Microwave measurements and machine learning algorithms are presented to estimate metal ion concen... more Microwave measurements and machine learning algorithms are presented to estimate metal ion concentrations in drinking water. A novel block loop gap resonator (BLGR) as a microwave probe is designed and fabricated to estimate Pb ion concentrations in city water as low as 1 ppb with an rms error of 0.18 ppb. No physical contact between the BLGR probe and the water sample allows on-site/in situ continuous detection of ppb-level metal ion concentrations. The S11 raw data (amplitude and phase) from the BLGR are used to classify and estimate metal ion concentrations using a support vector regression algorithm. The performance of the proposed method to estimate Pb concentrations in the presence of interfering metal ions (Cu 2+ , Fe 3+ , and Zn 2+ ) is also evaluated, and it is found that the average measurement error remains less than 13%
International Symposium on Wireless and pervasive Computing (ISWPC), 2013
This paper studies the performance of asynchronous consensus algorithms in wireless sensors netwo... more This paper studies the performance of asynchronous consensus algorithms in wireless sensors networks (WSNs). The application of such distributed consensus algorithms for the estimation of parameters or detection of events in WSNs has attracted increased attention recently. In this work the reliability of the wireless links between nodes is modeled by the outage probability. The outage probability formulation embeds the effect of small and large scale channel fading and allows a more precise performance evaluation of consensus algorithms for wireless applications. We investigate the performance of the following algorithms: pairwise, neighborhood, geographic and broadcasting. Simulation results show which algorithm minimizes the number of exchanged messages and/or obtains a faster convergence for different scenarios. The best strategy depends both on the wireless channel characteristics and the network topology.
A key aspect to controlling and reducing the effects invasive insect species have on agriculture ... more A key aspect to controlling and reducing the effects invasive insect species have on agriculture is to obtain knowledge about the migration patterns of these species. Current state-of-the-art methods of studying these migration patterns involve a mark-release-recapture technique, in which insects are released after being marked and researchers attempt to recapture them later. However, this approach involves a human researcher manually searching for these insects in large fields and results in very low recapture rates. In this paper, we propose an automated system for detecting released insects using an unmanned aerial vehicle. This system utilizes ultraviolet lighting technology, digital cameras, and lightweight computer vision algorithms to more quickly and accurately detect insects compared to the current state of the art. The efficiency and accuracy that this system provides will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of invasive insect species migration patterns. Our exper...
We consider the problem of extracting curve skeletons of three-dimensional, elongated objects giv... more We consider the problem of extracting curve skeletons of three-dimensional, elongated objects given a noisy surface, which has applications in agricultural contexts such as extracting the branching structure of plants. We describe an efficient and robust method based on breadth-first search that can determine curve skeletons in these contexts. Our approach is capable of automatically detecting junction points as well as spurious segments and loops. All of that is accomplished with only one user-adjustable parameter. The run time of our method ranges from hundreds of milliseconds to less than four seconds on large, challenging datasets, which makes it appropriate for situations where real-time decision making is needed. Experiments on synthetic models as well as on data from real world objects, some of which were collected in challenging field conditions, show that our approach compares favorably to classical thinning algorithms as well as to recent contributions to the field.
Segmentation in dynamic outdoor environments can be difficult when the illumination levels and ot... more Segmentation in dynamic outdoor environments can be difficult when the illumination levels and other aspects of the scene cannot be controlled. Specifically in orchard and vineyard automation contexts, a background material is often used to shield a camera's field of view from other rows of crops. In this paper, we describe a method that uses superpixels to determine low texture regions of the image that correspond to the background material, and then show how this information can be integrated with the color distribution of the image to compute optimal segmentation parameters to segment objects of interest. Quantitative and qualitative experiments demonstrate the suitability of this approach for dynamic outdoor environments, specifically for tree reconstruction and apple flower detection applications.
In fruit production, critical crop management decisions are guided by bloom intensity, i.e., the ... more In fruit production, critical crop management decisions are guided by bloom intensity, i.e., the number of flowers present in an orchard. Despite its importance, bloom intensity is still typically estimated by means of human visual inspection. Existing automated computer vision systems for flower identification are based on hand-engineered techniques that work only under specific conditions and with limited performance. This work proposes an automated technique for flower identification that is robust to uncontrolled environments and applicable to different flower species. Our method relies on an end-to-end residual convolutional neural network (CNN) that represents the state-of-the-art in semantic segmentation. To enhance its sensitivity to flowers, we fine-tune this network using a single dataset of apple flower images. Since CNNs tend to produce coarse segmentations, we employ a refinement method to better distinguish between individual flower instances. Without any pre-processin...
