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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 August 2022

Bolin Gao, Kaiyuan Zheng, Fan Zhang, Ruiqi Su, Junying Zhang and Yimin Wu

Intelligent and connected vehicle technology is in the ascendant. High-level autonomous driving places more stringent requirements on the accuracy and reliability of environmental…

Abstract

Purpose

Intelligent and connected vehicle technology is in the ascendant. High-level autonomous driving places more stringent requirements on the accuracy and reliability of environmental perception. Existing research works on multitarget tracking based on multisensor fusion mostly focuses on the vehicle perspective, but limited by the principal defects of the vehicle sensor platform, it is difficult to comprehensively and accurately describe the surrounding environment information.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, a multitarget tracking method based on roadside multisensor fusion is proposed, including a multisensor fusion method based on measurement noise adaptive Kalman filtering, a global nearest neighbor data association method based on adaptive tracking gate, and a Track life cycle management method based on M/N logic rules.

Findings

Compared with fixed-size tracking gates, the adaptive tracking gates proposed in this paper can comprehensively improve the data association performance in the multitarget tracking process. Compared with single sensor measurement, the proposed method improves the position estimation accuracy by 13.5% and the velocity estimation accuracy by 22.2%. Compared with the control method, the proposed method improves the position estimation accuracy by 23.8% and the velocity estimation accuracy by 8.9%.

Originality/value

A multisensor fusion method with adaptive Kalman filtering of measurement noise is proposed to realize the adaptive adjustment of measurement noise. A global nearest neighbor data association method based on adaptive tracking gate is proposed to realize the adaptive adjustment of the tracking gate.

Details

Smart and Resilient Transportation, vol. 4 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2632-0487

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 July 2020

Ce Pang and Ganlin Shan

This paper aims to introduce a new target tracking method based on risk theory in a 2-D discrete environment. After that, the related sensor scheduling method is proposed. This…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to introduce a new target tracking method based on risk theory in a 2-D discrete environment. After that, the related sensor scheduling method is proposed. This can make up the blank of target tracking and sensor management in the 2-D discrete environment.

Design/methodology/approach

The definition of risk is proposed based on risk decision theory firstly. Then the target tracking model in a two-dimensional discrete environment is built. The motion state updating and estimation method of target’s motion state based on Bayes theory is given. Thirdly, the method of computing sensor emission interception risk is provided. Afterwards, the optimization rule of obtaining the minimum risk is followed to model the sensor scheduling objective function. The lion algorithm is adjusted and improved combined with Chaos theory to generate the optimal sensor management projects.

Findings

The risk-based sensor target tracking method and sensor management method are both effective in a 2-D discrete environment.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to study the target tracking method and sensor scheduling method in a 2-D environment. Furthermore, the lion algorithm is improved combined with Chaos theory to show a better optimization performance.

Details

Engineering Computations, vol. 37 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-4401

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 October 2017

Chengtao Cai, Bing Fan, Xiangyu Weng, Qidan Zhu and Li Su

Because of their large field of view, omnistereo vision systems have been widely used as primary vision sensors in autonomous mobile robot tasks. The purpose of this article is to…

201

Abstract

Purpose

Because of their large field of view, omnistereo vision systems have been widely used as primary vision sensors in autonomous mobile robot tasks. The purpose of this article is to achieve real-time and accurate tracking by the omnidirectional vision robot system.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors provide in this study the key techniques required to obtain an accurate omnistereo target tracking and location robot system, including stereo rectification and target tracking in complex environment. A simple rectification model is proposed, and a local image processing method is used to reduce the computation time in the localization process. A target tracking method is improved to make it suitable for omnidirectional vision system. Using the proposed methods and some existing methods, an omnistereo target tracking and location system is established.

Findings

The experiments are conducted with all the necessary stages involved in obtaining a high-performance omnistereo vision system. The proposed correction algorithm can process the image in real time. The experimental results of the improved tracking algorithm are better than the original algorithm. The statistical analysis of the experimental results demonstrates the effectiveness of the system.

Originality/value

A simple rectification model is proposed, and a local image processing method is used to reduce the computation time in the localization process. A target tracking method is improved to make it suitable for omnidirectional vision system. Using the proposed methods and some existing methods, an omnistereo target tracking and location system is established.

Details

Industrial Robot: An International Journal, vol. 44 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 April 2013

He Xu and Yi‐ping Shen

Target tracking systems are generally computationally intensive and require expensive and power‐hungry visual sensors. On the other hand, the existing target tracking control…

Abstract

Purpose

Target tracking systems are generally computationally intensive and require expensive and power‐hungry visual sensors. On the other hand, the existing target tracking control approaches fail to track the target swiftly and accurately when the mobile robot moves in the diversified manoeuvre modes. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel target tracking control method with a low cost embedded vision system to achieve high accuracy and speediness of target tracking control, regardless of the type of manoeuvre modes.

