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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Robust Course-Boundary Extraction Algorithms For Autonomous Vehicles, Chris Roman, Charles Reinholtz
Robust Course-Boundary Extraction Algorithms For Autonomous Vehicles, Chris Roman, Charles Reinholtz
Christopher N. Roman
Practical autonomous robotic vehicles require dependable methods for accurately identifying course or roadway boundaries. The authors have developed a method to reliably extract the boundary line using simple dynamic thresholding, noise filtering, and blob removal. This article describes their efforts to apply this procedure in developing an autonomous vehicle.
Micro-Bathymetric Mapping Using Acoustic Range Images, Christopher Roman, Hanumant Singh
Micro-Bathymetric Mapping Using Acoustic Range Images, Christopher Roman, Hanumant Singh
Christopher N. Roman
This work focuses on the creation of high resolution micro-bathymetric maps using a high frequency pencil beam sonar. These maps typically cover areas of 10's to 100's of square meters. Data is collected using a sonar mounted to an underwater vehicle that can be positioned at discrete locations on the sea floor or flown in a survey pattern above the bottom. Specifically, we are focused on improving the accuracy of these terrain maps by merging sonar pings taken from multiple vantage points over the same location. This requires the adaption of data registration techniques to handle errors related to the …
Optical And Acoustic Habitat Characterization With The Seabed Auv, Hanumant Singh, Ryan Eustice, Oscar Pizarro, Christopher Roman
Optical And Acoustic Habitat Characterization With The Seabed Auv, Hanumant Singh, Ryan Eustice, Oscar Pizarro, Christopher Roman
Christopher N. Roman
The Seabed AUV is an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) built to serve as a readily available and operationally simple tool for high resolution imaging. It is a hover-capable vehicle that performs optical sensing with a 12 bit 1280/spl times/1024 CCD camera and acoustic high resolution mapping using an MST 300 kHz sidescan and a 675 kHz pencil beam bathymetric sonar. The AUV has been designed for operations from small vessels with minimal support equipment. It has an operational depth of 2000 meters and at 1 m/s can run for up to 10 hours. In this paper we report on the …
Estimation Of Error In Large Area Underwater Photomosaics Using Vehicle Navigation Data, C. Roman, H. Singh
Estimation Of Error In Large Area Underwater Photomosaics Using Vehicle Navigation Data, C. Roman, H. Singh
Christopher N. Roman
Creating geometrically accurate photomosaics of underwater sites using images collected from an AUV or ROV is a difficult task due to dimensional errors which grow as a function of 3D image distortion and the mosaicking process. Although photomosiacs are accurate locally their utility for accurately representing a large survey area is jeopardized by this error growth. Evaluating the error in a mosaic is the first step in creating globally accurate photomosaics of an unstructured environment with bounded error. Using vehicle navigation data and sensor offsets it is possible to estimate the error present in large area photomosaics independent of the …
A New Autonomous Underwater Vehicle For Imaging Research, C. Roman, O. Pizarro, R. Eustice, H. Singh
A New Autonomous Underwater Vehicle For Imaging Research, C. Roman, O. Pizarro, R. Eustice, H. Singh
Christopher N. Roman
Currently, unmanned underwater vehicles either tend to be cumbersome and complex to run, or operationally simple, but not quite suitable platforms for deep water imaging. This paper presents an alternative design in the form of a new low cost and easier to use autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for imaging research. The objective of the vehicle is to serve as a readily available and operationally simple tool that allows rapid testing of imaging algorithms in areas such as photomosaicking, 3D image reconstruction from a single camera, image based navigation, and multi-sensor fusion of bathymetry and optical data. These are all current …