Design of a road vehicle detection system based on monocular vision

In order to decrease vehicle crashes, a new rear view vehicle detection system based on monocular vision is designed. First, a small and flexible hardware platform based on a DM642 digtal signal processor （DSP） micro-controller is built. Then, a two-step vehicle detection algorithm is proposed. In the first step, a fast vehicle edge and symmetry fusion algorithm is used and a low threshold is set so that all the possible vehicles have a nearly 100% detection rate （TP） and the non-vehicles have a high false detection rate （FP）, i. e., all the possible vehicles can be obtained. In the second step, a classifier using a probabilistic neural network （PNN） which is based on multiple scales and an orientation Gabor feature is trained to classify the possible vehicles and eliminate the false detected vehicles from the candidate vehicles generated in the first step. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system maintains a high detection rate and a low false detection rate under different road, weather and lighting conditions.

Mobile Robot Localization and Navigation System Based on Monocular Vision

A system for mobile robot localization and navigation was presented.With the proposed system,the robot can be located and navigated by a single landmark in a single image.And the navigation mode may be following-track,teaching and playback,or programming.The basic idea is that the system computes the differences between the expected and the recognized position at each time and then controls the robot in a direction to reduce those differences.To minimize the robot sensor equipment,only one omnidirectional camera was used.Experiments in disturbing environments show that the presented algorithm is robust and easy to implement,without camera rectification.The rootmean-square error(RMSE) of localization is 1.4,cm,and the navigation error in teaching and playback is within 10,cm.

Calibration of laser beam direction based on monocular vision

In the laser displacement sensors measurement system,the laser beam direction is an important parameter.Particularly,the azimuth and pitch angles are the most important parameters to a laser beam.In this paper,based on monocular vision,a laser beam direction measurement method is proposed.First,place the charge coupled device(CCD)camera above the base plane,and adjust and fix the camera position so that the optical axis is nearly perpendicular to the base plane.The monocular vision localization model is established by using circular aperture calibration board.Then the laser beam generating device is placed and maintained on the base plane at fixed position.At the same time a special target block is placed on the base plane so that the laser beam can project to the special target and form a laser spot.The CCD camera placed above the base plane can acquire the laser spot and the image of the target block clearly,so the two-dimensional(2D)image coordinate of the centroid of the laser spot can be extracted by correlation algorithm.The target is moved at an equal distance along the laser beam direction,and the spots and target images of each moving under the current position are collected by the CCD camera.By using the relevant transformation formula and combining the intrinsic parameters of the target block,the2D coordinates of the gravity center of the spot are converted to the three-dimensional(3D)coordinate in the base plane.Because of the moving of the target,the3D coordinates of the gravity center of the laser spot at different positions are obtained,and these3D coordinates are synthesized into a space straight line to represent the laser beam to be measured.In the experiment,the target parameters are measured by high-precision instruments,and the calibration parameters of the camera are calibrated by a high-precision calibration board to establish the corresponding positioning model.The measurement accuracy is mainly guaranteed by the monocular vision positioning accuracy and the gravity center extraction accuracy.The experimental results show the maximum error of the angle between laser beams reaches to0.04°and the maximum error of beam pitch angle reaches to0.02°.

Research on Vehicle Anti-collision Technique Based on Monocular Vision

Vehicle anti-collision technique is a hot topic in the research area of Intelligent Transport System. The research on preceding vehicles detection and the distance measurement, which are the key techniques, makes great contributions to safe-driving. This paper presents a method which can be used to detect preceding vehicles and get the distance between own car and the car ahead. Firstly, an adaptive threshold method is used to get shadow feature, and a shadow!area merging approach is used to deal with the distortion of the shadow border. Region of interest(ROI) is obtained using shadow feature. Then in the ROI, symmetry feature is analyzed to verify whether there are vehicles and to locate the vehicles. Finally, using monocular vision distance measurement based on camera interior parameters and geometrical reasoning, we get the distance between own car and the preceding one. Experimental results show that the proposed method can detect the preceding vehicle effectively and get the distance between vehicles accurately.

