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Full-Text Articles in Computer Engineering

Autonomous Apple Harvester Robot, Jack Ryan Cline, Tyus Green, Devon Woolston Jun 2024

Autonomous Apple Harvester Robot, Jack Ryan Cline, Tyus Green, Devon Woolston

Electrical Engineering

As agricultural demands rise and manual labor costs increase, there has become a dire need to automate apple harvesting. However, the precision and speed necessary for cost-efficient apple harvesting pose a significant challenge for robotic automation. To maintain cost-effective production, a harvester must be able to operate fast enough and long enough to compete with human labor. It must also be able to navigate and traverse apple orchards autonomously and pick apples without damaging the fruit or tree. This project presents an apple harvesting robot that uses a Mask R-CNN vision system with an RGB-D camera to detect the location …


Simulating And Training Autonomous Rover Navigation In Unity Engine Using Local Sensor Data, Christopher Pace May 2024

Simulating And Training Autonomous Rover Navigation In Unity Engine Using Local Sensor Data, Christopher Pace

Senior Honors Theses

Autonomous navigation is essential to remotely operating mobile vehicles on Mars, as communication takes up to 20 minutes to travel between the Earth and Mars. Several autonomous navigation methods have been implemented in Mars rovers and other mobile robots, such as odometry or simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) until the past few years when deep reinforcement learning (DRL) emerged as a viable alternative. In this thesis, a simulation model for end-to-end DRL Mars rover autonomous navigation training was created using Unity Engine, using local inputs such as GNSS, LiDAR, and gyro. This model was then trained in navigation in a …


Learning State-Dependent Sensor Measurement Models To Improve Robot Localization Accuracy, Troi André Williams Nov 2021

Learning State-Dependent Sensor Measurement Models To Improve Robot Localization Accuracy, Troi André Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a novel method called state-dependent sensor measurement models (SDSMMs). Such models dynamically predict the state-dependent bias and uncertainty of sensor measurements, ultimately improving fundamental robot tasks such as localization. In our first investigation, we introduced the state-dependent sensor measurement model framework, described their properties, stated the input and output of these models, and described how to train them. We also explained how to integrate such models with an Extended Kalman Filter and a Particle Filter, two popular robot state estimation algorithms. We validated the proposed framework through a series of localization tasks. The results showed that our …


Bibliometric Analysis On Optimal Path Planning For Robots, Varad Sandeep Nerlekar, Tathaagat Nihar Mamtura, Nishant Singh, Suket Anand, Sushma Parihar May 2021

Bibliometric Analysis On Optimal Path Planning For Robots, Varad Sandeep Nerlekar, Tathaagat Nihar Mamtura, Nishant Singh, Suket Anand, Sushma Parihar

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Traversing from a given point to another while avoiding collision with obstacles is one of the key goals of path planning for robots [1]. Doing so in the most optimal way - the minimum total distance traveled by the robot is the objective of our study [2,3]. To do so, the algorithms implemented on the robots need to constantly map the environment or workspace in real time and subsequently create paths for the traversal in the environment without colliding with objects or obstacles [4,5]. Throughout the years, many researchers have conducted their own studies, researches and have proposed approaches for …


Planr.: Planar Learning Autonomous Navigation Robot, Gabrielle S. Santamorena, Daniel Kasman, Jesus Mercado, Ben Klave, Andrew Weisman, Anthony Fortner Jun 2019

Planr.: Planar Learning Autonomous Navigation Robot, Gabrielle S. Santamorena, Daniel Kasman, Jesus Mercado, Ben Klave, Andrew Weisman, Anthony Fortner

Computer Engineering

PLANR is a self-contained robot capable of mapping a space and generating 2D floor plans of a building while identifying objects of interest. It runs Robot Operating System (ROS) and houses four main hardware components. An Arduino Mega board handles the navigation, while an NVIDIA Jetson TX2, holds most of the processing power and runs ROS. An Orbbec Astra Pro stereoscopic camera is used for recognition of doors, windows and outlets and the RPLiDAR A3 laser scanner is able to give depth for wall detection and dimension measurements. The robot is intended to operate autonomously and without constant human monitoring …


Towards Autonomous Localization Of An Underwater Drone, Nathan Sfard Jun 2018

Towards Autonomous Localization Of An Underwater Drone, Nathan Sfard

Master's Theses

Autonomous vehicle navigation is a complex and challenging task. Land and aerial vehicles often use highly accurate GPS sensors to localize themselves in their environments. These sensors are ineffective in underwater environments due to signal attenuation. Autonomous underwater vehicles utilize one or more of the following approaches for successful localization and navigation: inertial/dead-reckoning, acoustic signals, and geophysical data. This thesis examines autonomous localization in a simulated environment for an OpenROV Underwater Drone using a Kalman Filter. This filter performs state estimation for a dead reckoning system exhibiting an additive error in location measurements. We evaluate the accuracy of this Kalman …