network localization

In this paper, we introduce a first-order probabilistic model that combines multiple cues to classify human activities from video data accurately and robustly. Our system works in a realistic office setting with background clutter, natural illumination, different people, and partial occlusion. The model we present is compact, requires only fifteen sentences of first-order logic grouped as a Dynamic Markov Logic Network (DMLNs) to implement the probabilistic model and leverages existing state-of-the-art work in pose detection and object recognition.

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Rahul Biswas

Papers

ICEBERG: an Internet core network architecture for integrated communications

Towards object mapping in non-stationary environments with mobile robots

Learning hierarchical object maps of non-stationary environments with mobile robots

A passive approach to sensor network localization

Recognizing activities with multiple cues