Related papers: Low-Cost Underwater In-Pipe Centering and Inspecti…
Robotic grasping is a fundamental capability for autonomous manipulation, yet remains highly challenging in cluttered environments where occlusion, poor perception quality, and inconsistent 3D reconstructions often lead to unstable or…
Navigation inside luminal organs is an arduous task that requires non-intuitive coordination between the movement of the operator's hand and the information obtained from the endoscopic video. The development of tools to automate certain…
Recently, a new underwater imaging formation model presented that the coefficients related to the direct and backscatter transmission signals are dependent on the type of water, camera specifications, water depth, and imaging range. This…
In today's chemical plants, human field operators perform frequent integrity checks to guarantee high safety standards, and thus are possibly the first to encounter dangerous operating conditions. To alleviate their task, we present a…
Leveraging background fluid flows for propulsion has the potential to enhance the range and speed of autonomous aerial and underwater vehicles. In this work, we demonstrate experimentally a fully autonomous strategy for exploiting vortex…
Underwater pipelines are highly susceptible to corrosion, which not only shorten their service life but also pose significant safety risks. Compared with manual inspection, the intelligent real-time imaging system for underwater pipeline…
Vision-based localization approaches now underpin newly emerging navigation pipelines for myriad use cases from robotics to assistive technologies. Compared to sensor-based solutions, vision-based localization does not require pre-installed…
Faced with strong demand for robots working in underwater pipeline environments, a novel underwater multi-model locomotion robot is designed and studied in this research. By mimicking the earthworm's metameric body, the robot is segmented…
Precise sensor calibration is critical for autonomous vehicles as a prerequisite for perception algorithms to function properly. Rotation error of one degree can translate to position error of meters in target object detection at large…
Having accurate localization capabilities is one of the fundamental requirements of autonomous robots. For underwater vehicles, the choices for effective localization are limited due to limitations of GPS use in water and poor environmental…
In this paper we address the mine countermeasures (MCM) search problem for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) surveying the seabed using a side-looking sonar. We propose a coverage path planning method that adapts the AUV track spacing…
This paper presents a solution for the autonomous exploration and inspection of Ballast Water Tanks (BWTs) of marine vessels using aerial robots. Ballast tank compartments are critical for a vessel's safety and correspond to confined…
Visually-guided underwater robots are deployed alongside human divers for cooperative exploration, inspection, and monitoring tasks in numerous shallow-water and coastal-water applications. The most essential capability of such companion…
Robotic inspection of radioactive areas enables operators to be removed from hazardous environments; however, planning and operating in confined, cluttered environments remain challenging. These systems must autonomously reconstruct the…
Precise autonomous navigation remains a substantial challenge to all underwater platforms. Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) and Doppler Velocity Logs (DVL) have complementary characteristics and are promising sensors that could enable fully…
In-pipe inspection robots must traverse confined pipeline networks with elbows and three-dimensional fittings, requiring both reliable axial traction and rapid rolling reorientation for posture correction. In compact V-shaped platforms,…
This paper presents a state-of-the-art LiDAR based autonomous navigation system for under-canopy agricultural robots. Under-canopy agricultural navigation has been a challenging problem because GNSS and other positioning sensors are prone…
Quadruped robots are currently a widespread platform for robotics research, thanks to powerful Reinforcement Learning controllers and the availability of cheap and robust commercial platforms. However, to broaden the adoption of the…
Impact-sounding (IS) and impact-echo (IE) are well-developed non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods that are widely used for inspections of concrete structures to ensure the safety and sustainability. However, it is a tedious work to…
Inspection and maintenance are two crucial aspects of industrial pipeline plants. While robotics has made tremendous progress in the mechanic design of in-pipe inspection robots, the autonomous control of such robots is still a big open…