Visual detection and tracking with UAVs,following a mobile object

ABSTRACT

Conception and development of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) capable of detecting, tracking and following a moving object with unknown dynamics is presented in this work, considering a human face as a case of study. Object detection is accomplished by a Haar cascade classifier. Once an object is detected, it is tracked with the help of a Kalman Filter (KF), and an estimation of the relative position with respect to the target is obtained. A linear controller is used to validate the proposed vision scheme and for regulating the aerial robot's position in order to keep a constant distance with respect to the mobile target, employing as well the extra available information from the embedded sensors. The proposed system was extensively tested in real-time experiments, through different conditions, using a commercial quadcopter connected via wireless to a ground station running under the Robot Operative System (ROS). The proposed overall strategy shows a good performance even under disadvantageous conditions as outdoor flight, being robust against illumination changes, image noise and the presence of other people in the scene.     

Adaptive quaternion control of a 3-DOF inertial stabilised platforms

ABSTRACT

Inertial stabilised platforms are increasingly popular with a large range of products available mainstream. Most items are controlled using popular algorithms that sometimes do not offer best achievable performances. Present paper proposes an advanced control which aims at improving these latter. The exposed solution is based on quaternion representation and self-adapts to the characteristics of the payload it tries to stabilise. Proposed control law ensures the stability of the system whatever the required orientation path is. Although only simulation has been performed to check the performances of such control, results look very promising compared to non-adaptive controls and may help to construct more polyvalent and efficient gimbals which would further facilitate their expansion. Proposed control law can also be applied, as is, to every system that shares the same quaternion-based rotational dynamics.     

Photoacoustic Monitoring of Absorption Spectrum During the Dehydration Process of <Emphasis Type="Italic">pasilla</Emphasis> Chili Pepper

In this work, the optical absorption spectrum of peppers was monitored by phase-resolved photoacoustic spectroscopy during a dehydration process based on hot-air drying, yielding simultaneous information about changes in the exocarp and mesocarp. Our results show that between all of the dehydration processes of green Capsicum annuum L. variety pasilla peppers, only very small changes occur in the different phase angles, which has been correlated with the small changes in the exocarp thickness. The phase-resolved spectra of mesocarp show more clearly the evolution of the carotenoid compounds with respect to the optical absorption spectrum without phase resolving, due to the last spectrum having a band broadening in that region with more signals convolved. We have shown that not only do the ripened chili peppers produce new carotenoid compounds, but also we are probing that the dehydration process, beginning with the green stage, preserves the nutrimental content, similar to changes that occur in the natural ripening process.     

PD+SMC Quadrotor Control for Altitude and Crack Recognition Using Deep Learning

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - Building inspection is a vital task because infrastructure damage puts people at risk or causes economic losses. Thanks to the...     

Adaptive removable visible watermarking technique using dual watermarking for digital color images

This paper proposes a removable visible watermarking system based on a dual watermark technique and blind removal. A visible watermark pattern is embedded in the cosine discrete transform (DCT) domain, taking into consideration the texture and luminance features of the watermark and host images to create a visible watermarked image. To prevent illegal visible watermark removal, the original watermark is embedded in an invisible manner in the visible watermarked image by employing the Quantization Index Modulation-Dither Modulation (QIM-DM) technique, thus ensuring that the original watermark cannot be obtained by malicious attacks. The visible watermark removal process is carried out using only the correct user’s keys, without the need for additional information, such as the original watermark or the original host image, which allows a high-quality image to be obtained; however, if the user’s keys used in the removal process are wrong, the visible watermarked image suffers higher distortion in its content, even in non-visible watermarked regions. The experimental results show that the proposed system outperforms previous related works in terms of blind removal, preservation of the quality of the unmarked recovered image, and higher visual degradation of the content in the recovered image if an illegal removal attempt is performed.     

Soft purification of N-doped and undoped multi-wall carbon nanotubes

A soft method for purifying multi-wall carbon nanotubes (N-doped and undoped) is presented. The technique includes a hydrothermal/ultrasonic treatment of the material in conjunction with other subsequent treatments, including the extraction of polyaromatic compounds, dissolution of metal particles, bundle exfoliation, and uniform dispersion. This method avoids harsh oxidation protocols that burn (via thermal treatments) or functionalize (by introducing chemical groups) the nanotubes. We show a careful analysis of each purification step and demonstrate that the technique is extremely efficient when characterizing the materials using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive x-ray analysis (EDAX), scanning tuneling electron microscopy (STEM), x-ray powder diffraction (XRD), diffuse reflectance Fourier transform infrared (DRFTIR) spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA).     

Analysis of the thermal hydrocracking of heavy fuel oil

The thermal hydrocracking of Mexican heavy fuel oil was studied at 1200 psia and different reaction temperatures (370, 380, 390 and 400°C). The results show that the vacuum residue which constitutes 62 wt. % of the heavy fuel oil and contains 47 wt. % resins and 23.3 wt. % asphaltenes, reacts to form lighter hydrocarbons (IBP-540°C), solid and gas. Resins transform more easily to saturates, and gases are produced mainly from the asphaltene fraction, indicating that the terminal alkyl groups in this fraction are shorter than those present in the resin fraction. The C-C scission reactions dominate the transformation of heavy fuel oil in the interval from 370 to 390°C, whereas the carbon rejection reactions are dominant at 400°C. Finally, the thermal hydrocracking of heavy fuel oil at 390°C appears suitable since at this temperature the reaction produces the greater amount of atmospheric distillates (+20.5 wt. %) and a low content of solid (2.0 wt. %) and gas (2.1 wt. %).