The autonomous measurement of tree traits, such as branching structure, branch diameters, branch ... more The autonomous measurement of tree traits, such as branching structure, branch diameters, branch lengths, and branch angles, is required for tasks such as robotic pruning of trees as well as structural phenotyping. We propose a robotic vision system called the Robotic System for Tree Shape Estimation (RoTSE) to determine tree traits in field settings. The process is composed of the following stages: image acquisition with a mobile robot unit, segmentation, reconstruction, curve skeletonization, conversion to a graph representation, and then computation of traits. Quantitative and qualitative results on apple trees are shown in terms of accuracy, computation time, and robustness. Compared to ground truth measurements, the RoTSE produced the following estimates: branch diameter (mean-squared error 0.99 mm), branch length (mean-squared error 45.64 mm), and branch angle (mean-squared error 10.36 degrees). The average run time was 8.47 minutes when the voxel resolution was 3 mm^3.
Camera network and multi-camera calibration for external parameters is a necessary step for a var... more Camera network and multi-camera calibration for external parameters is a necessary step for a variety of contexts in computer vision and robotics, ranging from three-dimensional reconstruction to human activity tracking. This paper describes a method for camera network and/or multi-camera calibration suitable for specific contexts: the cameras may not all have a common field of view, or if they do, there may be some views that are 180 degrees from one another, and the network may be asynchronous. The calibration object required is one or more planar calibration patterns, rigidly attached to one another, and are distinguishable from one another, such as aruco or charuco patterns. We formulate the camera network and/or multi-camera calibration problem in this context using rigidity constraints, represented as a system of equations, and an approximate solution is found through a two-step process. Synthetic and real experiments, including scenarios of a asynchronous camera network and r...
Despite recent improvements using fully convolutional networks, in general, the segmentation prod... more Despite recent improvements using fully convolutional networks, in general, the segmentation produced by most state-of-the-art semantic segmentation methods does not show satisfactory adherence to the object boundaries. We propose a method to refine the segmentation results generated by such deep learning models. Our method takes as input the confidence scores generated by a pixel-dense segmentation network and re-labels pixels with low confidence levels. The re-labeling approach employs a region growing mechanism that aggregates these pixels to neighboring areas with high confidence scores and similar appearance. In order to correct the labels of pixels that were incorrectly classified with high confidence level by the semantic segmentation algorithm, we generate multiple region growing steps through a Monte Carlo sampling of the seeds of the regions. Our method improves the accuracy of a state-of-the-art fully convolutional semantic segmentation approach on the publicly available ...
This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University L... more This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact epubs@purdue.edu for additional information.
Microwave measurements and machine learning algorithms are presented to estimate metal ion concen... more Microwave measurements and machine learning algorithms are presented to estimate metal ion concentrations in drinking water. A novel block loop gap resonator (BLGR) as a microwave probe is designed and fabricated to estimate Pb ion concentrations in city water as low as 1 ppb with an rms error of 0.18 ppb. No physical contact between the BLGR probe and the water sample allows on-site/in situ continuous detection of ppb-level metal ion concentrations. The S11 raw data (amplitude and phase) from the BLGR are used to classify and estimate metal ion concentrations using a support vector regression algorithm. The performance of the proposed method to estimate Pb concentrations in the presence of interfering metal ions (Cu 2+ , Fe 3+ , and Zn 2+ ) is also evaluated, and it is found that the average measurement error remains less than 13%
International Symposium on Wireless and pervasive Computing (ISWPC), 2013
This paper studies the performance of asynchronous consensus algorithms in wireless sensors netwo... more This paper studies the performance of asynchronous consensus algorithms in wireless sensors networks (WSNs). The application of such distributed consensus algorithms for the estimation of parameters or detection of events in WSNs has attracted increased attention recently. In this work the reliability of the wireless links between nodes is modeled by the outage probability. The outage probability formulation embeds the effect of small and large scale channel fading and allows a more precise performance evaluation of consensus algorithms for wireless applications. We investigate the performance of the following algorithms: pairwise, neighborhood, geographic and broadcasting. Simulation results show which algorithm minimizes the number of exchanged messages and/or obtains a faster convergence for different scenarios. The best strategy depends both on the wireless channel characteristics and the network topology.
A key aspect to controlling and reducing the effects invasive insect species have on agriculture ... more A key aspect to controlling and reducing the effects invasive insect species have on agriculture is to obtain knowledge about the migration patterns of these species. Current state-of-the-art methods of studying these migration patterns involve a mark-release-recapture technique, in which insects are released after being marked and researchers attempt to recapture them later. However, this approach involves a human researcher manually searching for these insects in large fields and results in very low recapture rates. In this paper, we propose an automated system for detecting released insects using an unmanned aerial vehicle. This system utilizes ultraviolet lighting technology, digital cameras, and lightweight computer vision algorithms to more quickly and accurately detect insects compared to the current state of the art. The efficiency and accuracy that this system provides will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of invasive insect species migration patterns. Our exper...
