Ultrasound scanning is an imaging technique that aids medical professionals in diagnostics and interventional procedures. However, a trained human-in-the-loop (HITL) with a radiologist is required to perform the scann...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781728196817
Ultrasound scanning is an imaging technique that aids medical professionals in diagnostics and interventional procedures. However, a trained human-in-the-loop (HITL) with a radiologist is required to perform the scanning procedure. We seek to create a novel ultrasound system that can provide imaging in the absence of a trained radiologist, say for patients in the field who suffered injuries after a natural disaster. One challenge of automating ultrasound scanning involves finding the optimal area to scan and then performing the actual scan. This task requires simultaneously maintaining contact with the surface while moving along it to capture high quality images. In this work, we present an automated Robotic Ultrasound System (RUS) to tackle these challenges. Our approach introduces a Bayesian Optimization framework to guide the probe to multiple points on the unknown surface. Our proposed framework collects the ultrasound images as well as the pose information at every probed point to estimate regions with high vessel density (information map) and the surface contour. Based on the information map and the surface contour, an area of interest is selected for scanning. Furthermore, to scan the proposed region, a novel 6-axis hybrid force-position controller is presented to ensure acoustic coupling. Lastly, we provide experimental results on two different phantom models to corroborate our approach.
In this work, we robustly compare the performance of popular collision avoidance approaches for Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USVs) in the context of adhering to the international Regulations for Preventing Collisions at...
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Autonomous exploration and mapping of unknown terrains employing single or multiple robots is an essential task in mobile robotics and has therefore been widely investigated. Nevertheless, given the lack of unified da...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781728196817
Autonomous exploration and mapping of unknown terrains employing single or multiple robots is an essential task in mobile robotics and has therefore been widely investigated. Nevertheless, given the lack of unified data sets, metrics, and platforms to evaluate the exploration approaches, we develop an autonomous robot exploration benchmark entitled Explore-Bench. The benchmark involves various exploration scenarios and presents two types of quantitative metrics to evaluate exploration efficiency and multi-robot cooperation. Explore-Bench is extremely useful as, recently, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been widely used for robot exploration tasks and achieved promising results. However, training DRL-based approaches requires large data sets, and additionally, current benchmarks rely on realistic simulators with a slow simulation speed, which is not appropriate for training exploration strategies. Hence, to support efficient DRL training and comprehensive evaluation, the suggested Explore-Bench designs a 3-level platform with a unified data flow and 12x speed-up that includes a grid-based simulator for fast evaluation and efficient training, a realistic Gazebo simulator, and a remotely accessible robot testbed for high-accuracy tests in physical environments. The practicality of the proposed benchmark is highlighted with the application of one DRL-based and three frontier-based exploration approaches. Furthermore, we analyze the performance differences and provide some insights about the selection and design of exploration methods. Our benchmark is available at https: //github. com/efc-robot/Explore-Bench.
While there are many works developing methods for modeling and calibrating robot kinematics, assessing the accuracy of those models has received little attention. However, accuracy assessment is critically important f...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9798350358513;9798350358520
While there are many works developing methods for modeling and calibrating robot kinematics, assessing the accuracy of those models has received little attention. However, accuracy assessment is critically important for applications where the robot must operate with absolute accuracy over a large region of workspace, such as in robotic machining. When the model of such a system is well calibrated, the remaining deterministic error can be quite complex, owing to complicated gearing errors, deformations, and quasi-static thermal changes. Locating the largest deterministic error requires an exploration over the workspace, but assessing the largest error is complicated by repeatability error and measurement noise. How then to assess the largest error from such a measurement set? This paper evaluates the efficacy of two conventional methods, maximum measured error and outlier rejection, and a novel method based on model invalidation that uses a hypothesis testing framework. A machining robot is used to develop a numerical study for evaluation of these methods under differing magnitude of measurement noise. A high-order kinematic model of the robot is constructed as used as the true robot kinematics, and the workspace for that system is used as the region of interest. A best-fit Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) model is used as the model whose accuracy is to be measured. The study shows that the largest deterministic error can be difficult to locate with just a few percent of points approaching the defining accuracy limit. As expected, the largest measured error provides a poor (over)estimate of the error as noise is increased, but outlier rejection can be equally as bad as rare large deterministic errors can be easily mistaken for lowprobability large random error. The novel model invalidation method, however, performs well across all noise levels.
The Xacro XML macro language can be used to augment the Universal Robot Description Format (URDF) and is part of a critical toolchain from geometric representations to simulation, visualization, and system execution. ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781728196817
The Xacro XML macro language can be used to augment the Universal Robot Description Format (URDF) and is part of a critical toolchain from geometric representations to simulation, visualization, and system execution. However, members of the robotics community, especially newcomers, struggle to troubleshoot and understand the interplay between systems and the Xacro preprocessing pipeline. To better understand how system developers struggle with Xacros, we manually examine 712 Xacro-related questions from the question and answer site *** and find Xacro misunderstandings fit into eight key categories using a systematic, qualitative approach called Open Coding. By examining the 'tags' applied to questions, we further find that Xacro problems manifest in a befuddlingly broad set of contexts. This hinders onboarding and complicates system developers' understanding of representations and tools in the Robot Operating System. We aim to provide an empirical grounding that identifies and prioritizes impediments to users of open robotics systems, so that tool designers, teachers, and robotics practitioners can devise ways of improving robot software tooling and education.
This paper presents a modeling and control framework for multibody flying robots subject to non-negligible aero-dynamic forces acting on the centroidal dynamics. First, aero-dynamic forces are calculated during robot ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781728196817
This paper presents a modeling and control framework for multibody flying robots subject to non-negligible aero-dynamic forces acting on the centroidal dynamics. First, aero-dynamic forces are calculated during robot flight in different operating conditions by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. Then, analytical models of the aerodynamics coefficients are generated from the dataset collected with CFD analysis. The obtained simplified aerodynamic model is also used to improve the flying robot control design. We present two control strategies: compensating for the aerodynamic effects via feedback linearization and enforcing the controller robustness with gain-scheduling. Simulation results on the jet-powered humanoid robot iRonCub validate the proposed approach.
Surgical instrument removal has become increasingly necessary to provide precise information during intraoperative execution. Occlusions in the endoscopic view caused by interactions between surgical instruments and o...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9798350388084;9798350388077
Surgical instrument removal has become increasingly necessary to provide precise information during intraoperative execution. Occlusions in the endoscopic view caused by interactions between surgical instruments and organs can impede a surgeon's ability to accurately assess internal tissue, as well as certain computer-assisted surgical algorithms that rely on endoscopic images. This work demonstrates a novel application of removing surgical instruments from endoscopic video utilizing flow-guided image inpainting methods. A comparative experiment was conducted to validate the advantages of the improved method. Additionally, two task-based experiments including target tracking and image fusion experiments were conducted to further demonstrate its potential as a preprocessing step for other visual algorithms.
This paper introduces a UAV-based wheat rust detection system employing deep learning techniques. To address the limitations of traditional wheat rust disease detection methods, such as time and labor-intensive proces...
This research focuses on enhancing the identification of process variants in robotic process automation (RPA) by using process mining techniques. It introduces a novel approach for identifying RPA automation candidate...
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In this paper, a FIWARE based control implementation framework for supervisory control of inputoutput models, in Discrete Event System (DES) form, will be introduced, through the case study of an industrial product tr...
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