[robotics-worldwide] Call for participation ICRA10 Workshop on Robotics and Intelligent Transportation System
Philippe MARTINET
Philippe.MARTINET at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr
Tue Mar 23 20:37:01 PDT 2010
ICRA10 Workshop on Robotics and Intelligent Transportation System
Full Day Workshop
May 7th 2010, Anchorage, Alaska
Contact : Professor Philippe Martinet
http://wwwlasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr/Control/workshopICRA10/RITS10.html
Organizers
*********
Research Director Christian Laugier, INRIA, Emotion project, INRIA
Rhône-Alpes, 655 Avenue de l'Europe, 38334 Saint Ismier Cedex, France,
Phone: +33 4 7661 5222, Fax : +33 4 7661 5477, Email:
Christian.Laugier at inrialpes.fr,
Home page: http://emotion.inrialpes.fr/laugier
<http://emotion.inrialpes.fr/laugier>
Beverly W. Long Distinguished Professor Ming Lin, Department of
Computer Science University of North Carolina, 254 Brooks Building,
CB#3175 , Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175, USA, Phone: +01 919 962-1974 ,
Fax : +01 919 962-1799, Email: lin at cs.unc.edu,
Home page: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~lin/ <http://www.cs.unc.edu/%7Elin/>
Professor Philippe Martinet, LASMEA-CNRS Laboratory, Blaise Pascal
University, Campus des Cezeaux, 63177 Aubiere, Cedex, France, Phone:
+33 473 407 653, Sec : +33 473 407 261, Fax : +33 473 407 262, Email:
martinet at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr,
Home page:
http://wwwlasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr/Personnel/Philippe.Martinet
<http://wwwlasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr/Personnel/Philippe.Martinet>
Professor Urbano Nunes, Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of University of
Coimbra, 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal, GABINETE 3A.10, Phone: +351 239
796 287, Fax: +351 239 406 672, Email: urbano at deec.uc.pt,
Home page: http://www.isr.uc.pt/~urbano <http://www.isr.uc.pt/%7Eurbano>
General Scope
***********
Autonomous driving and navigation is a major research issue which
would affect our lives in near future. The purpose of this workshop is
to discuss topics related to the challenging problems of autonomous
navigation and of driving assistance in open and dynamic environments.
Technologies related to application fields such as unmanned outdoor
vehicles or intelligent road vehicles will be considered from both the
theoretical and technological point of views. Several research
questions located on the cutting edge of the state of the art will be
addressed. Among the many application areas that robotics is
addressing, transportation of people and goods seem to be a domain
that will dramatically benefit from intelligent automation. Fully
automatic driving is emerging as the approach to dramatically improve
efficiency while at the same time leading to the goal of zero
fatalities. Theses new technologies can be applied efficiently for
other application field like unmanned vehicles, w
heelchair or assistance mobile robot. Technologies related to this
area, such as autonomous outdoor vehicles, achievements, challenges
and open questions would be presented, including the following topics:
Object detection, tracking and classification, Collision prediction
and avoidance, Environment perception, vehicle localization and
autonomous navigation, Real-time perception and sensor fusion, SLAM in
dynamic environments, Real-time motion planning in dynamic
environments, 3D Modelling and reconstruction, Human-Robot
Interaction, Behavior modeling and learning, Robust sensor-based 3D
reconstruction, Modeling and Control of mobile robot, Cooperation and
communications, Multi-agent based architectures, Cooperative unmanned
vehicles. This edition will be done with 4 wellknown invited speakers
(Alberto Broggi, Alexandre Bayen, Oussama Khatib, Rudiger Dillmann),
with 6 selected papers for oral presentation, and with 7 papers
presented during an interactive session.
