Enhancing pose accuracy of space robot by improved differential evolution

Due to the intense vibration durirLg launching and rigorous orbital temperature environment, the kinematic parameters of space robot may be largely deviated from their nominal parameters. The disparity will cause the real pose （including position and orientation） of the end effector not to match the desired one, and further hinder the space robot from performing the scheduled mission. To improve pose accuracy of space robot, a new self-calibration method using the distance measurement provided by a laser-ranger fixed on the end-effector is proposed. A distance-measurement model of the space robot is built according to the distance from the starting point of the laser beam to the intersection point at the declining plane. Based on the model, the cost function about the pose error is derived. The kinematic calibration is transferred to a non-linear system optimization problem, which is solved by the improved differential evolution （DE） algoritlun. A six-degree of freedom （6-DOF） robot is used as a practical simulation example, and the simulation results show： 1） A significant improvement of pose accuracy of space robot can be obtained by distance measurement only; 2） Search efficiency is increased by improved DE; 3） More calibration configurations may make calibration results better.

Improved HardNet and Stricter Outlier Filtering to Guide Reliable Matching

As the fundamental problem in the computer vision area,image matching has wide applications in pose estimation,3D reconstruction,image retrieval,etc.Suffering from the influence of external factors,the process of image matching using classical local detectors,e.g.,scale-invariant feature transform(SIFT),and the outlier filtering approaches,e.g.,Random sample consensus(RANSAC),show high computation speed and pool robustness under changing illumination and viewpoints conditions,while image matching approaches with deep learning strategy(such as HardNet,OANet)display reliable achievements in large-scale datasets with challenging scenes.However,the past learning-based approaches are limited to the distinction and quality of the dataset and the training strategy in the image-matching approaches.As an extension of the previous conference paper,this paper proposes an accurate and robust image matching approach using fewer training data in an end-to-end manner,which could be used to estimate the pose error This research first proposes a novel dataset cleaning and construction strategy to eliminate the noise and improve the training efficiency;Secondly,a novel loss named quadratic hinge triplet loss(QHT)is proposed to gather more effective and stable feature matching;Thirdly,in the outlier filtering process,the stricter OANet and bundle adjustment are applied for judging samples by adding the epipolar distance constraint and triangulation constraint to generate more outstanding matches;Finally,to recall the matching pairs,dynamic guided matching is used and then submit the inliers after the PyRANSAC process.Multiple evaluation metrics are used and reported in the 1st place in the Track1 of CVPR Image-Matching Challenge Workshop.The results show that the proposed method has advanced performance in large-scale and challenging Phototourism benchmark.

An Overview of Calibration Technology of Industrial Robots

With the continuous improvement of automation,industrial robots have become an indispensable part of automated production lines.They widely used in a number of industrial production activities,such as spraying,welding,handling,etc.,and have a great role in these sectors.Recently,the robotic technology is developing towards high precision,high intelligence.Robot calibration technology has a great significance to improve the accuracy of robot.However,it has much work to be done in the identification of robot parameters.The parameter identification work of existing serial and parallel robots is introduced.On the one hand,it summarizes the methods for parameter calibration and discusses their advantages and disadvantages.On the other hand,the application of parameter identification is introduced.This overview has a great reference value for robot manufacturers to choose proper identification method,points further research areas for researchers.Finally,this paper analyzes the existing problems in robot calibration,which may be worth researching in the future.