Multicopters are among the most versatile mobile robots. Their applications range from inspection and mapping tasks to providing vital reconnaissance in disaster zones and to package delivery. The range, endurance, and speed a multirotor vehicle can achieve while performing its task is a decisive factor not only for vehicle design and mission planning, but also for policy makers deciding on the rules and regulations for aerial robots. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work proposes the first approach to estimate the range, endurance, and optimal flight speed for a wide variety of multicopters. This advance is made possible by combining a state-of-the-art first-principles aerodynamic multicopter model based on blade-element-momentum theory with an electric-motor model and a graybox battery model. This model predicts the cell voltage with only 1.3% relative error (43.1 mV), even if the battery is subjected to non-constant discharge rates. Our approach is validated with real-world experiments on a test bench as well as with flights at speeds up to 65 km/h in one of the world's largest motion-capture systems. We also present an accurate pen-and-paper algorithm to estimate the range, endurance and optimal speed of multicopters to help future researchers build drones with maximal range and endurance, ensuring that future multirotor vehicles are even more versatile.
Sward species composition estimation is a tedious one. Herbage must be collected in the field, manually separated into components, dried and weighed to estimate species composition. Deep learning approaches using neural networks have been used in previous work to propose faster and more cost efficient alternatives to this process by estimating the biomass information from a picture of an area of pasture alone. Deep learning approaches have, however, struggled to generalize to distant geographical locations and necessitated further data collection to retrain and perform optimally in different climates. In this work, we enhance the deep learning solution by reducing the need for ground-truthed (GT) images when training the neural network. We demonstrate how unsupervised contrastive learning can be used in the sward composition prediction problem and compare with the state-of-the-art on the publicly available GrassClover dataset collected in Denmark as well as a more recent dataset from Ireland where we tackle herbage mass and height estimation.
Covariance estimation for matrix-valued data has received an increasing interest in applications. Unlike previous works that rely heavily on matrix normal distribution assumption and the requirement of fixed matrix size, we propose a class of distribution-free regularized covariance estimation methods for high-dimensional matrix data under a separability condition and a bandable covariance structure. Under these conditions, the original covariance matrix is decomposed into a Kronecker product of two bandable small covariance matrices representing the variability over row and column directions. We formulate a unified framework for estimating bandable covariance, and introduce an efficient algorithm based on rank one unconstrained Kronecker product approximation. The convergence rates of the proposed estimators are established, and the derived minimax lower bound shows our proposed estimator is rate-optimal under certain divergence regimes of matrix size. We further introduce a class of robust covariance estimators and provide theoretical guarantees to deal with heavy-tailed data. We demonstrate the superior finite-sample performance of our methods using simulations and real applications from a gridded temperature anomalies dataset and a S&P 500 stock data analysis.
We propose a novel framework for learning a low-dimensional representation of data based on nonlinear dynamical systems, which we call dynamical dimension reduction (DDR). In the DDR model, each point is evolved via a nonlinear flow towards a lower-dimensional subspace; the projection onto the subspace gives the low-dimensional embedding. Training the model involves identifying the nonlinear flow and the subspace. Following the equation discovery method, we represent the vector field that defines the flow using a linear combination of dictionary elements, where each element is a pre-specified linear/nonlinear candidate function. A regularization term for the average total kinetic energy is also introduced and motivated by optimal transport theory. We prove that the resulting optimization problem is well-posed and establish several properties of the DDR method. We also show how the DDR method can be trained using a gradient-based optimization method, where the gradients are computed using the adjoint method from optimal control theory. The DDR method is implemented and compared on synthetic and example datasets to other dimension reductions methods, including PCA, t-SNE, and Umap.
This paper presents GoPose, a 3D skeleton-based human pose estimation system that uses WiFi devices at home. Our system leverages the WiFi signals reflected off the human body for 3D pose estimation. In contrast to prior systems that need specialized hardware or dedicated sensors, our system does not require a user to wear or carry any sensors and can reuse the WiFi devices that already exist in a home environment for mass adoption. To realize such a system, we leverage the 2D AoA spectrum of the signals reflected from the human body and the deep learning techniques. In particular, the 2D AoA spectrum is proposed to locate different parts of the human body as well as to enable environment-independent pose estimation. Deep learning is incorporated to model the complex relationship between the 2D AoA spectrums and the 3D skeletons of the human body for pose tracking. Our evaluation results show GoPose achieves around 4.7cm of accuracy under various scenarios including tracking unseen activities and under NLoS scenarios.
Autonomous marine vessels are expected to avoid inter-vessel collisions and comply with the international regulations for safe voyages. This paper presents a stepwise path planning method using stream functions. The dynamic flow of fluids is used as a guidance model, where the collision avoidance in static environments is achieved by applying the circular theorem in the sink flow. We extend this method to dynamic environments by adding vortex flows in the flow field. The stream function is recursively updated to enable on the fly waypoint decisions. The vessel avoids collisions and also complies with several rules of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea. The method is conceptually and computationally simple and convenient to tune, and yet versatile to handle complex and dense marine traffic with multiple dynamic obstacles. The ship dynamics are taken into account, by using B\'{e}zier curves to generate a sufficiently smooth path with feasible curvature. Numerical simulations are conducted to verify the proposed method.