Main Topics
*********
# Object detection, tracking and classification
# Collision prediction and avoidance
# Environment perception, vehicle localization and autonomous navigation
# Real-time perception and sensor fusion
# SLAM in dynamic environments
# Real-time motion planning in dynamic environments
# 3D Modelling and reconstruction
# Human-Robot Interaction
# Behavior modeling and learning
# Robust sensor-based 3D reconstruction
# Modeling and Control of mobile robot
# Cooperation and communications (among vehicles and infrastructure)
# Multi-agent based architectures
# Cooperative unmanned vehicles (not restricted to ground transportation)
International Program Committee
**************************
# Lounis Adouane (Blaise Pascal University, France)
# Alberto Broggi (VisLab, Parma University, Italy)
# Javier Ibanez-Guzman (Renault, France)
# Christian Laugier (Emotion, INRIA, France)
# Sukhan Lee (ISRC, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea)
# Philippe Martinet (Blaise Pascal University, France)
# Ming Lin ((University of North Carolina, USA),
# Urbano Nunes (Coimbra University, Portugal),
# Cedric Pradalier, (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
# Cyril Stachniss (AIS, University of Freiburg, Germany)
# Ljubo Vlacic (Griffith University, Australia)
Preliminary program
*******************
Introduction /8:30-8:35/
Chairman: /Min Lin & Philippe Martinet/
Session I: Perception & Localization /8:35-10:10/
Chairman: /Alberto Broggi/
Title: The VIAC Challenge: Setup of an Autonomous Vehicle for a
13,000 km Intercontinental Unmanned Drive /8:35-9:20/
Keynote speaker: Alberto Broggi (Parma University, Italy) /40min
+ 5min questions/
Co-Authors: Massimo Bertozzi, Luca Bombini, Alberto Broggi, and
Paolo Grisleri
/Abstract/: Autonomous vehicles have been demonstrated to be able
to traverse the desert (the DARPA Grand Challenge, 2005), navigate
downtown together with other traffic (the DARPA Urban Challenge,
2007), someone is even trying to emulate experienced drivers in
extreme races,... In all these situations, however, the unmanned
vehicles move within a semi-controlled environment. VisLab is now
trying to push the unmanned vehicles technology to the limit and
test their systems (both hardware and software) for a long time
and in an extreme environment: on July 10, 2010, two autonomous
vehicles will leave Italy and will drive for 13,000 km in Europe
towards Moscow, then Russia, then Siberia, Kazakstan, then China,
Mongolia, finally reaching Shanghai on October 10, 2010, after 3
months of autonomous driving. As a 'challenge into the challenge,
VisLab selected electric vehicles, with the final aim of setting a
new milestone in the history of robotics: goods will be
transported from Italy to China on a ground trip with no driver,
and without using a drop of conventional fuel. Not only these
vehicles will be moving without any human intervention, but the
driverless technology will be powered by solar energy thanks to a
panel on the vehicle's roof. The talk will present the current
state of the art and the major design challenges.
Title: Learning a Real-Time 3D Point Cloud Obstacle Discriminator
via Bootstrapping /9:20-9:45/
Authors: Michael Samples and Michael R. James /20min + 5min
questions/
/Abstract/: Many recent mobile robotics applications have
incorporated the use of 3D LIDAR sensors as an important component
in scene understanding due to frequent data measurements and
direct observation of geometric relationships. However, the
sparseness of point cloud information and the lack of unique cues
at an individual point level presents challenges in algorithm
design for obstacle detection, segmentation, and tracking. Since
individual measurements yield less information about the presence
of obstacles, many algorithmic approaches model the joint
posterior of point-labels. Such approaches can produce robust
point labelings at higher computation cost. In this paper, we
apply joint posterior approaches with smooth terrain priors for
point cloud obstacle discrimination. The resulting labels are used
to bootstrap efficient discriminators which require no human
labeled data, yet are comparable in discriminative ability to the
joint posterior approaches.
