Unveiling the Potential of iMarkers: Invisible Fiducial Markers for Advanced Robotics

Fiducial markers are widely used in various robotics tasks, facilitating enhanced navigation, object recognition, and scene understanding. Despite their advantages for robots and Augmented Reality (AR) applications, they often disrupt the visual aesthetics of environments because they are visible to humans, making them unsuitable for non-intrusive use cases. To address this gap, this paper presents "iMarkers"-innovative, unobtrusive fiducial markers detectable exclusively by robots equipped with specialized sensors. These markers offer high flexibility in production, allowing customization of their visibility range and encoding algorithms to suit various demands. The paper also introduces the hardware designs and software algorithms developed for detecting iMarkers, highlighting their adaptability and robustness in the detection and recognition stages. Various evaluations have demonstrated the effectiveness of iMarkers compared to conventional (printed) and blended fiducial markers and confirmed their applicability in diverse robotics scenarios.

Global SLAM in Visual-Inertial Systems with 5G Time-of-Arrival Integration

This paper presents a novel approach to improve global localization and mapping in indoor drone navigation by integrating 5G Time of Arrival (ToA) measurements into ORB-SLAM3, a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) system. By incorporating ToA data from 5G base stations, we align the SLAM's local reference frame with a global coordinate system, enabling accurate and consistent global localization. We extend ORB-SLAM3's optimization pipeline to integrate ToA measurements alongside bias estimation, transforming the inherently local estimation into a globally consistent one. This integration effectively resolves scale ambiguity in monocular SLAM systems and enhances robustness, particularly in challenging scenarios where standard SLAM may fail. Our method is evaluated using five real-world indoor datasets collected with RGB-D cameras and inertial measurement units (IMUs), augmented with simulated 5G ToA measurements at 28 GHz and 78 GHz frequencies using MATLAB and QuaDRiGa. We tested four SLAM configurations: RGB-D, RGB-D-Inertial, Monocular, and Monocular-Inertial. The results demonstrate that while local estimation accuracy remains comparable due to the high precision of RGB-D-based ORB-SLAM3 compared to ToA measurements, the inclusion of ToA measurements facilitates robust global positioning. In scenarios where standard mono-inertial ORB-SLAM3 loses tracking, our approach maintains accurate localization throughout the trajectory.

Hierarchical Performance-Based Design Optimization Framework for Soft Grippers

This paper presents a hierarchical, performance-based framework for the design optimization of multi-fingered soft grippers. To address the need for systematically defined performance indices, the framework structures the optimization process into three integrated layers: Task Space, Motion Space, and Design Space. In the Task Space, performance indices are defined as core objectives, while the Motion Space interprets these into specific movement primitives. Finally, the Design Space applies parametric and topological optimization techniques to refine the geometry and material distribution of the system, achieving a balanced design across key performance metrics. The framework's layered structure enhances SG design, ensuring balanced performance and scalability for complex tasks and contributing to broader advancements in soft robotics.

Metric-Semantic Factor Graph Generation based on Graph Neural Networks

Understanding the relationships between geometric structures and semantic concepts is crucial for building accurate models of complex environments. In indoors, certain spatial constraints, such as the relative positioning of planes, remain consistent despite variations in layout. This paper explores how these invariant relationships can be captured in a graph SLAM framework by representing high-level concepts like rooms and walls, linking them to geometric elements like planes through an optimizable factor graph. Several efforts have tackled this issue with add-hoc solutions for each concept generation and with manually-defined factors. This paper proposes a novel method for metric-semantic factor graph generation which includes defining a semantic scene graph, integrating geometric information, and learning the interconnecting factors, all based on Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). An edge classification network (G-GNN) sorts the edges between planes into same room, same wall or none types. The resulting relations are clustered, generating a room or wall for each cluster. A second family of networks (F-GNN) infers the geometrical origin of the new nodes. The definition of the factors employs the same F-GNN used for the metric attribute of the generated nodes. Furthermore, share the new factor graph with the S-Graphs+ algorithm, extending its graph expressiveness and scene representation with the ultimate goal of improving the SLAM performance. The complexity of the environments is increased to N-plane rooms by training the networks on L-shaped rooms. The framework is evaluated in synthetic and simulated scenarios as no real datasets of the required complex layouts are available.

Towards Localizing Structural Elements: Merging Geometrical Detection with Semantic Verification in RGB-D Data

RGB-D cameras supply rich and dense visual and spatial information for various robotics tasks such as scene understanding, map reconstruction, and localization. Integrating depth and visual information can aid robots in localization and element mapping, advancing applications like 3D scene graph generation and Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VSLAM). While point cloud data containing such information is primarily used for enhanced scene understanding, exploiting their potential to capture and represent rich semantic information has yet to be adequately targeted. This paper presents a real-time pipeline for localizing building components, including wall and ground surfaces, by integrating geometric calculations for pure 3D plane detection followed by validating their semantic category using point cloud data from RGB-D cameras. It has a parallel multi-thread architecture to precisely estimate poses and equations of all the planes detected in the environment, filters the ones forming the map structure using a panoptic segmentation validation, and keeps only the validated building components. Incorporating the proposed method into a VSLAM framework confirmed that constraining the map with the detected environment-driven semantic elements can improve scene understanding and map reconstruction accuracy. It can also ensure (re-)association of these detected components into a unified 3D scene graph, bridging the gap between geometric accuracy and semantic understanding. Additionally, the pipeline allows for the detection of potential higher-level structural entities, such as rooms, by identifying the relationships between building components based on their layout.

