DEVELOPMENT OF A PORTABLE HIGH PERFORMANCE MOBILE MAPPING SYSTEM USING THE ROBOT OPERATING SYSTEM

Abstract. The rapid progression in digitalization in the construction industry and in facility management creates an enormous demand for the efficient and accurate reality capturing of indoor spaces. Cloud-based services based on georeferenced metric 3D imagery are already extensively used for infrastructure management in outdoor environments. The goal of our research is to enable such services for indoor applications as well. For this purpose, we designed a portable mobile mapping research platform with a strong focus on acquiring accurate 3D imagery. Our system consists of a multi-head panorama camera in combination with two multi-profile LiDAR scanners and a MEMS-based industrial grade IMU for LiDAR-based online and offline SLAM. Our modular implementation based on the Robot Operating System enables rapid adaptations of the sensor configuration and the acquisition software. The developed workflow provides for completely GNSS-independent data acquisition and camera pose estimation using LiDAR-based SLAM. Furthermore, we apply a novel image-based georeferencing approach for further improving camera poses. First performance evaluations show an improvement from LiDAR-based SLAM to image-based georeferencing by an order of magnitude: from 10&ndash;13cm to 1.3&ndash;1.8cm in absolute 3D point accuracy and from 8&ndash;12cm to sub-centimeter in relative 3D point accuracy.

Download Full-text

Design of Distributed Reconfigurable Robotics Systems with ReconROS

ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems ◽

10.1145/3494571 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 1-20

Author(s):

Christian Lienen ◽

Marco Platzner

Keyword(s):

Operating System ◽

Energy Efficiency ◽

High Performance ◽

Hardware Acceleration ◽

Design Flow ◽

Programming Models ◽

Unique Combination ◽

Reconfigurable Computers ◽

Multithreaded Programming ◽

Robot Operating System

Robotics applications process large amounts of data in real time and require compute platforms that provide high performance and energy efficiency. FPGAs are well suited for many of these applications, but there is a reluctance in the robotics community to use hardware acceleration due to increased design complexity and a lack of consistent programming models across the software/hardware boundary. In this article, we present ReconROS , a framework that integrates the widely used robot operating system (ROS) with ReconOS, which features multithreaded programming of hardware and software threads for reconfigurable computers. This unique combination gives ROS 2 developers the flexibility to transparently accelerate parts of their robotics applications in hardware. We elaborate on the architecture and the design flow for ReconROS and report on a set of experiments that underline the feasibility and flexibility of our approach.

Download Full-text

PORTABLE IMAGE-BASED HIGH PERFORMANCE MOBILE MAPPING SYSTEM IN UNDERGROUND ENVIRONMENTS – SYSTEM CONFIGURATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ◽

10.5194/isprs-annals-iv-2-w5-255-2019 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol IV-2/W5 ◽

pp. 255-262

Author(s):

S. Blaser ◽

S. Nebiker ◽

D. Wisler

Keyword(s):

High Performance ◽

Life Cycle Management ◽

Measurement Unit ◽

Indoor Environments ◽

Mobile Mapping ◽

Mapping System ◽

Order Of Magnitude ◽

Mobile Mapping System ◽

And Performance ◽

Measurement Campaigns

Abstract. The progression in urbanization increases the need for different types of underground infrastructure. Consequently, infrastructure and life cycle management are rapidly gaining in importance. Mobile reality capturing systems and cloud-based services exploiting georeferenced metric 3D imagery are already extensively used for infrastructure management in outdoor environments. These services minimise dangerous and expensive field visits or measurement campaigns. In this paper, we introduce the BIMAGE Backpack, a portable image-based mobile mapping system for 3D data acquisition in indoor environments. The system consists of a multi-head panorama camera, two multi-profile laser scanners and an inertial measurement unit. With this system, we carried out underground measurement campaigns in the Hagerbach Test Gallery, located in Flums Hochwiese, Switzerland. For our performance evaluations in two different tunnel sections, we employed LiDAR SLAM as well as advanced image-based georeferencing. The obtained absolute accuracies were in the range from 6.2 to 7.4&thinsp;cm. The relative accuracy, which for many applications is even more important, was in the range of 2&ndash;6&thinsp;mm. These figures demonstrate an accuracy improvement of the subsequent image-based georeferencing over LiDAR SLAM by about an order of magnitude. The investigations show the application potential of image-based portable mobile mapping systems for infrastructure inventory and management in large underground facilities.

Download Full-text

F1_Tenth_Course_Report_Group_C

10.31224/osf.io/68bvh ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Yi Chen ◽

Sagar Manglani ◽

Roberto Merco ◽

Drew Bolduc

Keyword(s):

Operating System ◽

Autonomous Driving ◽

Software Tools ◽

Simulation Environment ◽

Robot Operating System ◽

Available Information

In this paper, we discuss several of major robot/vehicle platforms available and demonstrate the implementation of autonomous techniques on one such platform, the F1/10. Robot Operating System was chosen for its existing collection of software tools, libraries, and simulation environment. We build on the available information for the F1/10 vehicle and illustrate key tools that will help achieve properly functioning hardware. We provide methods to build algorithms and give examples of deploying these algorithms to complete autonomous driving tasks and build 2D maps using SLAM. Finally, we discuss the results of our findings and how they can be improved.