Bayesian model selection provides a powerful framework for objectively comparing models directly from observed data, without reference to ground truth data. However, Bayesian model selection requires the computation of the marginal likelihood (model evidence), which is computationally challenging, prohibiting its use in many high-dimensional Bayesian inverse problems. With Bayesian imaging applications in mind, in this work we present the proximal nested sampling methodology to objectively compare alternative Bayesian imaging models for applications that use images to inform decisions under uncertainty. The methodology is based on nested sampling, a Monte Carlo approach specialised for model comparison, and exploits proximal Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to scale efficiently to large problems and to tackle models that are log-concave and not necessarily smooth (e.g., involving l_1 or total-variation priors). The proposed approach can be applied computationally to problems of dimension O(10^6) and beyond, making it suitable for high-dimensional inverse imaging problems. It is validated on large Gaussian models, for which the likelihood is available analytically, and subsequently illustrated on a range of imaging problems where it is used to analyse different choices of dictionary and measurement model.
Multi-camera vehicle tracking is one of the most complicated tasks in Computer Vision as it involves distinct tasks including Vehicle Detection, Tracking, and Re-identification. Despite the challenges, multi-camera vehicle tracking has immense potential in transportation applications including speed, volume, origin-destination (O-D), and routing data generation. Several recent works have addressed the multi-camera tracking problem. However, most of the effort has gone towards improving accuracy on high-quality benchmark datasets while disregarding lower camera resolutions, compression artifacts and the overwhelming amount of computational power and time needed to carry out this task on its edge and thus making it prohibitive for large-scale and real-time deployment. Therefore, in this work we shed light on practical issues that should be addressed for the design of a multi-camera tracking system to provide actionable and timely insights. Moreover, we propose a real-time city-scale multi-camera vehicle tracking system that compares favorably to computationally intensive alternatives and handles real-world, low-resolution CCTV instead of idealized and curated video streams. To show its effectiveness, in addition to integration into the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS), we participated in the 2021 NVIDIA AI City multi-camera tracking challenge and our method is ranked among the top five performers on the public leaderboard.
With the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources, distributed optimization algorithms have attracted significant attention for power systems applications due to their potential for superior scalability, privacy, and robustness to a single point-of-failure. The Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) is a popular distributed optimization algorithm; however, its convergence performance is highly dependent on the selection of penalty parameters, which are usually chosen heuristically. In this work, we use reinforcement learning (RL) to develop an adaptive penalty parameter selection policy for the AC optimal power flow (ACOPF) problem solved via ADMM with the goal of minimizing the number of iterations until convergence. We train our RL policy using deep Q-learning, and show that this policy can result in significantly accelerated convergence (up to a 59% reduction in the number of iterations compared to existing, curvature-informed penalty parameter selection methods). Furthermore, we show that our RL policy demonstrates promise for generalizability, performing well under unseen loading schemes as well as under unseen losses of lines and generators (up to a 50% reduction in iterations). This work thus provides a proof-of-concept for using RL for parameter selection in ADMM for power systems applications.
Soft robotic grippers facilitate contact-rich manipulation, including robust grasping of varied objects. Yet the beneficial compliance of a soft gripper also results in significant deformation that can make precision manipulation challenging. We present visual pressure estimation & control (VPEC), a method that uses a single RGB image of an unmodified soft gripper from an external camera to directly infer pressure applied to the world by the gripper. We present inference results for a pneumatic gripper and a tendon-actuated gripper making contact with a flat surface. We also show that VPEC enables precision manipulation via closed-loop control of inferred pressure. We present results for a mobile manipulator (Stretch RE1 from Hello Robot) using visual servoing to do the following: achieve target pressures when making contact; follow a spatial pressure trajectory; and grasp small objects, including a microSD card, a washer, a penny, and a pill. Overall, our results show that VPEC enables grippers with high compliance to perform precision manipulation.
Obtaining a dynamic population distribution is key to many decision-making processes such as urban planning, disaster management and most importantly helping the government to better allocate socio-technical supply. For the aspiration of these objectives, good population data is essential. The traditional method of collecting population data through the census is expensive and tedious. In recent years, machine learning methods have been developed to estimate the population distribution. Most of the methods use data sets that are either developed on a small scale or not publicly available yet. Thus, the development and evaluation of the new methods become challenging. We fill this gap by providing a comprehensive data set for population estimation in 98 European cities. The data set comprises digital elevation model, local climate zone, land use classifications, nighttime lights in combination with multi-spectral Sentinel-2 imagery, and data from the Open Street Map initiative. We anticipate that it would be a valuable addition to the research community for the development of sophisticated machine learning-based approaches in the field of population estimation.