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We propose a novel, canopy density estimation solution using a 3D ray cloud representation for perennial horticultural crops at the field scale. To attain high spatial and temporal fidelity in field conditions, we propose the application of continuous-time 3D SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) to a spinning lidar payload (AgScan3D) mounted on a moving farm vehicle. The AgScan3D data is processed through a Continuous-Time SLAM algorithm into a globally registered 3D ray cloud. The global ray cloud is a canonical data format (a digital twin) from which we can compare vineyard snapshots over multiple times within a season and across seasons. Then, the vineyard rows are automatically extracted from the ray cloud and a novel density calculation is performed to estimate the maximum likelihood canopy densities of the vineyard. This combination of digital twinning, together with the accurate extraction of canopy structure information, allows entire vineyards to be analysed and compared, across the growing season and from year to year. The proposed method is evaluated both in simulation and field experiments. Field experiments were performed at four sites, which varied in vineyard structure and vine management, over two growing seasons and 64 data collection campaigns, resulting in a total traversal of 160 kilometres, 42.4 scanned hectares of vines with a combined total of approximately 93,000 scanned vines. Our experiments show canopy density repeatability of 3.8% (Relative RMSE) per vineyard panel, for acquisition speeds of 5-6 km/h, and under half the standard deviation in estimated densities when compared to an industry standard gap-fraction based solution. The code and field datasets are available at https://github.com/csiro-robotics/agscan3d.
We study a semantic SLAM problem faced by a robot tasked with autonomous weeding under the corn canopy. The goal is to detect corn stalks and localize them in a global coordinate frame. This is a challenging setup for existing algorithms because there is very little space between the camera and the plants, and the camera motion is primarily restricted to be along the row. To overcome these challenges, we present a multi-camera system where a side camera (facing the plants) is used for detection whereas front and back cameras are used for motion estimation. Next, we show how semantic features in the environment (corn stalks, ground, and crop planes) can be used to develop a robust semantic SLAM solution and present results from field trials performed throughout the growing season across various cornfields.
An accurate and computationally efficient SLAM algorithm is vital for modern autonomous vehicles. To make a lightweight the algorithm, most SLAM systems rely on feature detection from images for vision SLAM or point cloud for laser-based methods. Feature detection through a 3D point cloud becomes a computationally challenging task. In this paper, we propose a feature detection method by projecting a 3D point cloud to form an image and apply the vision-based feature detection technique. The proposed method gives repeatable and stable features in a variety of environments. Based on such features, we build a 6-DOF SLAM system consisting of tracking, mapping, and loop closure threads. For loop detection, we employ a 2-step approach i.e. nearest key-frames detection and loop candidate verification by matching features extracted from rasterized LIDAR images. Furthermore, we utilize a key-frame structure to achieve a lightweight SLAM system. The proposed system is evaluated with implementation on the KITTI dataset and the University of Michigan Ford Campus dataset. Through experimental results, we show that the algorithm presented in this paper can substantially reduce the computational cost of feature detection from the point cloud and the whole SLAM system while giving accurate results.
Map-centric SLAM utilizes elasticity as a means of loop closure. This approach reduces the cost of loop closure while still provides large-scale fusion-based dense maps, when compared to the trajectory-centric SLAM approaches. In this paper, we present a novel framework for 3D LiDAR-based map-centric SLAM. Having the advantages of a map-centric approach, our method exhibits new features to overcome the shortcomings of existing systems, associated with multi-modal sensor fusion and LiDAR motion distortion. This is accomplished through the use of a local Continuous-Time (CT) trajectory representation. Also, our surface resolution preservative matching algorithm and Wishart-based surfel fusion model enables non-redundant yet dense mapping. Furthermore, we present a robust metric loop closure model to make the approach stable regardless of where the loop closure occurs. Finally, we demonstrate our approach through both simulation and real data experiments using multiple sensor payload configurations and environments to illustrate its utility and robustness.
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) has been a hot research field in the past years. Against the backdrop of more affordable 3D LiDAR sensors, research on 3D LiDAR SLAM is becoming increasingly popular. Furthermore, the re-localization problem with a point cloud map is the foundation for other SLAM applications. In this paper, a template matching framework is proposed to re-localize a robot globally in a 3D LiDAR map. This presents two main challenges. First, most global descriptors for point cloud can only be used for place detection under a small local area. Therefore, in order to re-localize globally in the map, point clouds and descriptors(templates) are densely collected using a reconstructed mesh model at an offline stage by a physical simulation engine to expand the functional distance of point cloud descriptors. Second, the increased number of collected templates makes the matching stage too slow to meet the real-time requirement, for which a cascade matching method is presented for better efficiency. In the experiments, the proposed framework achieves 0.2-meter accuracy at about 10Hz matching speed using pure python implementation with 100k templates, which is effective and efficient for SLAM applications.
With the advent of autonomous vehicles, LiDAR and cameras have become an indispensable combination of sensors. They both provide rich and complementary data which can be used by various algorithms and machine learning to sense and make vital inferences about the surroundings. We propose a novel pipeline and experimental setup to find accurate rigid-body transformation for extrinsically calibrating a LiDAR and a camera. The pipeling uses 3D-3D point correspondences in LiDAR and camera frame and gives a closed form solution. We further show the accuracy of the estimate by fusing point clouds from two stereo cameras which align perfectly with the rotation and translation estimated by our method, confirming the accuracy of our methods estimates both mathematically and visually. Taking our idea of extrinsic LiDAR-camera calibration forward, we demonstrate how two cameras with no overlapping field-of-view can also be calibrated extrinsically using 3D point correspondences. The code has been made available as open-source software in the form of a ROS package, more information about which can be sought here: https://github.com/ankitdhall/lidar_camera_calibration .