Title: In Improved Flies Method for Stereo Vision: Application to
Pedestrian Detection /9:45-10:10/
Authors: Hao Lee, Gwenaelle Toulminet, Fawzi Nashashibi /20min +
5min questions/
/Abstract/: In the vast research field of intelligent
transportation systems, the problem of detection (and recognition)
of environment objects, for example pedestrians and vehicles, is
indispensable but challenging. The research work presented in this
paper is devoted to stereo-vision based method with pedestrian
detection as its application (a sub-part of the French national
project "LOVe": Logiciels d'Observation des
Vulnerables). With a
prospect of benefiting from an innovative method i.e. the genetic
evolutionary "flies" method proposed by former researchers on
continuous data updating and asynchronous data reading, we have
carried on the "flies" method through the task of pedestrian
detection affiliated with the "LOVe" project. Compared
with former
work of the "flies" method, two main contributions have been
incorporated into the architecture of the "flies"
method: first,
an improved fitness function has been proposed instead of the
original one; second, a technique coined
"concentrating" has been
integrated into the evolution procedure. The improved "flies"
method is used to offer range information of possible objects in
the detection field. The integrate scheme of pedestrian detection
is presented as well. Some experimental results are given for
validating the performance improvements brought by the improved
"flies" method and for validating the pedestrian
detection method
based on the improved "flies" method.
Session II: Path Planning & Navigation systems /10:30-12:05/
Chairman: /Alexandre Bayen/
Title: Mobile Millenium /10:30-11:15/
Keynote speaker: Alexandre Bayen (Berkeley University, USA)
/40min + 5min questions/
/Abstract/: This talk describes how the mobile internet is
changing the face of traffic monitoring at a rapid pace. In the
last five years, cellular phone technology has bypassed several
attempts to construct dedicated infrastructure systems to monitor
traffic. Today, GPS equipped smartphones are progressively
morphing into an ubiquitous traffic monitoring system, with the
potential to provide information almost everywhere in the
transportation network. Traffic information systems of this type
are one of the first instantiations of participatory sensing for
large scale cyberphysical infrastructure systems. However, while
mobile device technology is very promising, fundamental challenges
remain to be solved to use it to its full extent, in particular in
the fields of modeling and data assimilation. The talk will
present a new system, called Mobile Millennium, launched recently
by UC Berkeley, Nokia and Navteq, in which the driving public in
Northern California can freely download software into their GPS
equiped smartphones, enabling them to view traffic in real time
and become probe vehicles themselves. The smartphone data is
collected in a privacy-by-design environment, using spatially
aware sampling. Using data assimilation, the probe data is fused
with existing sensor data, to provide real time estimates of
traffic. Results from experimental deployments in California and
New York will be presented, as well as preliminary results from a
pilot field operational test in California, with already more than
5,000 downloads.
Title: Optimal Vehicle Routing and Scheduling with Precedence
Constraints and Location Choice /11:15-11:40/
Authors: G. Ayorkor Korsah, Anthony Stentz, and M. Bernardine
Dias, and Imran Fanaswala /20min + 5min questions/
/Abstract/: To realize the vision of intelligent transportation
systems with fully automated vehicles, there is a need for
highlevel planning for single vehicles as well as fleets of
vehicles. This paper addresses the problem of optimally assigning
and scheduling a set of spatially distributed tasks to a fleet of
vehicles working together to achieve a high-level goal, in domains
where tasks may be related by precedence or synchronization
constraints and might have a choice of locations at which they can
be performed. Such problems may arise, for example, in disaster
preparedness planning, transportation of people, and delivery of
supplies. We present a novel mathematical model of the problem and
describe how it can be solved optimally in a branch-and-price
framework.
Title: Multi-Agent Planning and Simulation for Intelligent
Transportation System /11:40-12:05/
Authors: Ming C. Lin, Jason Sewall, Jur Van den Berg, David
Willkie, Dinesh Manocha /20min + 5min questions/
/Abstract/: In this paper, we provide a brief survey of our recent
work on multi-agent planning and simulation for intelligent
transportation system. In particular, we first present a novel
algorithm to reconstruct and visualize continuous traffic flows
from discrete spatio-temporal data provided by traffic sensors.