We consider the problem of extracting curve skeletons of three-dimensional, elongated objects giv... more We consider the problem of extracting curve skeletons of three-dimensional, elongated objects given a noisy surface, which has applications in agricultural contexts such as extracting the branching structure of plants. We describe an efficient and robust method based on breadth-first search that can determine curve skeletons in these contexts. Our approach is capable of automatically detecting junction points as well as spurious segments and loops. All of that is accomplished with only one user-adjustable parameter. The run time of our method ranges from hundreds of milliseconds to less than four seconds on large, challenging datasets, which makes it appropriate for situations where real-time decision making is needed. Experiments on synthetic models as well as on data from real world objects, some of which were collected in challenging field conditions, show that our approach compares favorably to classical thinning algorithms as well as to recent contributions to the field.
Segmentation in dynamic outdoor environments can be difficult when the illumination levels and ot... more Segmentation in dynamic outdoor environments can be difficult when the illumination levels and other aspects of the scene cannot be controlled. Specifically in orchard and vineyard automation contexts, a background material is often used to shield a camera's field of view from other rows of crops. In this paper, we describe a method that uses superpixels to determine low texture regions of the image that correspond to the background material, and then show how this information can be integrated with the color distribution of the image to compute optimal segmentation parameters to segment objects of interest. Quantitative and qualitative experiments demonstrate the suitability of this approach for dynamic outdoor environments, specifically for tree reconstruction and apple flower detection applications.
In fruit production, critical crop management decisions are guided by bloom intensity, i.e., the ... more In fruit production, critical crop management decisions are guided by bloom intensity, i.e., the number of flowers present in an orchard. Despite its importance, bloom intensity is still typically estimated by means of human visual inspection. Existing automated computer vision systems for flower identification are based on hand-engineered techniques that work only under specific conditions and with limited performance. This work proposes an automated technique for flower identification that is robust to uncontrolled environments and applicable to different flower species. Our method relies on an end-to-end residual convolutional neural network (CNN) that represents the state-of-the-art in semantic segmentation. To enhance its sensitivity to flowers, we fine-tune this network using a single dataset of apple flower images. Since CNNs tend to produce coarse segmentations, we employ a refinement method to better distinguish between individual flower instances. Without any pre-processin...
The autonomous measurement of tree traits, such as branching structure, branch diameters, branch ... more The autonomous measurement of tree traits, such as branching structure, branch diameters, branch lengths, and branch angles, is required for tasks such as robotic pruning of trees as well as structural phenotyping. We propose a robotic vision system called the Robotic System for Tree Shape Estimation (RoTSE) to determine tree traits in field settings. The process is composed of the following stages: image acquisition with a mobile robot unit, segmentation, reconstruction, curve skeletonization, conversion to a graph representation, and then computation of traits. Quantitative and qualitative results on apple trees are shown in terms of accuracy, computation time, and robustness. Compared to ground truth measurements, the RoTSE produced the following estimates: branch diameter (mean-squared error 0.99 mm), branch length (mean-squared error 45.64 mm), and branch angle (mean-squared error 10.36 degrees). The average run time was 8.47 minutes when the voxel resolution was 3 mm^3.
Camera network and multi-camera calibration for external parameters is a necessary step for a var... more Camera network and multi-camera calibration for external parameters is a necessary step for a variety of contexts in computer vision and robotics, ranging from three-dimensional reconstruction to human activity tracking. This paper describes a method for camera network and/or multi-camera calibration suitable for specific contexts: the cameras may not all have a common field of view, or if they do, there may be some views that are 180 degrees from one another, and the network may be asynchronous. The calibration object required is one or more planar calibration patterns, rigidly attached to one another, and are distinguishable from one another, such as aruco or charuco patterns. We formulate the camera network and/or multi-camera calibration problem in this context using rigidity constraints, represented as a system of equations, and an approximate solution is found through a two-step process. Synthetic and real experiments, including scenarios of a asynchronous camera network and r...
Despite recent improvements using fully convolutional networks, in general, the segmentation prod... more Despite recent improvements using fully convolutional networks, in general, the segmentation produced by most state-of-the-art semantic segmentation methods does not show satisfactory adherence to the object boundaries. We propose a method to refine the segmentation results generated by such deep learning models. Our method takes as input the confidence scores generated by a pixel-dense segmentation network and re-labels pixels with low confidence levels. The re-labeling approach employs a region growing mechanism that aggregates these pixels to neighboring areas with high confidence scores and similar appearance. In order to correct the labels of pixels that were incorrectly classified with high confidence level by the semantic segmentation algorithm, we generate multiple region growing steps through a Monte Carlo sampling of the seeds of the regions. Our method improves the accuracy of a state-of-the-art fully convolutional semantic segmentation approach on the publicly available ...
This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University L... more This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact epubs@purdue.edu for additional information.
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