http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/201/4359/899.2.full.pdf

Phenomenology of perception.

Introduction - The aims of this book the features of this book organization and background the analytical mind: strengh and weakness. Fundamentals of linear algebra - Vector and matrix calculus Eigenvalue problem linear systems and optimization matrix and tensor algebra. Probabilities and statistical estimation - probability distributions manifolds and local distributions gaussian distributions and X2 distributions statistical estimation for gaussian models general statistical estimation maximum likelihood estimation Akaike information criterion. Representation of geometric objects - image points and image lines space points and space lines space planes conics space conics and quadrics coordinate transformation and projection. Geometric correction - general theory correction of image points and image lines correction of space points and space lines correction of space planes orthogonality correction conic incidence correction. 3-D computation by stereo vision - epipolar constraint optimal correction of correspondence 3-D reconstruction of points 3-D reconstruction of lines optimal back projection onto a space plane scenes infinitely far away camera calibration errors. Parametric fitting - general theory optimal fitting for image points optimal fitting for image lines optimal fitting for space points optimal fitting for space lines optimal fitting for space planes. Optimal filter - general theory iterative estimation scheme effective gradient approximation reduction from the klaman filter estimation from linear hypotheses. Renormalization - eigenvector fit unbiased eigenvector generalized eigenvalue fit renormalization lincarization second order renormalization. Applications of geometric estimation - image line fitting conic fitting space plane fitting by range sensing space plane fitting by stereo vision. 3-D motion analysis - general theory lincarization and renormalization optimal correction and decomposition reliability of 3-D reconstruction critical surfaces 3-D reconstruction from planar surface motion camera rotation and information. 3-D interpretation of optical flow - optical flow detection theoretical basis of 3-D interpretation optimal estimation of motion parameters. (Part contents).

Statistical optimization for geometric computation : theory and practice

Texture is a fundamental characteristic of many types of images, and texture representation is one of the essential and challenging problems in computer vision and pattern recognition which has attracted extensive research attention over several decades. Since 2000, texture representations based on Bag of Words and on Convolutional Neural Networks have been extensively studied with impressive performance. Given this period of remarkable evolution, this paper aims to present a comprehensive survey of advances in texture representation over the last two decades. More than 250 major publications are cited in this survey covering different aspects of the research, including benchmark datasets and state of the art results. In retrospect of what has been achieved so far, the survey discusses open challenges and directions for future research.

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From BoW to CNN: Two Decades of Texture Representation for Texture Classification

State of research in automatic as-built modelling

This review provides a comprehensive overview of machine learning approaches for vision-based robotic grasping and manipulation. Current trends and developments as well as various criteria for categorization of approaches are provided. Model-free approaches are attractive due to their generalization capabilities to novel objects, but are mostly limited to top-down grasps and do not allow a precise object placement which can limit their applicability. In contrast, model-based methods allow a precise placement and aim for an automatic configuration without any human intervention to enable a fast and easy deployment. Both approaches to robotic grasping and manipulation with and without object-specific knowledge are discussed. Due to the large amount of data required to train AI-based approaches, simulations are an attractive choice for robot learning. This article also gives an overview of techniques and achievements in transfers from simulations to the real world.

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A Survey on Learning-Based Robotic Grasping

The division of floor plans or navigation maps into single rooms or similarly meaningful semantic units is central to numerous tasks in robotics such as topological mapping, semantic mapping, place categorization, human-robotinteraction, or automatized professional cleaning. Although many map partitioning algorithms have been proposed for various applications there is a lack of comparative studies on these different algorithms. This paper surveys the literature on room segmentation and provides four publicly available implementations of popular methods, which target the semantic mapping domain and are tuned to yield segmentations into complete rooms. In an attempt to provide new users of such technologies guidance in the choice of map segmentation algorithm, those methods are compared qualitatively and quantitatively using several criteria. The evaluation is based on a novel compilation of 20 challenging floor plans.

Room segmentation: Survey, implementation, and analysis

Coverage Path Planning (CPP) describes the process of generating robot trajectories that fully cover an area or volume. Applications are, amongst many others, mobile cleaning robots, lawn mowing robots or harvesting machines in agriculture. Many approaches and facets of this problem have been discussed in literature but despite the availability of several surveys on the topic there is little work on quantitative assessment and comparison of different coverage path planning algorithms. This paper analyzes six popular off-line coverage path planning methods, applicable to previously recorded maps, in the setting of indoor coverage path planning on room-sized units. The implemented algorithms are thoroughly compared on a large dataset of over 550 rooms with and without furniture.

Indoor Coverage Path Planning: Survey, Implementation, Analysis

A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring persons’ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot®3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developments.

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Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years

Millions of office workplaces are cleaned by a surprisingly small group of cleaning workers every day, however, cleaning companies struggle to recruit enough personnel these days One solution to this challenge is to schedule available professionals for demanding tasks while relieving them from simpler activities which are transferred to a robotic cleaning assistant Two of such tasks are floor cleaning and waste disposal which account for 70% of the daily cleaning efforts This paper presents the world's first autonomous cleaning robot prototype that masters both of these tasks and whose development was accompanied by the advice of a large cleaning company Besides a detailed description of the overall system and its individual components an evaluation is provided based on real world experiments The results indicate that both cleaning tasks can be solved at high quality but with potential for increased efficiency to meet the required performance Hence, the paper concludes with a discussion on measures necessary for the development of a commercial prototype

Richard Bormann

Papers

A Survey on Learning-Based Robotic Grasping

Room segmentation: Survey, implementation, and analysis

Indoor Coverage Path Planning: Survey, Implementation, Analysis

Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years

New brooms sweep clean - an autonomous robotic cleaning assistant for professional office cleaning