Given the positions of each car at two recorded locations on a
highway and the corresponding time instances, our approach can
reconstruct the traffic flows (i.e. the dynamic motions of
multiple cars over time) in between the two locations along the
highway using a priority-based multi-agent planning algorithm. Our
algorithm is applicable to high-density traffic on highways with
an arbitrary number of lanes and takes into account the geometric,
kinematic, and dynamic constraints on the cars. In addition, we
describe an efficient method for simulating realistic traffic
flows on large-scale road networks. Our technique is based on a
continuum PDE model of traffic flow that we extend to correctly
handle lane changes and merges, as well as traffic behaviors due
to changes in speed limit. We show that our method can simulate
plausible traffic flows on publiclyavailable, real-world road data
and demonstrate the scalability of this technique on many-core
systems.
Session III: Human Robot Interaction /13:30-14:15/
Title: Robot for the Human /13:30-14:15/
Keynote speaker: Oussama Khatib (Stanford University, USA)
/40min + 5min questions/
/Abstract/: Robotics is rapidly expanding into the human
environment and vigorously engaged in its new emerging challenges.
From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics has undergone
by the turn of the new millennium a major transformation in scope
and dimensions. This expansion has been brought about by the
maturity of the field and the advances in its related
technologies. The new generation of robots is expected to safely
and dependably co-habitat with humans in homes, workplaces, and
communities, providing support in services, entertainment,
education, health care, manufacturing, and assistance.
Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new
generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their
lives. New design and fabrication concepts, novel sensing
modalities, effective planning and control strategies, modeling
and understanding of human motion and skills are among the key
requirements discussed for the development of this new generation
of human-friendly robots.
Session IV: Interactive session /14:15-15:45/
Chairman: /Ming Lin & Philippe Martinet/
Title: Benchmark Tools for Evaluating AGVs at Industrial
Environments
Authors: Hector Yuste, Leopoldo Armesto and Josep Tornero
/Abstract/: The paper addresses the problem of evaluating AGVs
with different degrees of autonomy by defining a methodology and
benchmark tools to grade the performance of each solution. The
proposed benchmark requires running different experiments, from
manual driving to autonomous navigation, at different velocities
and different scenarios. The goal is to evaluate the performance
of AGVs, in terms of robustness to reach the goal, collisions
reduction, traveling time, average speed, etc. The underlying
objective is to evaluate the potential advantages of
manual-assisted driving as well as autonomous navigation against
standard manual driving. To obtain valid and significant results,
180 experiments have been completed on each case with drivers of
different ages, sex and skills.
Title: Automatic Routing System for Intelligent Warehouses
Authors: K. T. Vivaldini, J. P. M. Galdames, T. B. Pasqual, R. M.
Sobral; R. C. Araújo, M. Becker, and G. A. P. Caurin
/Abstract/: Automation of logistic processes is essential to
improve productivity and reduce costs. In this context,
intelligent warehouses are becoming a key to logistic systems
thanks to their ability of optimizing transportation tasks and,
consequently, reducing costs. This paper initially presents
briefly routing systems applied on intelligent warehouses. Then,
we present the approach used to develop our router system. This
router system is able to solve traffic jams and collisions,
generate conflict-free and optimized paths before sending the
final paths to the robotic forklifts. It also verifies the
progress of all tasks. When a problem occurs, the router system
can change the tasks priorities, routes, etc. in order to avoid
new conflicts. In the routing simulations each vehicle executes
its tasks starting from a predefined initial pose, moving to the
desired position. Our algorithm is based on Dijkstra's
shortestpath and the time window approaches and it was implemented
in C language. Computer simulation tests were used to validate the
algorithm efficiency under different working conditions. Several
simulations were carried out using the Player/Stage Simulator to
test the algorithms. Thanks to the simulations, we could solve
many faults and refine the algorithms before embedding them in
real robots.
