Showing papers presented at "Field and Service Robotics in 2021"

Revisiting boustrophedon coverage path planning as a generalized traveling salesman problem

Abstract: In this paper, we present a path planner for low-altitude terrain coverage in known environments with unmanned rotary-wing micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). Airborne systems can assist humanitarian demining by surveying suspected hazardous areas (SHAs) with cameras, ground-penetrating synthetic aperture radar (GPSAR), and metal detectors. Most available coverage planner implementations for MAVs do not consider obstacles and thus cannot be deployed in obstructed environments. We describe an open-source framework to perform coverage planning in polygon flight corridors with obstacles. Our planner extends boustrophedon coverage planning by optimizing over different sweep combinations to find the optimal sweep path, and considers obstacles during transition flights between cells. We evaluate the path planner on 320 synthetic maps and show that it is able to solve realistic planning instances fast enough to run in the field. The planner achieves 14% lower path costs than a conventional coverage planner. We validate the planner on a real platform where we show low-altitude coverage over a sloped terrain with trees.

ANYmal in the Field: Solving Industrial Inspection of an Offshore HVDC Platform with a Quadrupedal Robot

Abstract: Offshore HVDC converter stations for transportation of offshore wind energy to the coast need regular human inspection. Automated surveillance of such a platform by a mobile robot has high potential of improving the speed and quality of decision-making while reducing operating expenses and risk of unmanned operation of the platforms. However, the challenging environment of such platforms has prevented operators from making use of mobile robots to this date. Recent progress in legged robotics resulted in systems that are becoming feasible for such tasks nowadays. For this reason, the quadrupedal robot ANYmal was tested on a platform in the North Sea for automated inspection. This paper presents the results of the field tests and discusses the challenges of industrial inspection of offshore sites.

Airborne particle classification in LiDAR point clouds using deep learning

Abstract: LiDAR sensors have been very popular in robotics due to their ability to provide accurate range measurements and their robustness to lighting conditions. However, their sensitivity to airborne particles such as dust or fog can lead to perception algorithm failures (e.g. the detection of false obstacles by field robots). In this work, we address this problem by proposing methods to classify airborne particles in LiDAR data. We propose and compare two deep learning approaches, the first is based on voxel-wise classification, while the second is based on point-wise classification. We also study the impact of different combinations of input features extracted from LiDAR data, including the use of multi-echo returns as a classification feature. We evaluate the performance of the proposed methods on a realistic dataset with the presence of fog and dust particles in outdoor scenes. We achieve an F1 score of 94% for the classification of airborne particles in LiDAR point clouds, thereby significantly outperforming the state-of-the-art. We show the practical significance of this work on two real-world use cases: a relative pose estimation task using point cloud matching, and an obstacle detection task. The code and dataset used for this work are available online.

Analyze the Development Status and Optimization Strategies of Food Cold Chain Logistics

Abstract: Researchers pointed out that in recent years, with the improvement and optimization of living standards, the food cold chain logistics industry has developed vigorously In general, based on the promotion of food cold chain logistics, researchers can further realize the reasonable exploration of cold chain logistics, so as to effectively realize the overall development and construction of cold chain logistics, which is good for the reasonable satisfaction of the people’s dietary needs The promotion of meaning and value On the other hand, the development of the cold chain logistics industry has further realized the reasonable satisfaction of the requirements of the cold chain transportation of food materials, has a good guiding role in the realization of long-distance transportation of food materials, and is conducive to the diversified development of the people’s diet structure However, at present, in the process of food cold chain logistics work, my country still has certain shortcomings to be improved This article analyzes the development status of food cold chain logistics, and proposes corresponding optimization strategies at the same time, aiming to effectively realize the improvement and optimization of the comprehensive level of my country’s food cold chain logistics industry