Complex manipulation with a simple robotic hand through contact breaking and caging

Humans use all surfaces of the hand for contact-rich manipulation. Robot hands, in contrast, typically use only the fingertips, which can limit dexterity. In this work, we leveraged a potential energy–based whole-hand manipulation model, which does not depend on contact wrench modeling like traditional approaches, to design a robotic manipulator. Inspired by robotic caging grasps and the high levels of dexterity observed in human manipulation, a metric was developed and used in conjunction with the manipulation model to design a two-fingered dexterous hand, the Model W. This was accomplished by simulating all planar finger topologies composed of open kinematic chains of up to three serial revolute and prismatic joints, forming symmetric two-fingered hands, and evaluating their performance according to the metric. We present the best design, an unconventional robot hand capable of performing continuous object reorientation, as well as repeatedly alternating between power and pinch grasps—two contact-rich skills that have often eluded robotic hands—and we experimentally characterize the hand’s manipulation capability. This hand realizes manipulation motions reminiscent of thumb–index finger manipulative movement in humans, and its topology provides the foundation for a general-purpose dexterous robot hand.

OBJECT RE-IDENTIFICATION USING MULTIMODAL AERIAL IMAGERY AND CONDITIONAL ADVERSARIAL NETWORKS

Object Re-Identification (ReID) is the task of matching a given object in the new environment with its image captured in a different environment. The input for a ReID method includes two sets of images. The probe set includes one or more images of the object that must be identified in the new environment. The gallery set includes images that may contain the object from the probe image. The ReID task’s complexity arises from the differences in the object appearance in the probe and gallery sets. Such difference may originate from changes in illumination or viewpoint locations for multiple cameras that capture images in the probe and gallery sets. This paper focuses on developing a deep learning ThermalReID framework for cross-modality object ReID in thermal images. Our framework aims to provide continuous object detection and re-identification while monitoring a region from a UAV. Given an input probe image captured in the visible range, our ThermalReID framework detects objects in a thermal image and performs the ReID. We evaluate our ThermalReID framework and modern baselines using various metrics. We use the IoU and mAP metrics for the object detection task. We use the cumulative matching characteristic (CMC) curves and normalized area-under-curve (nAUC) for the ReID task. The evaluation demonstrated encouraging results and proved that our ThermalReID framework outperforms existing baselines in the ReID accuracy. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the fusion of the semantic data with the input thermal gallery image increases the object detection and localization scores. We developed the ThermalReID framework for cross-modality object re-identification. We evaluated our framework and two modern baselines on the task of object ReID for four object classes. Our framework successfully performs object ReID in the thermal gallery image from the color probe image. The evaluation using real and synthetic data demonstrated that our ThermalReID framework increases the ReID accuracy compared to modern ReID baselines.

The implementation of a digital system for automatic continuous control object, based on a physical model of the object using a thermal Scada Zenon system

Purpose. Develop a methodology for the implementation of digital control systems for continuous objects on a personal computer, which should provide: bringing the temperature in the chamber to a given value at a given range of air flow in the system; maintaining the temperature in the chamber at a given level at a given range of air flow in the system; visualization and control of the stand of the thermal object; control of fan speed in order to create a disturbing effect; registration of process parameters in the thermal object. The methods. The development is carried out through the phased implementation of a digital control system for a continuous object, implemented on a personal computer. The proposed approach consists of the main stages: a controller is synthesized in a continuous form, which implements the proportional-integral-differential (PID) control law. The simulation of the obtained system is performed in the mathematical package MATLAB. At the next stage on the personal computer the software implementation of the synthesized digital regulator is executed. At the last stage, the hardware elements of the control system were developed and implemented. Findings. The use of this approach in the development of a system of automatic control of a continuous object on the basis of a thermal object allows you to effectively create a complete hardware and software part of digital SAC using Scada system Zenon. This will significantly reduce the duration and cost of commissioning of ACS in production conditions at the actual control facility. Which makes it possible to significantly reduce the duration and cost of commissioning of ACS in production conditions at the actual control facility. The originality. For the first time, a method of creating a control system for thermal objects, based on programmable logic controller with the synthesis of the system in the mathematical package MATLAB. Practical implimintation. The obtained data allow to bring the model as close as possible to the real control system and to perform effective testing of its functioning in non-production conditions.

An Energy Efficient Sink Location Service for Continuous Objects in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), detection and report of continuous object, such as forest fire and toxic gas leakage, is one of the major applications. In large-scale continuous object tracking in WSNs, there might be many source nodes simultaneously, detecting the continuous object. Each nodes reports its data to both a base station and mobile workers in the industry field. For communication between the source nodes and a mobile worker, sink location service is needed to continuously notify the location of the mobile worker. But, as the application has a large number of sources, it causes a waste of energy consumption. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a two-phase sink location service scheme. In the first phase, the proposed scheme constructs a virtual grid structure for merging the source nodes. Then, the proposed scheme aggregates the merging points from an originated merging point as the second phase. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is superior to other schemes in terms of energy consumption.

Unmanned Farm utilizes Virtual Fence Technology for Animal Tracking

In order to graze animals on farms in large areas, fences must be installed. For this reason, installation and maintenance costs are high. To solve this problem and to manage animals efficiently, we want to use virtual fences based on IoT system. A virtual fence is not about installing a physically contiguous fence but using the least IoT device to get the effect of the existing fence. As described above, since the virtual fence is not an invisible and continuous object, it can be formed in various shapes other than a rectangular shape. Virtual fences can be implemented using a variety of sensors and embedded systems currently available in the marketplace. This can reduce the cost of installing and maintaining an existing fence and provide additional benefits such as tracking the health of the animal and movement tracking. In this paper, we propose a virtual fence algorithm. The proposed algorithm can propose an animal's range of motion and take action according to specified rules. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can manage the animals in the virtual fence well.