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38 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2018

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Instrumentation, Data, and Algorithms for Visually Understanding Haptic Surface Properties

Burka, A. L.

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, August 2018, Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering (phdthesis)

Abstract
Autonomous robots need to efficiently walk over varied surfaces and grasp diverse objects. We hypothesize that the association between how such surfaces look and how they physically feel during contact can be learned from a database of matched haptic and visual data recorded from various end-effectors' interactions with hundreds of real-world surfaces. Testing this hypothesis required the creation of a new multimodal sensing apparatus, the collection of a large multimodal dataset, and development of a machine-learning pipeline. This thesis begins by describing the design and construction of the Portable Robotic Optical/Tactile ObservatioN PACKage (PROTONPACK, or Proton for short), an untethered handheld sensing device that emulates the capabilities of the human senses of vision and touch. Its sensory modalities include RGBD vision, egomotion, contact force, and contact vibration. Three interchangeable end-effectors (a steel tooling ball, an OptoForce three-axis force sensor, and a SynTouch BioTac artificial fingertip) allow for different material properties at the contact point and provide additional tactile data. We then detail the calibration process for the motion and force sensing systems, as well as several proof-of-concept surface discrimination experiments that demonstrate the reliability of the device and the utility of the data it collects. This thesis then presents a large-scale dataset of multimodal surface interaction recordings, including 357 unique surfaces such as furniture, fabrics, outdoor fixtures, and items from several private and public material sample collections. Each surface was touched with one, two, or three end-effectors, comprising approximately one minute per end-effector of tapping and dragging at various forces and speeds. We hope that the larger community of robotics researchers will find broad applications for the published dataset. Lastly, we demonstrate an algorithm that learns to estimate haptic surface properties given visual input. Surfaces were rated on hardness, roughness, stickiness, and temperature by the human experimenter and by a pool of purely visual observers. Then we trained an algorithm to perform the same task as well as infer quantitative properties calculated from the haptic data. Overall, the task of predicting haptic properties from vision alone proved difficult for both humans and computers, but a hybrid algorithm using a deep neural network and a support vector machine achieved a correlation between expected and actual regression output between approximately ρ = 0.3 and ρ = 0.5 on previously unseen surfaces.

hi

Project Page [BibTex]

2018

hi Burka, A. L. Instrumentation, Data, and Algorithms for Visually Understanding Haptic Surface Properties University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, August 2018, Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering (phdthesis)

Project Page [BibTex]

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Robust Visual Augmented Reality in Robot-Assisted Surgery

Forte, M. P.

Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, July 2018, Department of Electronic, Information, and Biomedical Engineering (mastersthesis)

Abstract
The broader research objective of this line of research is to test the hypothesis that real-time stereo video analysis and augmented reality can increase safety and task efficiency in robot-assisted surgery. This master’s thesis aims to solve the first step needed to achieve this goal: the creation of a robust system that delivers the envisioned feedback to a surgeon while he or she controls a surgical robot that is identical to those used on human patients. Several approaches for applying augmented reality to da Vinci Surgical Systems have been proposed, but none of them entirely rely on a clinical robot; specifically, they require additional sensors, depend on access to the da Vinci API, are designed for a very specific task, or were tested on systems that are starkly different from those in clinical use. There has also been prior work that presents the real-world camera view and the computer graphics on separate screens, or not in real time. In other scenarios, the digital information is overlaid manually by the surgeons themselves or by computer scientists, rather than being generated automatically in response to the surgeon’s actions. We attempted to overcome the aforementioned constraints by acquiring input signals from the da Vinci stereo endoscope and providing augmented reality to the console in real time (less than 150 ms delay, including the 62 ms of inherent latency of the da Vinci). The potential benefits of the resulting system are broad because it was built to be general, rather than customized for any specific task. The entire platform is compatible with any generation of the da Vinci System and does not require a dVRK (da Vinci Research Kit) or access to the API. Thus, it can be applied to existing da Vinci Systems in operating rooms around the world.

hi

Project Page [BibTex]

hi Forte, M. P. Robust Visual Augmented Reality in Robot-Assisted Surgery Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, July 2018, Department of Electronic, Information, and Biomedical Engineering (mastersthesis)

Project Page [BibTex]

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Colloidal Chemical Nanomotors

Alarcon-Correa, M.