Title: Coordinating the motion of multiple AGVs in automatic
warehouses
Authors: Roberto Olmi, Cristian Secchi and Cesare Fantuzzi
/Abstract/: In this paper an algorithm for planning a coordinated
motion of a fleet of Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) delivering
goods in an automatic warehouse is proposed. The AGVs travel along
a common segmented layout and a path is assigned to each robot by
a mission planner. Coordination diagrams are used for representing
possible collisions among the robots and a novel algorithm for
efficiently determining a coordinated motion of the fleet is
proposed. The coordination approach proposed in the paper is
validated through experiments on real plants layouts. We present
an example in which the coordinated motion of 10 vehicles is
computed in only 12.4 sec. on a common PC.
Title: ArosDyn: Robust Analysis of Dynamic Scenes by means of
Bayesian Fusion of Sensor Data - Application to the Safety of Car
Driving
Authors: Christian Laugier, Igor E. Paromtchik, Mathias Perrollaz,
Mao Yong, Amaury Nègre, John-David Yoder, Christopher Tay
/Abstract/: The ArosDyn project aims to develop an embedded
software for robust analysis of dynamic scenes in urban
environment during car driving. The software is based on Bayesian
fusion of data from telemetric sensors (lidars) and visual sensors
(stereo camera). The key objective is to process the dynamic
scenes in real time to detect and track multiple moving objects,
in order to estimate and predict risks of collision while driving.
Title: Real-Time Detection of Moving Obstacles from Mobile
Platforms
Authors: Chunrong Yuan and Hanspeter A. Mallot
/Abstract/: In this paper we present a vision-based algorithm for
the detection of moving obstacles in complex and unknown
environments. The goal is to find moving objects from images
captured by a mobile camera navigating together with a moving
platform. One specific feature of our approach is that it does not
need any information of the camera and hence works without camera
calibration. Another advantage lies in the fact that it integrates
motion separation and outlier detection into one statistical
framework. Based on sparse point correspondences extracted from
consecutive frame pairs, scene points are clustered into different
classes by statistical analysis and modeling of the probability
distribution function of the underlying motion characteristics.
Experimental results based on several real-world video streams
demonstrate the efficiency of our algorithm.
Title: Studying of WiFi range-only sensor and its application to
localization and mapping systems
Authors: F. Herranz, M. Ocaña, L. M. Bergasa, M. A. Sotelo, D. F.
Llorca, N. Hernandez, A. Llamazares and C. Fernandez
/Abstract/: The goal of this paper is to study a noisy WiFi
range-only sensor and its application in the development of
localization and mapping systems. Moreover, the paper shows
several localization and mapping techniques to be compared. These
techniques have been applied successfully with other technologies,
like ultra-wide band (UWB), but we demonstrate that even using a
much more noisier sensor these systems can be applied correctly.
We use two trilateration techniques and a particle filter to
develop the localization and mapping systems based on the
range-only sensor. Some experimental results and conclusions are
presented.
Title: Terrain Classification for Improving Traversability of
Autonomous Vehicles
Authors: Jayoung Kim, Jonghwa Lee, Jihong Lee
/Abstract/: One of the requirements for autonomous vehicles on
off-road is to move harmoniously in unstructured environments. It
is an undeniable fact that such capacity of autonomous vehicles is
the most important in an aspect considering mobility of the
vehicle. So, many researchers use contact and/or non-contact
methods to detect a terrain whether the vehicle can move on or
not. In this paper we introduce an algorithm to classify terrains
using visual information. As pre-processing, contrast enhancement
technique is introduced to improve accurate rate of
classification. Also, for conducting classification algorithm,
training images are grouped as each material and Bayesian
classification recognizes new images as each material using such
material groups. Consequently, we can confirm the good performance
of classification. Moreover, we can build Traversability map on
which autonomous vehicles can predict whether to go or not to go
through real friction coefficients which are measured by Load-Cell
on surfaces of various terrains.
