Abstract

Frontier detection is a critical component in indoor mobile robot exploration, wherein the robot decides the next best location to move in order to continue with its mapping process. All frontier detection algorithms to the best of our knowledge require 3D locations of occupied regions as its input. In a monocular setting this entails a backend VSLAM algorithm that reconstructs the scene as the robot moves. Most monocular SLAM algorithms however provide sparse scene reconstruction from which frontiers cannot be reliably detected and estimated. In this effort we provide an alternate method of detecting frontiers during the course of robot motion that circumvents the requirement of dense mapping. Based on the observation that frontiers typically occur around vertical edges of walls, doors or tables we propose a novel linear chain CRF formulation that is able to detect the presence or absence of such frontier regions around such vertical edges. We used cues like increase in number of ground plane pixels and change in the spreading of optical flow vector, around those vertical edges. We also demonstrate that this method gives us more relevant frontiers as compared to methods based on reconstructing the scene through state-of-the art such SLAM algorithms such as PTAM. Finally, we present results in indoor scenes wherein frontiers are reliably detected around wall edges leading to new corridors, door edges leading to new rooms or corridors and table edges that opens up to a new space in rooms.

Abstract

Detecting multiple planes in images is a challenging problem, but one with many applications. Recent work such as J-Linkage and Ordered Residual Kernels have focussed on developing a domain independent approach to detect multiple structures. These multiple structure detection methods are then used for estimating multiple homographies given feature matches between two images. Features participating in the multiple homographies detected, provide us the multiple scene planes. We show that these methods provide locally optimal results and fail to merge detected planar patches to the true scene planes. These methods use only residues obtained on applying homography of one plane to another as cue for merging. In this paper, we develop additional cues such as local consistency of planes, local normals, texture etc. to perform better classification and merging. We formulate the classification as an MRF problem and use TRWS message passing algorithm to solve non metric energy terms and complex sparse graph structure. We show results on Michigan Indoor Corridor Dataset and our challenging dataset, common in robotics navigation scenarios. Experiments on the datasets demonstrate the accuracy of our plane detection relative to ground truth, with detailed comparisons to prior art.

Abstract

While the literature has been fairly dense in the areas of scene understanding and semantic labeling there have been few works that make use of motion cues to embellish semantic performance and vice versa. In this paper, we address the problem of semantic motion segmentation, and show how semantic and motion priors augments performance. We propose an algorithm that jointly infers the semantic class and motion labels of an object. Integrating semantic, geometric and optical flow based constraints into a dense CRF-model we infer both the object class as well as motion class, for each pixel. We found improvement in performance using a fully connected CRF as compared to a standard clique-based CRFs. For inference, we use a Mean Field approximation based algorithm. Our method outperforms recently proposed motion detection algorithms and also improves the semantic labeling compared to the state-of-the-art Automatic Labeling Environment algorithm on the challenging KITTI dataset especially for object classes such as pedestrians and cars that are critical to an outdoor robotic navigation scenario.

Abstract

For autonomous navigation in urban environments, the ability to detect road intersections in advance is crucial, especially in the absence of auxiliary geographic information. In this paper we investigate a 3D Point Cloud based solution for intersection recognition and road segment classification. We set up the intersection recognition problem as one of decoding a linear-chain Conditional Random Field (CRF). This allows us to encode temporal consistency relations between adjacent scans in our process, leading to a less error prone recognition algorithm. We quantify this claim experimentally. We first build a grid map of the point cloud, segmenting the region surrounding the robot into navigable and non-navigable regions. Then, based on our proposed beam model, we extract a descriptor of the scene. This we do as each scan is received from the robot. Based on the descriptor we build a linear chain-CRF. By decoding the CRF-chain we are able to recognize the type of road segment taken into consideration. With the proposed method, we are able to recognize Xjunctions, T-shaped intersections and standard non-branching road segments. We compare the CRF-based approach with a standard SVM based one and show performance gain due to the CRF formulation.

