PhDSupervision:Alessandro Stranieri

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Week 1

Friday, February 3rd

Bought first batch of material to build the camera supports. Started planning of supports´ shape and structure. Planned camera positioning and marked the position for the cameras along the row closer to the arena windows.

Monday, February 6th

Bought other material for the camera support. Prepared a master support. Based on this master, manufactured 6 different frames to speed the preparation of the final camera supports.

Tuesday, February 7th

Had the material bought on Tuesday replaced with a set of properly cut pieces. Finished preliminary work on the support. 16 supports are ready.

Wednesday, February 8th

Collected and studied 5 papers concerning my project:

  • Vision-Based Global Localization and Mapping for Mobile Robots
  • Vision-Based Localization and Data Fusion in a System of Cooperating Mobile Robots
  • Collective Perception in a Robot Swarm
  • Distributed Sensor Fusion for Object Position Estimation by Multi-Robot Systems
  • Distributed Multirobot Localzation

The comments on the above-mentioned papers, as well as the next ones, will be given in a separate PDF file, which I will soon make available.

Thursday, February 9th

Began the creation of a frame grabber for the E-Puck camera. This is needed in order to enable Arne’s and Manuele’s students to work with the front camera on the E-Puck.

Friday, February 10th

Meeting with Mauro. The main purpose of this meeting was to outline the first steps to take towards the definition of the thesis subject and of the first experiments. We agreed on a set of aspects that have to be addressed and mainly concerning the general message of my work and the settings of the first experiments. As a result of the meeting, we established that the next following two/three weeks will be dedicated to: Elaboration of a clear and sound message that will be the main purpose of my thesis. This means considering the definition of what for the moment I will call Swarm perception and the listing of the related works. Acquisition of a first data-set of images to work on a validation experiment. To put it briefly, the experiment involves a swarm of robots which use vision and local communication to improve the estimation of an object distance. The purpose of this first test is twofold: Study the kind of information that the robots should be able to extract from the acquired images and how much of this information should they exchange with each other; Prove that the idea of improving the capabilities of environment perception can be enhanced by means of a ¨Swarm Robotics¨ approach is worth investigating.

This phase will actually have a further purpose. The vision support in ARGoS needs a work of refactoring aimed at: Ease the introduction of new computer algorithms on the robots; Update the currently used version of OpenCV; Introduce image acquisition capabilities for the E-Puck; [Optional] Allow the uses of computer vision algorithm also in simulation (to be discussed with Carlo).

During this first phase I will propose a possible way of action to address this point. The output will eventually be the steps to be taken in order to accomplish that. If everything goes according to plan, the mentioned steps will be taken in what I and Mauro agreed to be the second phase, which will be dedicated to: Refactoring of the vision support in ARGoS; Coding of the new software modules that will be used in my work.

Given the bigger priority of the first phase, I will not comment any further on the second one.

Plans for the next week

As for this past week, I will dedicate Monday and Tuesday to the work on the tracking system, while the rest of the week will be dedicated to the work on my project.

Arena tracking system

With the help of Ali, I will begin the installation of four cameras in a 2x2 configuration. Before this, we will mark once and for all the positions of all cameras on the ceiling wooden structure. At the same time, I will start working on: A vision-based procedure to aid the camera positioning. This means that I will try to use the camera itself and software to aid the alignment of the camera with the ground plane. The strategy for the camera calibration. This step will surely involve the construction of a proper calibration structure (a board with a pre-defined pattern)

This second point is likely to take also the following week.

Thesis project

Regarding my project, I plan to dedicate the rest of the week to the following activities: Creation of a document where I define the focus of my studies. In the beginning this document will mainly contain: The definition of my study and the comments on the long term vision My comments on the related works I have been reading and collecting so far Creation of a second document, where I will describe my first experimental work.

I would consider the first document as an incubation draft of what could go in the end in the introduction and state of the art of my thesis. The second document instead would eventually grow into a conference paper. These two documents will be prepared in LaTeX, but I plan to share the PDF version in Google docs.