Autonomous Landing of Small Unmanned Aerial Rotorcraft Based on Monocular Vision in GPS-denied Area

Focusing on the low-precision attitude of a current small unmanned aerial rotorcraft at the landing stage, the present paper proposes a new attitude control method for the GPS-denied scenario based on the monocular vision. Primarily, a robust landmark detection technique is developed which leverages the well-documented merits of supporting vector machines (SVMs) to enable landmark detection. Then an algorithm of nonlinear optimization based on Newton iteration method for the attitude and position of camera is put forward to reduce the projection error and get an optimized solution. By introducing the wavelet analysis into the adaptive Kalman filter, the high frequency noise of vision is filtered out successfully. At last, automatic landing tests are performed to verify the method's feasibility and effectiveness. © 2014 Chinese Association of Automation.

Mobile Robot Hierarchical Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Using Monocular Vision

A hierarchical mobile robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) method that allows us to obtain accurate maps was presented. The local map level is composed of a set of local metric feature maps that are guaranteed to be statistically independent. The global level is a topological graph whose arcs are labeled with the relative location between local maps. An estimation of these relative locations is maintained with local map alignment algorithm, and more accurate estimation is calculated through a global minimization procedure using the loop closure constraint. The local map is built with Rao-Blackwellised particle filter (RBPF), where the particle filter is used to extending the path posterior by sampling new poses. The landmark position estimation and update is implemented through extended Kalman filter (EKF). Monocular vision mounted on the robot tracks the 3D natural point landmarks, which are structured with matching scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) feature pairs. The matching for multi-dimension SIFT features is implemented with a KD-tree in the time cost of O(lbN). Experiment results on Pioneer mobile robot in a real indoor environment show the superior performance of our proposed method.

Monocular vision based navigation method of mobile robot

A trajectory tracking method is presented for the visual navigation of the monocular mobile robot.The robot move along line trajectory drawn beforehand,recognized and stop on the stop-sign to finish special task.The robot uses a forward looking colorful digital camera to capture information in front of the robot,and by the use of HSI model partition the trajectory and the stop-sign out.Then the "sampling estimate" method was used to calculate the navigation parameters.The stop-sign is easily recognized and can identify 256 different signs.Tests indicate that the method can fit large-scale intensity of brightness and has more robustness and better real-time character.

Monocular Vision Based Boundary Avoidance for Non-Invasive Stray Control System for Cattle: A Conceptual Approach

Building fences to manage the cattle grazing can be very expensive;cost inefficient. These do not provide dynamic control over the area in which the cattle are grazing. Existing virtual fencing techniques for the control of herds of cattle, based on polygon coordinate definition of boundaries is limited in the area of land mass coverage and dynamism. This work seeks to develop a more robust and an improved monocular vision based boundary avoidance for non-invasive stray control system for cattle, with a view to increase land mass coverage in virtual fencing techniques and dynamism. The monocular vision based depth estimation will be modeled using concept of global Fourier Transform (FT) and local Wavelet Transform (WT) of image structure of scenes (boundaries). The magnitude of the global Fourier Transform gives the dominant orientations and textual patterns of the image;while the local Wavelet Transform gives the dominant spectral features of the image and their spatial distribution. Each scene picture or image is defined by features v, which contain the set of global (FT) and local (WT) statistics of the image. Scenes or boundaries distances are given by estimating the depth D by means of the image features v. Sound cues of intensity equivalent to the magnitude of the depth D are applied to the animal ears as stimuli. This brings about the desired control as animals tend to move away from uncomfortable sounds.