Abstract

The challenges in generating minimum time trajectory and control for generic quadrocopter flying through sophisticated and unknown environment are explored in this paper. The proposed method uses convex programming technique to optimize polynomial splines, which are numerically stable for high-order including large number of segments and easily formulated for efficient computation. Moreover, exploiting the differential flatness of system, these polynomial trajectories encode the dynamics and constraints of the vehicle and decouple them from trajectory planning. The framework is fast enough to be performed in real time and results in solution which is close to time optimal. As control inputs are computed from the generated trajectory in each update, they are applicable to achieve closed-loop control similar to model predictive controller.

Abstract

Today, IaaS cloud providers are dynamically minimizing the cost of data centers operations, while maintaining the Service Level Agreement (SLA). Currently, this is achieved by the live migration capability, which is an advanced state-of-the-art technology of Virtualization. However, existing migration techniques suffer from high network bandwidth utilization, large network data transfer, large migration time as well as the destination's VM failure during migration. In this paper, we propose Reliable Lazy Copy (RLC) - a fast, efficient and a reliable migration technique. RLC provides a reasonable solution for high-efficiency and less disruptive migration scheme by utilizing the three phases of the process migration. For effective network bandwidth utilization and reducing the total migration time, we introduce a learning phase to estimate the writable working set (WWS) prior to the migration, resulting in an almost single time transfer of the pages. Our approach decreases the total data transfer by 1.16 x - 12.21x and the total migration time by a factor of 1.42x - 9.84x against the existing approaches, thus providing a fast and an efficient, reliable VM migration of the VMs in the cloud.

Abstract

Multiprocessors have been widely used in modern high performance embedded system to meet the computational needs of smart, real time applications spread across multiple domains. While custom IPs (Intellectual Property) on FPGA based systems are commonly used, multiprocessing on FPGAs have not been explored enough due to concerns about meeting a right trade-off between area usage, achievable performance, and the required design time. This paper presents an implementation of a multiprocessing system on FPGA using multiple light weight soft processors (LWP) that work in conjunction with a custom hardware to achieve balanced performance to resource ratio. As an example we have implemented a TDEA (Triple Data Encryption Algorithm) cryptographic algorithm on our multiprocessing system that uses 2.5X less area, is 40% faster in performance, and requires 20% less power as compared to equivalent solution implemented using a commercial soft processor.

Abstract

A switching converter (DC-DC) cascaded with a low dropout regulator (LDO) gives the best trade off in terms of high system efficiency and low output ripple for automotive power management applications. The dropout voltage of the LDO is fixed based on its peak load. An adaptive LDO dropout technique, based on LDO load-current sensing, has been proposed to improve the moderate and light load system efficiency of the cascaded DC-DC and LDO combination. The feedback from LDO output to DC-DC output is stable and has minimal overhead (<; 2%) in terms of area and current consumption. The 1V LDO with adaptive dropout gives an efficiency improvement of 74% for 1A load to 81.6% for 100uA load across input voltage range of 6V to 18V. The overall hybrid regulator efficiency improvement upto 5% is achieved in simulations using 0.35μm AMS H35 process.

Abstract

Channel bonding is a mechanism deployed to synchronize serial communication channels of higher data rate and bandwidth applications. Application that demands higher bandwidth, for example 400G Ethernet, it is not possible to achieve such massive rate using single high speed serial IO channel and aggregating multiple communication-links as a single communication channel makes such ultra-high speed realizable. One challenge that is faced in aggregating communication links is elimination of serial data skew introduced by non-identical trace length of the serial links. Various techniques exist to de-skew lanes in the receive side of the high speed serial transceiver. This paper presents a novel approach to channel bonding that optimizes area, power, initialization time and yields better performance. The idea discussed here is based on a delay based model and explores the possibility of performing channel bonding in a centralized way rather than a distributed way.

Abstract

This paper explains the importance of the role played by photon lifetime in the generation of terminal voltage across Semiconductor Ring Laser Gyroscope (SRLG). This terminal voltage can be used for direct measurement of rotation rate.