Navigation using color and depth

Semester: Winter 2011
Students: Assaf Cohen and Hila Sastiel
Instructor:  Amir Geva

For any mobile device, the ability to navigate in its environment is one of the most important capabilities of all. Robot navigation means its ability to determine its own position in its frame of reference and then to plan a path towards some goal location. In order to navigate in its environment, the robot or any other mobility device requires representation i.e. a map of the environment and the ability to interpret that representation.

Optimally Covering an Unknown Environment with Ant-like STC algorithm

Semester: Winter 2010-2011
Students: Majd Srour and Anis Abboud
Instructor: Yotam Elor

Many insects interact by leaving pheromone traces in the environment. In this project the robot mimics that behavior by working on a floor covered with Phosphorescent color. The robot can charge the color by lighting it with UV Leds. After being charged, the Phosphorescent color emits green light which can be sensed by the robot's camera. Using these markings, the robot is able to perform the coverage algorithm of Gabrieli and Rimon[1] and cover the floor optimally.

Swarm

Semester: Winter 2010-2011
Students: Nir Hershko and Ranit Gottesman
Instructor: Yotam Elor

Winner of the Amdocs Project Competition of 2010!

Swarm is an educational game presenting the power and beauty of muti-robot systems. A series of multi-robot tasks is presented to the player. The player is required to design and program robots that perform the tasks. A simple graphic interface is used to build and program(!) the robots.

An Algorithm for Multiple Target Tracking I

Semester: Spring 2011
Students: Naseem Mahajna and Muhammad Zoabi
Instructor: Ishay Kamon

In this project the students have implemented an algorithm for multiple target tracking. Graph algorithms are used for efficient computation of association and tracking problems.

STC Simulation

Semester: Spring 2011
Students:Avi Stiefel
Instructors: Yotam Elor

A memoryless implementation of the on-line STC floor-coverage algorithm, in the cisbots Simulator environment.  The robot builds a spanning tree to cover the surface as it moves about the workspace, and then returns to the original location.  The robot leaves markers as it covers the floor, to signify which portions of the workspace have been covered, and which portions remain to be covered.

Quad-Rotor Control

Semester: Spring 2011
Students: Eran Nissim and Asaf Tal
Instructors: Leonid Mirkin

A quad-rotor type X-3DBL UFO helicopter is used in our project. The project goal is to learn the quad-rotor dynamics and create a control algorithm that will stabilize its orientation. The quad-rotor is initially equipped with a 3DOF gyro . In addition to the gyro, an Xsens IMU added. The IMU contains 3DOF gyro, 3DOF accelerometer , barometer and GPS unit. With the help of the IMU and with the measurements of the platform acceleration and rate in all 3 axis we succeed estimating the platform angles, controlling and stabilizing the platform orientation. The quad-rotor can receive a reference input to the platform angles : psi, theta, phi; and successfully track the reference without any errors. The communication to the platform is with a communication box that has 2 controlling channels: 1. Manual control – wireless communication that controls the platform. 2. Auto control – control with the MATLAB code, this option is wired and not wireless because of the high sampling rate of the IMU (512Hz).

Optimally Covering an Unknown Indoor Environment

Semester: Winter 2011
Students: Majd Srour and Anis Abboud
Instructors: Yotam Elor

Winner of the Amdocs Project Competition of 2011!

In this project, we implemented the coverage algorithm of Gabrieli and Rimon [1] using a simple Lego robot equipped with a camera. To cover an area, the robot is required to transverse the whole area once. Mobile coverage is required for a wide variety of tasks such as cleaning, demining, searching etc. The algorithm of [1] allows the robot to cover any unknown area optimally by online constructing the optimal path. In this project we have demonstrated that the algorithm can be implemented using a simple robot.

TRACKING A PERSON USING COLOR AND DEPTH (KINECT) IMAGES

Semester: Spring 2011
Students: Assaf Cohen and Hila Sastiel
Instructor:  Amir Geva

Our project uses both color and depth images taken from “Kinect”- a popular depth camera, to segment the picture and find all the objects in the scene. The depth channel enables us to find the edges of objects that have similar colors, while the color channel helps us to distinguish between adjacent objects. After the preceding process, we use a classifier, which is based on SVM (Support Vector Machine), to identify each person in the scene and build a color histogram for him.

Finally we choose the person that his histogram has the highest similarity to the one of the tracked person.

Background Objects Identification Using Texture and Color

Semester: Winter 2009-2010
Student: Ilya Gurvich
Instructor:  Tamar Avraham

Winner of the Amdocs excellent project award for 2010!

Abstract:

In this project we implemented background objects identification using their texture and color features. We used a feature vector composed of HSI color histograms, edges direction histogram and statistics of a grey-level co-occurrence matrix. We used an SVM classifier and we found its optimal parameters. We also introduced an improved feature vector that positively influenced the accuracy rate. In addition, we implemented a whole region classification by using weighted voting of the patches contained within. This project was then incorporated into a larger research in which a global context in the image was also used.

Circle Mark Ant Walk

Semseter: Spring 2010

Students: Kiril & Anna

Instructor: Yotam Elor

ABSTRACT

In this project the students have implemented a continuous domain covering algorithm. See the project book.