Monocular Vision-based Two-stage Iterative Algorithm for Relative Position and Attitude Estimation of Docking Spacecraft

Visual sensors are used to measure the relative state of the chaser spacecraft to the target spacecraft during close range ren- dezvous phases. This article proposes a two-stage iterative algorithm based on an inverse projection ray approach to address the relative position and attitude estimation by using feature points and monocular vision. It consists of two stages： absolute orienta- tion and depth recovery. In the first stage, Umeyama＇s algorithm is used to fit the three-dimensional （3D） model set and estimate the 3D point set while in the second stage, the depths of the observed feature points are estimated. This procedure is repeated until the result converges. Moreover, the effectiveness and convergence of the proposed algorithm are verified through theoreti- cal analysis and mathematical simulation.

A New Monocular Vision Measurement Method to Estimate 3D Positions of Objects on Floor

A new visual measurement method is proposed to estimate three-dimensional （3D） position of the object on the floor based on a single camera. The camera fixed on a robot is in an inclined position with respect to the floor. A measurement model with the camera＇s extrinsic parameters such as the height and pitch angle is described. Single image of a chessboard pattern placed on the floor is enough to calibrate the camera＇s extrinsic parameters after the camera＇s intrinsic parameters are calibrated. Then the position of object on the floor can be computed with the measurement model. Furthermore, the height of object can be calculated with the paired-points in the vertical line sharing the same position on the floor. Compared to the conventional method used to estimate the positions on the plane, this method can obtain the 3D positions. The indoor experiment testifies the accuracy and validity of the proposed method.

Monocular vision and calculation of regular three-dimensional target pose based on Otsu and Haar-feature AdaBoost classifier

Using machine vision to identify and sort scattered regular targets is an urgent problem to be solved in automated production lines.This study proposed a three-dimensional(3D)recognition method combining monocular vision and machine learning algorithms.According to the color characteristics of the targets,to convert the original color picture into YCbCr mode and use the 2D Otsu algorithm to perform gray level image segmentation on the Cb channel.Then the Haar-feature training was carried out.The comparison of feature training and Haar method for Hough transform showed that the recognized time of Haar-feature AdaBoost trainer reached 31.00 ms,while its false recognized rate was 3.91%.The strong classifier was formed by weight combination,and the Hough contour transformation algorithm was set to correct the normal vector between plane coordinate and camera coordinate system.The monocular vision system ensured that the field of camera view had not obstructed while the dots were being struck.It was measured and calculated angles between targets and the horizontal plane which coordinate points of the identified plane feature.The testing results were compared with the Otsu and AdaBoost trainer where the prediction and training set have an error of no more than 0.25 mm.Its correct rate can reach 95%.It shows that the Otsu and Haar-feature based on AdaBoost algorithm is feasible within a certain error ranges and meet the engineering requirements for solving the poses of automated regular three-dimensional targets.

Monocular vision for variable spray control system

The monocular vision-based system can obtain the leaf wall area characterizing the canopy parameter for online detection and real-time variable spraying,aiming to improve the accuracy of orchard spraying equipment and the utilization efficiency of pesticide.This study established a spraying system,in which canopy parameters were collected by monocular vision,and the spray volume decision coefficient was constructed by the leaf wall area and the L^(*)value in International Commission on Illumination Lab color space to control the duty cycle of each solenoid valve to achieve variable spraying.Four spray flow models were designed to determine the spray volume decision coefficient.The coefficients of determination of the spray volumes with the duty cycle range of 15%to 65%were all over 94 and the error of the leaf wall area values obtained using the improved super green algorithm(calculated as ExG=2.1G–1.1R–1.1B)was only 0.5%.The test showed that there is a negative relationship between canopy denseness and L^(*),and the value of L^(*)is smaller in the dense area compared with the sparse area;the actual flow generated by the system is similar to the theoretical flow when the duty cycle is 65%.The field validation tests showed that the variable spraying system could refine the droplet size and increase the droplet density to a certain extent with the same coverage rate,which had advantages over the continuous spraying.In terms of droplet deposition,DV0.1 and DV0.9 were reduced by 2μm and 18μm,respectively,and the increase of droplet density to 75 droplets/cm2.At the same time,the improvement of droplet distribution uniformity and droplet penetration by 16%and 3%,respectively.Compared with continuous spraying,variable spraying can achieve 55.64%savings.The study demonstrates the feasibility of monocular vision in guiding spraying operations and provides a reference for the use of monocular vision in plant protection operations.

