Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

The motivation behind this research is the lack of an underground mining shaft data set in the literature in the form of open access. For this reason, our data set can be used for many research purposes such as shaft inspection, 3D measurements, simultaneous localization and mapping, artificial intelligence, etc. The data collection method incorporates rotated Velodyne VLP-16, Velodyne Ultra Puck VLP-32c, Livox Tele-15, IMU Xsens MTi-30 and Faro Focus 3D. The ground truth data were acquired with a geodetic survey including 15 ground control points and 6 Faro Focus 3D terrestrial laser scanner stations of a total 273,784,932 of 3D measurement points. This data set provides an end-user case study of realistic applications in mobile mapping technology. The goal of this research was to fill the gap in the underground mining data set domain. The result is the first open-access data set for an underground mining shaft (shaft depth −300 m).

LiDAR, IMU, underground shaft mapping, mine mapping

This paper describes an affordable robotic mobile 3D mapping system. It is built with Livox Mid−40 lidar with a conic field of view extended by a custom rotating planar reflector. This 3D sensor is compared with the more expensive Velodyne VLP 16 lidar. It is shown that the proposed sensor reaches satisfactory accuracy and range. Furthermore, it is able to preserve the metric accuracy and non−repetitive scanning pattern of the unmodified sensor. Due to preserving the non−repetitive scan pattern, our system is capable of covering the entire field of view of 38.4 × 360 degrees, which is an added value of conducted research. We show the calibration method, mechanical design, and synchronization details that are necessary to replicate our system. This work extends the applicability of solid−state lidars since the field of view can be reshaped with minimal loss of measurement properties. The solution was part of a system that was evaluated during the 3rd European Robotics Hackathon in the Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant. The experimental part of the paper demonstrates that our affordable robotic mobile 3D mapping system is capable of providing 3D maps of a nuclear facility that are comparable to the more expensive solution.

automatic calibration, solid-state lidar, reshape field of view, 3D mapping, SLAM, robotic mapping

This paper describes the calibration method for calculating parameters (position and orientation) of planar reflectors reshaping LiDAR’s (light detection and ranging) field of view. The calibration method is based on the reflection equation used in the ICP (Iterative Closest Point) optimization. A novel calibration process as the multi-view data registration scheme is proposed; therefore, the poses of the measurement instrument and parameters of planar reflectors are calculated simultaneously. The final metric measurement is more accurate compared with parameters retrieved from the mechanical design. Therefore, it is evident that the calibration process is required for affordable solutions where the mechanical design can differ from the inaccurate assembly. It is shown that the accuracy is less than 20 cm for almost all measurements preserving long-range capabilities. The experiment is performed based on Livox Mid-40 LiDAR augmented with six planar reflectors. The ground-truth data were collected using Z + F IMAGER 5010 3D Terrestrial Laser Scanner. The calibration method is independent of mechanical design and does not require any fiducial markers on the mirrors. This work fulfils the gap between rotating and Solid-State LiDARs since the field of view can be reshaped by planar reflectors, and the proposed method can preserve the metric accuracy. Thus, such discussion concludes the findings. We prepared an open-source project and provided all the necessary data for reproducing the experiments. That includes: Complete open-source code, the mechanical design of reflector assembly and the dataset which was used in this paper.

LiDAR, ICP, mapping, calibration, reshape field of view, solid state LiDAR

This paper concerns the an intelligent mobile application for spatial design support and security domain. Mobility has two aspects in our research: The first one is the usage of mobile robots for 3D mapping of urban areas and for performing some specific tasks. The second mobility aspect is related with a novel Software as a Service system that allows access to robotic functionalities and data over the Ethernet, thus we demonstrate the use of the novel NVIDIA GRID technology allowing to virtualize the graphic processing unit. We introduce Complex Shape Histogram, a core component of our artificial intelligence engine, used for classifying 3D point clouds with a Support Vector Machine. We use Complex Shape Histograms also for loop closing detection in the simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm. Our intelligent mobile system is built on top of the Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Representation and Reasoning framework. This framework defines an ontology and a semantic model, which are used for building the intelligent mobile user interfaces. We show experiments demonstrating advantages of our approach. In addition, we test our prototypes in the field after the end-user case studies demonstrating a relevant contribution for future intelligent mobile systems that merge mobile robots with novel data centers.

Intelligent mobile system, 3D object recognition, Qualitative representation and reasoning, 3D mapping

W artykule przedstawiono projekt autonomicznego robota inspekcyjnego. Ze względu na fakt, że komercyjne rozwiązania nie oferują satysfakcjonującej funkcjonalności w stosunkowo niskiej cenie zdecydowano się zaprojektować autonomicznego robota inspekcyjnego na bazie komercyjnej platformy wyposażonej w autorskie rozwiązanie laserowego systemu pomiarowego 3D. Projekt lasera 3D wykonano z wykorzystaniem technik szybkiego prototypowania metodą druku 3D. Autonomiczny robot mobilny nawigowany jest na podstawie systemu IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) ze zintegrowanym GPS (Global Positioning System). Opracowane rozwiązanie dostarcza użytkownikowi danych w postaci map lokalnych 3D wraz z częściową analizą semantyczną (obliczanie wektorów normalnych dla chmury punktów metodą PCA Principal Component Analysis) w trybie on-line. Przeprowadzono eksperymenty weryfikujące poprawność działania systemu. W rezultacie powstało nowoczesne stanowisko badawcze, które może być wykorzystane do kolejnych badań z wykorzystaniem mobilnych systemów inspekcyjnych.

robot inspekcyjny, laserowy system pomiarowy 3D, PCA (Principal Component Analysis)

This article concerns current progress in the development of multi robot simulation for TIRAMISU project. This simulator is designed for training of UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicles) operators in cooperative mission execution. The core components of the system are implemented using VORTEX physics simulation engine with OSG (Open Scene Graph) used for rendering. The engine provides an accurate physics simulation for robots working on a single stage. The main goal during development was to prepare a multi robot architecture for the simulation. The challenge was to integrate all simulation components into a common framework, therefore allowing the robots to interact with each other, without lose of simulation accuracy. Current version of the simulator has two types of robots: a) iRobot-PacBot b)LOCSTRA - a TIRAMISU robot for humanitarian demining. An example of multi robot scenario, transportation of UXO (UneXploded Ordnance), will be discussed.

Humanitarian demining, mobile robot simulation, operator training