Real-time Localization and Mapping in Architectural Plans with Deviations

Having prior knowledge of an environment boosts the localization and mapping accuracy of robots. Several approaches in the literature have utilized architectural plans in this regard. However, almost all of them overlook the deviations between actual as-built environments and as-planned architectural designs, introducing bias in the estimations. To address this issue, we present a novel localization and mapping method denoted as deviations-informed Situational Graphs or diS-Graphs that integrates prior knowledge from architectural plans even in the presence of deviations. It is based on Situational Graphs (S-Graphs) that merge geometric models of the environment with 3D scene graphs into a multi-layered jointly optimizable factor graph. Our diS-Graph extracts information from architectural plans by first modeling them as a hierarchical factor graph, which we will call an Architectural Graph (A-Graph). While the robot explores the real environment, it estimates an S-Graph from its onboard sensors. We then use a novel matching algorithm to register the A-Graph and S-Graph in the same reference, and merge both of them with an explicit model of deviations. Finally, an alternating graph optimization strategy allows simultaneous global localization and mapping, as well as deviation estimation between both the A-Graph and the S-Graph. We perform several experiments in simulated and real datasets in the presence of deviations. On average, our diS-Graphs outperforms the baselines by a margin of approximately 43% in simulated environments and by 7% in real environments, while being able to estimate deviations up to 35 cm and 15 degrees.

A Practical Roadmap to Learning from Demonstration for Robotic Manipulators in Manufacturing

This paper provides a structured and practical roadmap for practitioners to integrate Learning from Demonstration (LfD ) into manufacturing tasks, with a specific focus on industrial manipulators. Motivated by the paradigm shift from mass production to mass customization, it is crucial to have an easy-to-follow roadmap for practitioners with moderate expertise, to transform existing robotic processes to customizable LfD-based solutions. To realize this transformation, we devise the key questions of "What to Demonstrate", "How to Demonstrate", "How to Learn", and "How to Refine". To follow through these questions, our comprehensive guide offers a questionnaire-style approach, highlighting key steps from problem definition to solution refinement. The paper equips both researchers and industry professionals with actionable insights to deploy LfD-based solutions effectively. By tailoring the refinement criteria to manufacturing settings, the paper addresses related challenges and strategies for enhancing LfD performance in manufacturing contexts.

Graph-Based vs. Error State Kalman Filter-Based Fusion Of 5G And Inertial Data For MAV Indoor Pose Estimation

5G New Radio Time of Arrival (ToA) data has the potential to revolutionize indoor localization for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). However, its performance under varying network setups, especially when combined with IMU data for real-time localization, has not been fully explored so far. In this study, we develop an error state Kalman filter (ESKF) and a pose graph optimization (PGO) approach to address this gap. We systematically evaluate the performance of the derived approaches for real-time MAV localization in realistic scenarios with 5G base stations in Line-Of-Sight (LOS), demonstrating the potential of 5G technologies in this domain. In order to experimentally test and compare our localization approaches, we augment the EuRoC MAV benchmark dataset for visual-inertial odometry with simulated yet highly realistic 5G ToA measurements. Our experimental results comprehensively assess the impact of varying network setups, including varying base station numbers and network configurations, on ToA-based MAV localization performance. The findings show promising results for seamless and robust localization using 5G ToA measurements, achieving an accuracy of 15 cm throughout the entire trajectory within a graph-based framework with five 5G base stations, and an accuracy of up to 34 cm in the case of ESKF-based localization. Additionally, we measure the run time of both algorithms and show that they are both fast enough for real-time implementation.

Synthetic Dataset Generation and Learning From Demonstration Applied to Industrial Manipulation

The aim of this study is to investigate an automated industrial manipulation pipeline, where assembly tasks can be flexibly adapted to production without the need for a robotic expert, both for the vision system and the robot program. The objective of this study is first, to develop a synthetic-dataset-generation pipeline with a special focus on industrial parts, and second, to use Learning-from-Demonstration (LfD) methods to replace manual robot programming, so that a non-robotic expert/process engineer can introduce a new manipulation task by teaching it to the robot.

Nussbaum Function Based Approach for Tracking Control of Robot Manipulators

This paper introduces a novel Nussbaum function-based PID control for robotic manipulators. The integration of the Nussbaum function into the PID framework provides a solution with a simple structure that effectively tackles the challenge of unknown control directions. Stability is achieved through a combination of neural network-based estimation and Lyapunov analysis, facilitating automatic gain adjustment without the need for system dynamics. Our approach offers a gain determination with minimum parameter requirements, significantly reducing the complexity and enhancing the efficiency of robotic manipulator control. The paper guarantees that all signals within the closed-loop system remain bounded. Lastly, numerical simulations validate the theoretical framework, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy in enhancing robotic manipulator control.