Accurate vision measurement for kinematic parameters of satellite separation tests

The accurate measurement of kinematic parameters in satellite separation tests has great significance in evaluating separation performance. A novel study is made on the measuring accuracy of monocular and binocular, which are the two main vision measurement methods used for kinematic parameters. As satellite separation process is transient and high-dynamic, it will bring more extraction errors to the binocular. Based on the design approach of intersection measure and variance ratio, the monocular method reflects higher precision, simpler structure and easier calibration for level satellite separation. In ground separation tests, a high-speed monocular system is developed to gain and analyze twelve kinematic parameters of a small satellite. Research shows that this monocular method can be widely applied for its high precision, with position accuracy of 0.5 mm, speed accuracy of 5 mm/s, and angular velocity accuracy of 1 (°)/s.

工业机器人单目视觉装配系统研究

为了解决传统机器人只能通过示教或离线编程固定执行点到点装配任务的问题,进行了视觉引导的工业机器人装配方面的研究。首先对工业机器人视觉装配过程建立数学模型并标定,然后研究了基于机器视觉的零件位姿估计方法,针对法兰盘类金属零件弱纹理及无角点特征的位姿估计问题,提出了一种基于自身特征和外部标记辅助的单目视觉位姿计算方法。最后搭建了工业机器人单目视觉装配实验平台验证该位姿计算方法的可行性。实验结果表明,该系统能够实现对法兰盘类零件的定位和装配,最小位置误差为2.07mm,最小姿态误差0.13。

单目三维视觉测量技术研究进展

单目三维视觉测量在视觉测量领域具有低成本、简便性、结构紧凑等优势,是以智能化、网络化制造为特征的先进制造典型技术之一。经过不断发展,单目三维视觉测量技术已成功应用于无人机导航、智能机器人、工业检测、医疗健康等领域,如今呈现出精准化、快捷化、微型化、自动化、动态化等发展趋势。以孔径数量为标准,将单目三维视觉测量技术分为单孔径及多孔径两大类,分别综述两类方法的研究现状和发展历程,重点论述了应用较广的运动恢复结构法(Structure From Motion,SFM)和光场三维测量方法,并对单目三维视觉测量技术的未来方向进行了展望。

基于双自由度转台的全向空间单目视觉室内定位测量方法

针对传统单目视觉测量系统测量视场有限的问题,本文提出一种基于双自由度旋转平台的全向空间单目视觉测量方法。首先,对双自由度旋转平台的转轴参数进行标定,用副相机拍摄固定在双自由度转台上的棋盘格标定板,提取棋盘格角点的位置坐标,并将其转化到同一相机坐标系下。利用PCA(主成分分析)平面拟合得到初始位置转轴参数中的方向向量,使用空间最小二乘圆拟合方法得到初始位置下转轴参数中的位置参数。然后,通过转台转动的角度以及罗德里格斯公式将不同位置下相机获取的数据进行坐标系统一,实现水平和竖直方向全向空间下的目标测量。最后,通过高精度激光测距仪验证了本方法的测量精度,并通过与双目视觉测量系统、wMPS测量系统进行比对实验,验证了本方法的全向空间测量能力。实验结果表明,本方法测量精度基本达到双目视觉测量系统水平,但测量范围远大于双目视觉测量,可以满足全向空间测量要求。

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Solutions Using Monocular and Stereo Visual Sensors with Baseline Scaling System