Design/methodology/approach

The pan/tilt angle differences are transformed from the tracking error between the image centre and the coordinates of the target centroid returned by the CMUcam3; the corresponding pan/tilt angle variation rates are calculated based on the manoeuvre control. All of them are fed to the controller. Then the controller generates appropriate control signals to fit the changing speed of target centroid and compensate for the tracking error. The experiments are designed in a way that the CMUcam3 keeps the target centre coincident with the image centre when the mobile robot moves in the diversified manoeuvre modes.

Findings

In spite of the type of manoeuvre modes, the controller responds to the tracking error instantly and actuates the pan/tilt with suitable position and speed commands, and the target centroid remains in the bounding box during the entire movement.

Originality/value

The proposed target tracking control takes the correlation between the robot manoeuvre modes and the target tracking control into account, and particularly suits for the target tracking tasks in planetary exploration, surveillance and military applications.

Details

Industrial Robot: An International Journal, vol. 40 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 September 2021

Xiao Bo Liang, Xinghua Qu, YuanJun Zhang, Lianyin Xu and Fumin Zhang

Laser absolute distance measurement has the characteristics of high precision, wide range and non-contact. In laser ranging system, tracking and aiming measurement point is the…

Abstract

Purpose

Laser absolute distance measurement has the characteristics of high precision, wide range and non-contact. In laser ranging system, tracking and aiming measurement point is the precondition of automatic measurement. To solve this problem, this paper aims to propose a novel method.

Design/methodology/approach

For the central point of the hollow angle coupled mirror, this paper proposes a method based on correlation filtering and ellipse fitting. For non-cooperative target points, this paper proposes an extraction method based on correlation filtering and feature matching. Finally, a visual tracking and aiming system was constructed by combining the two-axis turntable, and experiments were carried out.

Findings

The target tracking algorithm has an accuracy of 91.15% and a speed of 19.5 frames per second. The algorithm can adapt to the change of target scale and short-term occlusion. The mean error and standard deviation of the center point extraction of the hollow Angle coupling mirror are 0.20 and 0.09 mm. The mean error and standard deviation of feature points matching for non-cooperative target were 0.06 mm and 0.16 mm. The visual tracking and aiming system can track a target running at a speed of 0.7 m/s, aiming error mean is 1.74 pixels and standard deviation is 0.67 pixel.

Originality/value

The results show that this method can achieve fast and high precision target tracking and aiming and has great application value in laser ranging.

Details

Industrial Robot: the international journal of robotics research and application, vol. 49 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 October 2011

Bambang Rilanto Trilaksono, Ryan Triadhitama, Widyawardana Adiprawita, Artiko Wibowo and Anavatti Sreenatha

The purpose of this paper is to present the development of hardware‐in‐the‐loop simulation (HILS) for visual target tracking of an octorotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present the development of hardware‐in‐the‐loop simulation (HILS) for visual target tracking of an octorotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with onboard computer vision.

Design/methodology/approach

HILS for visual target tracking of an octorotor UAV is developed by integrating real embedded computer vision hardware and camera to software simulation of the UAV dynamics, flight control and navigation systems run on Simulink. Visualization of the visual target tracking is developed using FlightGear. The computer vision system is used to recognize and track a moving target using feature correlation between captured scene images and object images stored in the database. Features of the captured images are extracted using speed‐up robust feature (SURF) algorithm, and subsequently matched with features extracted from object image using fast library for approximate nearest neighbor (FLANN) algorithm. Kalman filter is applied to predict the position of the moving target on image plane. The integrated HILS environment is developed to allow real‐time testing and evaluation of onboard embedded computer vision for UAV's visual target tracking.

Findings

Utilization of HILS is found to be useful in evaluating functionality and performance of the real machine vision software and hardware prior to its operation in a flight test. Integrating computer vision with UAV enables the construction of an unmanned system with the capability of tracking a moving object.

Practical implications

HILS for visual target tracking of UAV described in this paper could be applied in practice to minimize trial and error in various parameters tuning of the machine vision algorithm as well as of the autopilot and navigation system. It also could reduce development costs, in addition to reducing the risk of crashing the UAV in a flight test.

Originality/value

A HILS integrated environment for octorotor UAV's visual target tracking for real‐time testing and evaluation of onboard computer vision is proposed. Another contribution involves implementation of SURF, FLANN, and Kalman filter algorithms on an onboard embedded PC and its integration with navigation and flight control systems which enables the UAV to track a moving object.

Details

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, vol. 83 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-2667

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 August 2010

Fan Wen, Zhenshen Qu and Changhong Wang

The purpose of this paper is to describe how, in order to fulfill the specific missions under some special environments without people participating, a multi‐robot object tracking

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe how, in order to fulfill the specific missions under some special environments without people participating, a multi‐robot object tracking and docking systems are designed based on networked control frames.

Design/methodology/approach

In the process of target recognition and tracking, the tracking robot obtains the target robot's position and poses information by means of multi‐sensors, and tracking the target robot uses a data fusion algorithm based on network‐delay. In the phase of docking, the exterior parameters of the CCD camera installed on the tracking robot can be calculated in‐phase by recognizing the coded target in a place on the target robot. Finally, the relative position and pose parameters between the tracking robot and the target robot can be derived using the coordinate rotation parameters.