Download Full-text

A Robot Operating System Framework for Secure UAV Communications

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s21041369 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 1369

Author(s):

Hyojun Lee ◽

Jiyoung Yoon ◽

Min-Seong Jang ◽

Kyung-Joon Park

Keyword(s):

Operating System ◽

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽

Ground Control ◽

Unmanned Aerial System ◽

Security Framework ◽

Security Vulnerabilities ◽

Robot Operating System ◽

Security Issues ◽

Aerial Vehicles ◽

Ground Control Station

To perform advanced operations with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), it is crucial that components other than the existing ones such as flight controller, network devices, and ground control station (GCS) are also used. The inevitable addition of hardware and software to accomplish UAV operations may lead to security vulnerabilities through various vectors. Hence, we propose a security framework in this study to improve the security of an unmanned aerial system (UAS). The proposed framework operates in the robot operating system (ROS) and is designed to focus on several perspectives, such as overhead arising from additional security elements and security issues essential for flight missions. The UAS is operated in a nonnative and native ROS environment. The performance of the proposed framework in both environments is verified through experiments.

Download Full-text

A Peristaltic Micropump Based on the Fast Electrochemical Actuator: Design, Fabrication, and Preliminary Testing

Actuators ◽

10.3390/act10030062 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 62

Author(s):

Ilia Uvarov ◽

Pavel Shlepakov ◽

Artem Melenev ◽

Kechun Ma ◽

Vitaly Svetovoy ◽

...

Keyword(s):

High Performance ◽

Drug Delivery Systems ◽

Main Part ◽

Fabrication Technology ◽

Fabrication Procedure ◽

Order Of Magnitude ◽

Peristaltic Micropump ◽

Biomedical Field ◽

Lift Off ◽

Actuator Design

Microfluidic devices providing an accurate delivery of fluids at required rates are of considerable interest, especially for the biomedical field. The progress is limited by the lack of micropumps, which are compact, have high performance, and are compatible with standard microfabrication. This paper describes a micropump based on a new driving principle. The pump contains three membrane actuators operating peristaltically. The actuators are driven by nanobubbles of hydrogen and oxygen, which are generated in the chamber by a series of short voltage pulses of alternating polarity applied to the electrodes. This process guaranties the response time of the actuators to be much shorter than that of any other electrochemical device. The main part of the pump has a size of about 3 mm, which is an order of magnitude smaller in comparison with conventional micropumps. The pump is fabricated in glass and silicon wafers using standard cleanroom processes. The channels are formed in SU-8 photoresist and the membrane is made of SiNx. The channels are sealed by two processes of bonding between SU-8 and SiNx. Functionality of the channels and membranes is demonstrated. A defect of electrodes related to the lift-off fabrication procedure did not allow a demonstration of the pumping process although a flow rate of 1.5 µl/min and dosage accuracy of 0.25 nl are expected. The working characteristics of the pump make it attractive for the use in portable drug delivery systems, but the fabrication technology must be improved.

Download Full-text

Highly efficient self-powered perovskite photodiode with an electron-blocking hole-transport NiOx layer

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-020-80640-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Amir Muhammad Afzal ◽

In-Gon Bae ◽

Yushika Aggarwal ◽

Jaewoo Park ◽

Hye-Ryeon Jeong ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Energy Harvesting ◽

Bias Voltage ◽

High Performance ◽

Hole Transport ◽

Transport Layer ◽

Hole Transport Layer ◽

Zero Bias ◽

Decay Times ◽

Order Of Magnitude ◽

Self Powered

AbstractHybrid organic–inorganic perovskite materials provide noteworthy compact systems that could offer ground-breaking architectures for dynamic operations and advanced engineering in high-performance energy-harvesting optoelectronic devices. Here, we demonstrate a highly effective self-powered perovskite-based photodiode with an electron-blocking hole-transport layer (NiOx). A high value of responsivity (R = 360 mA W−1) with good detectivity (D = 2.1 × 1011 Jones) and external quantum efficiency (EQE = 76.5%) is achieved due to the excellent interface quality and suppression of the dark current at zero bias voltage owing to the NiOx layer, providing outcomes one order of magnitude higher than values currently in the literature. Meanwhile, the value of R is progressively increased to 428 mA W−1 with D = 3.6 × 1011 Jones and EQE = 77% at a bias voltage of − 1.0 V. With a diode model, we also attained a high value of the built-in potential with the NiOx layer, which is a direct signature of the improvement of the charge-selecting characteristics of the NiOx layer. We also observed fast rise and decay times of approximately 0.9 and 1.8 ms, respectively, at zero bias voltage. Hence, these astonishing results based on the perovskite active layer together with the charge-selective NiOx layer provide a platform on which to realise high-performance self-powered photodiode as well as energy-harvesting devices in the field of optoelectronics.

Download Full-text