Session V: Multi-Robot Control & ITS /15:45-17:20/
Chairman: /Rüdiger Dillman /
Title: Situation Assessment and Behaviour Decision Making of
Cognitive Vehicles /15:45-16:30/
Keynotes speaker: Rüdiger Dillman (Karlsruhe University,
Germany) /40min + 5min questions/
/Abstract/: Driving an autonomous vehicle on urban and rural
environment requires knowledge about the situation on the road.
Knowledge about the intension of other vehicles and inividuals on
the road is required in order to classify the situation and to
decide how to behave and to react. This paper addresses the
problem of extracting information about the situative traffic
environment of a vehicle from ist sensorial observations, its
interpretation referencing situative knowledge and an estimation
of it?s further behaviour. This estimation requires understanding
the intension of the other vehicles or agents and a predictive
view of further traffic state evolvement. Because of uncomplete
observation and uncertainties the estimation and sensor fusion
process has an important role. With the help of learning methods
in terms of learning from example the vehicle will be able to
learn from ist observations which allows the estimation of
dangerous situations and a predictive view of its environment
which allows the continuation of driving. Furthermore it is
necessary to make according the actual situation and drive
intension behavioural decisions considering it?s effects and
results. Also here uncertainty has to be considered to enable
predictive driving. A predictive behavioural decision process in
combination with a learning process will be presented which allows
to enhance the decision performance. A dynamic risk map is used to
support algorithms for motion planning of the vehicle. Finally the
vehicle should be able to execute maneuvers such as passing a
crossing, lane changing, collision avoidance, overtaking and
turning off, processing information about the actual situation and
a prediction how it may evolve. The work to be reported is part of
the collaborative research center SFB/TR 28 Cognitive Automobile
which is sponsored by the German Research Agency DFG.
Title: A global decentralized control strategy for urban vehicle
platooning relying solely on monocular vision /16:30-16:55/
Authors: Pierre Avanzini, Benoit Thuilot, Eric Royer, Philippe
Martinet /20min + 5min questions/
/Abstract/: Automated electric vehicles available in free access
constitute a promising very efficient and environment-friendly
"urban transportation system". An additional functionality that
could enhance this transportation service is vehicle platooning.
In order to avoid oscillations within the platoon when completing
this task, a global control strategy, supported by inter-vehicle
communications, is investigated. Vehicle absolute localization is
then needed and is here derived from monocular vision. These data
are however expressed in a virtual vision world, slightly
distorted with respect to the actual metric one. It is shown that
such a distortion can accurately be corrected by designing a
nonlinear observer relying on odometric data. A global
decentralized control strategy, relying on exact linearization
techniques, can then be designed to achieve accurate vehicle
platooning. Simulations and full-scale experiments demonstrate the
performance of the proposed approach.
Title: Lyapunov Global Stability for a Reactive Mobile Robot
Navigation in Presence of Obstacles /16:55-17:20/
Authors: Ahmed Benzerrouk, Lounis Adouane, Philippe Martinet/
20min + 5min questions/
/Abstract/: This paper deals with the navigation of a mobile robot
in unknown environment. The robot has to reach a final target
while avoiding obstacles. It is proposed to break the task
complexity by dividing it into a set of basic tasks: Attraction to
a target and obstacle avoidance. Each basic task is accomplished
through the corresponding elementary controller. The activation of
one controller for another is done according to the priority task.
To ensure the overall stability of the control system, especially
at the switch moments, properties of hybrid systems are used.
Hybrid systems allow switching between continuous states in
presence of discrete events. In this paper, it is proposed to act
on the gain of the proposed control law. The aim is to ensure the
convergence of a common Lyapunov function to all the controllers.
This ensures the stability of the overall control. Simulation
results confirm the theoretical study.
Closing /17:20-17:30/
Chairman: /Min Lin & Philippe Martinet/
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