Findings

The experiment results indicated that the relative position measure error is less than 1.5 percent, and the relative pose measure error less than 1° within 1.5‐10 m. The research results show that the system can actualize object tracing and docking missions accurately and timely.

Research limitations/implications

This paper is devoted to multi‐robot object tracking and docking systems.

Practical implications

The main applications are in the exploration in the seabed, consignment in the workshop, formation of spacecrafts, docking of spacecrafts, and so on.

Originality/value

The system can actualize object tracing and docking missions accurately, and the system is of reliable, real‐time, and robust capabilities. This will aid all developers and researchers to enhance their technicality.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 39 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 December 2021

Yunpu Zhang, Gongguo Xu and Ganlin Shan

Continuous and stable tracking of the low-altitude maneuvering targets is usually difficult due to terrain occlusion and Doppler blind zone (DBZ). This paper aims to present a…

Abstract

Purpose

Continuous and stable tracking of the low-altitude maneuvering targets is usually difficult due to terrain occlusion and Doppler blind zone (DBZ). This paper aims to present a non-myopic scheduling method of multiple radar sensors for tracking the low-altitude maneuvering targets. In this scheduling problem, the best sensors are systematically selected to observe targets for getting the best tracking accuracy under maintaining the low intercepted probability of a multi-sensor system.

Design/methodology/approach

First, the sensor scheduling process is formulated within the partially observable Markov decision process framework. Second, the interacting multiple model algorithm and the cubature Kalman filter algorithm are combined to estimate the target state, and the DBZ information is applied to estimate the target state when the measurement information is missing. Then, an approximate method based on a cubature sampling strategy is put forward to calculate the future expected objective of the multi-step scheduling process. Furthermore, an improved quantum particle swarm optimization (QPSO) algorithm is presented to solve the sensor scheduling action quickly. Optimization problem, an improved QPSO algorithm is presented to solve the sensor scheduling action quickly.

Findings

Compared with the traditional scheduling methods, the proposed method can maintain higher target tracking accuracy with a low intercepted probability. And the proposed target state estimation method in DBZ has better tracking performance.

Originality/value

In this paper, DBZ, sensor intercepted probability and complex terrain environment are considered in sensor scheduling, which has good practical application in a complex environment.

Article
Publication date: 28 March 2008

Daniel Lockery and James F. Peters

The purpose of this paper is to report upon research into developing a biologically inspired targettracking system (TTS) capable of acquiring quality images of a known target

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report upon research into developing a biologically inspired targettracking system (TTS) capable of acquiring quality images of a known target type for a robotic inspection application.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach used in the design of the TTS hearkens back to the work on adaptive learning by Oliver Selfridge and Chris J.C.H. Watkins and the work on the classification of objects by Zdzislaw Pawlak during the 1980s in an approximation space‐based form of feedback during learning. Also, during the 1980s, it was Ewa Orlowska who called attention to the importance of approximation spaces as a formal counterpart of perception. This insight by Orlowska has been important in working toward a new form of adaptive learning useful in controlling the behaviour of machines to accomplish system goals. The adaptive learning algorithms presented in this paper are strictly temporal difference methods, including Q‐learning, sarsa, and the actor‐critic method. Learning itself is considered episodic. During each episode, the equivalent of a Tinbergen‐like ethogram is constructed. Such an ethogram provides a basis for the construction of an approximation space at the end of each episode. The combination of episodic ethograms and approximation spaces provides an extremely effective means of feedback useful in guiding learning during the lifetime of a robotic system such as the TTS reported in this paper.

Findings

It was discovered that even though the adaptive learning methods were computationally more expensive than the classical algorithm implementations, they proved to be more effective in a number of cases, especially in noisy environments.

Originality/value

The novelty associated with this work is the introduction of an approach to adaptive adaptive learning carried out within the framework of ethology‐based approximation spaces to provide performance feedback during the learning process.

Details

International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1756-378X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 June 2021

Sixian Chan, Jian Tao, Xiaolong Zhou, Binghui Wu, Hongqiang Wang and Shengyong Chen

Visual tracking technology enables industrial robots interacting with human beings intelligently. However, due to the complexity of the tracking problem, the accuracy of visual…

Abstract

Purpose

Visual tracking technology enables industrial robots interacting with human beings intelligently. However, due to the complexity of the tracking problem, the accuracy of visual target tracking still has great space for improvement. This paper aims to propose an accurate visual target tracking method based on standard hedging and feature fusion.

Design/methodology/approach

For this study, the authors first learn the discriminative information between targets and similar objects in the histogram of oriented gradients by feature optimization method, and then use standard hedging algorithms to dynamically balance the weights between different feature optimization components. Moreover, they penalize the filter coefficients by incorporating spatial regularization coefficient and extend the Kernelized Correlation Filter for robust tracking. Finally, a model update mechanism to improve the effectiveness of the tracking is proposed.

Findings

Extensive experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method comparing to the state-of-the-art tracking methods.

Originality/value

Improvements to existing visual target tracking algorithms are achieved through feature fusion and standard hedging algorithms to further improve the tracking accuracy of robots on targets in reality.

Details

Industrial Robot: the international journal of robotics research and application, vol. 48 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

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