Related papers: Localization in Unstructured Environments: Towards…
The use of drones for aerial cinematography has revolutionized several applications and industries that require live and dynamic camera viewpoints such as entertainment, sports, and security. However, safely controlling a drone while…
Autonomous exploration for mapping unknown large scale environments is a fundamental challenge in robotics, with efficiency in time, stability against map corruption and computational resources being crucial. This paper presents a novel…
Forestry plays a vital role in our society, creating significant ecological, economic, and recreational value. Efficient forest management involves labor-intensive and complex operations. One essential task for maintaining forest health and…
Understanding forest health is of great importance for the conservation of the integrity of forest ecosystems. In this regard, evaluating the amount and quality of dead wood is of utmost interest as they are favorable indicators of…
Accurate robot localization relative to orchard row centerlines is essential for autonomous guidance where satellite signals are often obstructed by foliage. Existing sensor-based approaches rely on various features extracted from images…
Drones will play an essential role in human-machine teaming in future search and rescue (SAR) missions. We present a first prototype that finds people fully autonomously in densely occluded forests. In the course of 17 field experiments…
Scattered trees outside of dense, closed-canopy forests are very important for carbon sequestration, supporting livelihoods, maintaining ecosystem integrity, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. In contrast to trees inside of…
In this paper, we emphasise the critical importance of large-scale datasets for advancing field robotics capabilities, particularly in natural environments. While numerous datasets exist for urban and suburban settings, those tailored to…
Increased growth in the global Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) (drone) industry has expanded possibilities for fully autonomous UAV applications. A particular application which has in part motivated this research is the use of UAV in wide…
Autonomous 3D acquisition of outdoor environments poses special challenges. Different from indoor scenes, where the room space is delineated by clear boundaries and separations (e.g., walls and furniture), an outdoor environment is spacious…
Monocular simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) is a cheap and energy efficient way to enable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to safely navigate managed forests and gather data crucial for monitoring tree health. SLAM research,…
Last-mile delivery systems commonly propose the use of autonomous robotic vehicles to increase scalability and efficiency. The economic inefficiency of collecting accurate prior maps for navigation motivates the use of planning algorithms…
This study demonstrates a method to locate an ideal perch location on a tree for vision-guided autonomous tree-perching drones. Various image processing algorithms, including those used for machine learning, image segmentation and binary…
We present a new and simple randomized algorithm for constructing the Delaunay triangulation using nearest neighbor graphs for point location. Under suitable assumptions, it runs in linear expected time for points in the plane with…
One of the hardest challenges to face in the development of a non GPS-based localization system for autonomous vehicles is the changes of the environment. LiDAR-based systems typically try to match the last measurements obtained with a…
Visual localization and mapping is a crucial capability to address many challenges in mobile robotics. It constitutes a robust, accurate and cost-effective approach for local and global pose estimation within prior maps. Yet, in highly…
Rapid sampling from the environment to acquire available frontier points and timely incorporating them into subsequent planning to reduce fragmented regions are critical to improve the efficiency of autonomous exploration. We propose HPHS,…
Robots deployed in settings such as warehouses and parking lots must cope with frequent and substantial changes when localizing in their environments. While many previous localization and mapping algorithms have explored methods of…
In recent years, increased wildfires have caused irreversible damage to forest resources worldwide, threatening wildlives and human living conditions. The lack of accurate frontline information in real-time can pose great risks to…
Onboard terrain sensing and mapping for safe planetary landings often suffer from missed hazardous features, e.g., small rocks, due to the large observational range and the limited resolution of the obtained terrain data. To this end, this…