In this paper, SLAM systems are introduced using monocular and stereo visual sensors. The SLAM solutions are implemented in both indoor and outdoor. The SLAM samples have been taken in different modes, such as a straight line that enables us to measure the drift, in addition to the loop sample that is used to test the loop closure and its corresponding trajectory deformation. In order to verify the trajectory scale, a baseline method has been used. In addition, a ground truth has been captured for both indoor and outdoor samples to measure the biases and drifts caused by the SLAM solution. Both monocular and stereo SLAM data have been captured with the same visual sensors which in the stereo situation had a baseline of 20.00 cm. It has been shown that, the stereo SLAM localization results are 75% higher precision than the monocular SLAM solution. In addition, the indoor results of the monocular SLAM are more precise than the outdoor. However, the outdoor results of the stereo SLAM are more precise than the indoor results by 30%, which is a result of the small stereo baseline cameras. In the vertical SLAM localization component, the stereo SLAM generally shows 60% higher precision than the monocular SLAM results.

基于惯性辅助跟踪的未知对应姿态估计方法

针对特征点对应关系未知的姿态估计问题,提出了1种基于惯性辅助跟踪的未知对应姿态估计方法。与利用惯性信息在数据处理层面优化先验位姿选取的方法不同,该方法在数据采集层面融合图像信息和惯性信息,从而提高了姿态估计和特征点匹配的准确性和稳健性。本文提出了1种融合特征点跟踪和运动矢量约束跟踪的混合跟踪新方法,构建了二维和三维点集的初始匹配权重矩阵。基于该匹配权重矩阵建立优化目标函数,并利用改进软分配算法交替优化姿态估计和二维/三维点集匹配关系。利用二维精密转台搭载合作立体靶标进行算法性能测试,结果表明:在方位角/俯仰角为±50°内,该方法的成功率为99%,姿态估计精度优于0.15°,单次测量耗时约17 ms,并且在视觉遮挡情况下仍可保持较高的成功率。

一种四轴飞行器单目视觉测距算法

为解决四轴飞行器在执行目标检测与跟踪任务时无法判断机身与障碍物或跟踪目标之间安全距离问题,提出一种四轴飞行器单目视觉测距算法,算法融合基于帧间差分技术的水平测距模型与基于小孔成像的垂直测距模型.首先,算法可利用基于YOLOV4-Tiny的目标检测算法识别视频帧中的物体类别,并可在视频帧中框选出被测物体,依据现场环境选择最佳的测距方法进行测距;其次,系统终端执行测距方法,基于被测物体的视频帧成像位置与设定参数之间的差值控制四轴飞行器飞行,并记录飞行数据;最后,通过测距模型对飞行数据进行处理,计算出四轴飞行器在初始位置和最终位置与被测物体之间的距离.通过在特洛(Tello)飞行器平台上的实际飞行验证,实验结果表明所提出的四轴飞行器单目视觉测距算法可以有效分析出视频帧中各物体的景深,测距误差百分比均值为4.07%.在四轴飞行器与障碍物或跟踪目标之间距离较近,却无法评估此距离是否处于安全距离时,所提出的算法可为搭载单目摄像头的四轴飞行器提供可靠的测距技术支持.

基于检测框下边沿的单目视觉车辆测距研究

对车辆测距是当今驾驶领域的热门研究方向。针对传统测距方法测距精度受到车型大小影响的问题以及前车存在的X轴偏移问题,提出了基于检测框下边沿中心点的车辆测距模型。该模型通过使用单目视觉摄像头及车辆检测算法获取前方车辆的位置信息,并通过车辆检测框得出的下边沿中心点坐标,以及相机安装的俯仰角信息综合建立了车辆测距模型,解决了车型大小带来的误差问题;通过构建三角函数模型,解决了前车相对于实验车辆存在的X轴分量问题,并优化改进了前车安全距离的判定方式;设定车尾矩形框中心点横坐标与车辆外接矩形框宽度的比值λ,根据λ取值分情况讨论,使该模型更符合场景应用需要。并提出了基于测距关键点的逆透视变换模型,减小了测距误差。实验表明,改进后测距模型的测距精度不受车型大小的影响且能考虑到前车位置的X轴分量问题,改进后的测距模型相对于传统测距模型,测距误差降低了约1.5%,且测距精度明显提高。