Colloidal Chemical Nanomotors, pages: 150, Cuvillier Verlag, MPI-IS , June 2018 (phdthesis)

Abstract
Synthetic sophisticated nanostructures represent a fundamental building block for the development of nanotechnology. The fabrication of nanoparticles complex in structure and material composition is key to build nanomachines that can operate as man-made nanoscale motors, which autonomously convert external energy into motion. To achieve this, asymmetric nanoparticles were fabricated combining a physical vapor deposition technique known as NanoGLAD and wet chemical synthesis. This thesis primarily concerns three complex colloidal systems that have been developed: i)Hollow nanocup inclusion complexes that have a single Au nanoparticle in their pocket. The Au particle can be released with an external trigger. ii)The smallest self-propelling nanocolloids that have been made to date, which give rise to a local concentration gradient that causes enhanced diffusion of the particles. iii)Enzyme-powered pumps that have been assembled using bacteriophages as biological nanoscaffolds. This construct also can be used for enzyme recovery after heterogeneous catalysis.

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[BibTex]

pf Alarcon-Correa, M. Colloidal Chemical Nanomotors Colloidal Chemical Nanomotors, pages: 150, Cuvillier Verlag, MPI-IS , June 2018 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Model-based Optical Flow: Layers, Learning, and Geometry

Wulff, J.

Tuebingen University, April 2018 (phdthesis)

Abstract
The estimation of motion in video sequences establishes temporal correspondences between pixels and surfaces and allows reasoning about a scene using multiple frames. Despite being a focus of research for over three decades, computing motion, or optical flow, remains challenging due to a number of difficulties, including the treatment of motion discontinuities and occluded regions, and the integration of information from more than two frames. One reason for these issues is that most optical flow algorithms only reason about the motion of pixels on the image plane, while not taking the image formation pipeline or the 3D structure of the world into account. One approach to address this uses layered models, which represent the occlusion structure of a scene and provide an approximation to the geometry. The goal of this dissertation is to show ways to inject additional knowledge about the scene into layered methods, making them more robust, faster, and more accurate. First, this thesis demonstrates the modeling power of layers using the example of motion blur in videos, which is caused by fast motion relative to the exposure time of the camera. Layers segment the scene into regions that move coherently while preserving their occlusion relationships. The motion of each layer therefore directly determines its motion blur. At the same time, the layered model captures complex blur overlap effects at motion discontinuities. Using layers, we can thus formulate a generative model for blurred video sequences, and use this model to simultaneously deblur a video and compute accurate optical flow for highly dynamic scenes containing motion blur. Next, we consider the representation of the motion within layers. Since, in a layered model, important motion discontinuities are captured by the segmentation into layers, the flow within each layer varies smoothly and can be approximated using a low dimensional subspace. We show how this subspace can be learned from training data using principal component analysis (PCA), and that flow estimation using this subspace is computationally efficient. The combination of the layered model and the low-dimensional subspace gives the best of both worlds, sharp motion discontinuities from the layers and computational efficiency from the subspace. Lastly, we show how layered methods can be dramatically improved using simple semantics. Instead of treating all layers equally, a semantic segmentation divides the scene into its static parts and moving objects. Static parts of the scene constitute a large majority of what is shown in typical video sequences; yet, in such regions optical flow is fully constrained by the depth structure of the scene and the camera motion. After segmenting out moving objects, we consider only static regions, and explicitly reason about the structure of the scene and the camera motion, yielding much better optical flow estimates. Furthermore, computing the structure of the scene allows to better combine information from multiple frames, resulting in high accuracies even in occluded regions. For moving regions, we compute the flow using a generic optical flow method, and combine it with the flow computed for the static regions to obtain a full optical flow field. By combining layered models of the scene with reasoning about the dynamic behavior of the real, three-dimensional world, the methods presented herein push the envelope of optical flow computation in terms of robustness, speed, and accuracy, giving state-of-the-art results on benchmarks and pointing to important future research directions for the estimation of motion in natural scenes.

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Official link DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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A virtual reality environment for experiments in assistive robotics and neural interfaces

Bustamante, S.

Graduate School of Neural Information Processing, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (mastersthesis)

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Bustamante, S. A virtual reality environment for experiments in assistive robotics and neural interfaces Graduate School of Neural Information Processing, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (mastersthesis)

PDF [BibTex]

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Optimal Trajectory Generation and Learning Control for Robot Table Tennis

Koc, O.

Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

ei

[BibTex]

ei Koc, O. Optimal Trajectory Generation and Learning Control for Robot Table Tennis Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Distribution-Dissimilarities in Machine Learning

Simon-Gabriel, C. J.

Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

ei

[BibTex]

ei Simon-Gabriel, C. J. Distribution-Dissimilarities in Machine Learning Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Domain Adaptation Under Causal Assumptions

Lechner, T.

Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (mastersthesis)

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[BibTex]

ei Lechner, T. Domain Adaptation Under Causal Assumptions Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (mastersthesis)

[BibTex]

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A Causal Perspective on Deep Representation Learning

Suter, R.

ETH Zurich, 2018 (mastersthesis)

ei

[BibTex]

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Probabilistic Approaches to Stochastic Optimization

Mahsereci, M.

Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

ei pn

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

ei pn Mahsereci, M. Probabilistic Approaches to Stochastic Optimization Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

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Reinforcement Learning for High-Speed Robotics with Muscular Actuation

Guist, S.

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , 2018 (mastersthesis)

ei

[BibTex]

ei Guist, S. Reinforcement Learning for High-Speed Robotics with Muscular Actuation Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , 2018 (mastersthesis)

[BibTex]

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Probabilistic Ordinary Differential Equation Solvers — Theory and Applications

Schober, M.

Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

ei pn

[BibTex]

ei pn Schober, M. Probabilistic Ordinary Differential Equation Solvers — Theory and Applications Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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A machine learning approach to taking EEG-based computer interfaces out of the lab

Jayaram, V.

Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience, IMPRS, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

ei

[BibTex]

ei Jayaram, V. A machine learning approach to taking EEG-based computer interfaces out of the lab Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience, IMPRS, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2018 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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XMCD investigations on new hard magnetic systems

Chen, Y.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2018 (phdthesis)

mms

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

mms Chen, Y. XMCD investigations on new hard magnetic systems Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2018 (phdthesis)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

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High-Resolution X-ray Ptychography for Magnetic Imaging

Bykova, I.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2018 (phdthesis)

mms

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

mms Bykova, I. High-Resolution X-ray Ptychography for Magnetic Imaging Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2018 (phdthesis)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

2016

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Non-parametric Models for Structured Data and Applications to Human Bodies and Natural Scenes

Lehrmann, A.

ETH Zurich, July 2016 (phdthesis)

Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is the study of non-parametric models for structured data and their fields of application in computer vision. We aim at the development of context-sensitive architectures which are both expressive and efficient. Our focus is on directed graphical models, in particular Bayesian networks, where we combine the flexibility of non-parametric local distributions with the efficiency of a global topology with bounded treewidth. A bound on the treewidth is obtained by either constraining the maximum indegree of the underlying graph structure or by introducing determinism. The non-parametric distributions in the nodes of the graph are given by decision trees or kernel density estimators. The information flow implied by specific network topologies, especially the resultant (conditional) independencies, allows for a natural integration and control of contextual information. We distinguish between three different types of context: static, dynamic, and semantic. In four different approaches we propose models which exhibit varying combinations of these contextual properties and allow modeling of structured data in space, time, and hierarchies derived thereof. The generative character of the presented models enables a direct synthesis of plausible hypotheses. Extensive experiments validate the developed models in two application scenarios which are of particular interest in computer vision: human bodies and natural scenes. In the practical sections of this work we discuss both areas from different angles and show applications of our models to human pose, motion, and segmentation as well as object categorization and localization. Here, we benefit from the availability of modern datasets of unprecedented size and diversity. Comparisons to traditional approaches and state-of-the-art research on the basis of well-established evaluation criteria allows the objective assessment of our contributions.

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pdf [BibTex]

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Statische und dynamische Magnetisierungseigenschaften nanoskaliger Überstrukturen

Gräfe, J.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart (und Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen), 2016 (phdthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Gräfe, J. Statische und dynamische Magnetisierungseigenschaften nanoskaliger Überstrukturen Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart (und Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen), 2016 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Gepinnte Bahnmomente in magnetischen Heterostrukturen

Audehm, P.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart (und Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen), 2016 (phdthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Audehm, P. Gepinnte Bahnmomente in magnetischen Heterostrukturen Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart (und Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen), 2016 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Austauschgekoppelte Moden in magnetischen Vortexstrukturen

Dieterle, G.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2016 (phdthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Dieterle, G. Austauschgekoppelte Moden in magnetischen Vortexstrukturen Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2016 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Density matrix calculations for the ultrafast demagnetization after femtosecond laser pulses

Weng, Weikai

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2016 (mastersthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Weng, Weikai Density matrix calculations for the ultrafast demagnetization after femtosecond laser pulses Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2016 (mastersthesis)

[BibTex]

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Deep Learning for Diabetic Retinopathy Diagnostics

Balles, Lukas

Heidelberg University, 2016 (mastersthesis)

[BibTex]

Balles, Lukas Deep Learning for Diabetic Retinopathy Diagnostics Heidelberg University, 2016 (mastersthesis)

[BibTex]

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Helium und Hydrogen Isotope Adsorption and Separation in Metal-Organic Frameworks

Zaiser, Ingrid

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart (und Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen), 2016 (phdthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Zaiser, Ingrid Helium und Hydrogen Isotope Adsorption and Separation in Metal-Organic Frameworks Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart (und Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen), 2016 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

2002

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Untersuchungen zur Spindynamik in nanostrukturierten ferromagnetischen Schichtsystemen

Puzic, A.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2002 (mastersthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

2002

mms Puzic, A. Untersuchungen zur Spindynamik in nanostrukturierten ferromagnetischen Schichtsystemen Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2002 (mastersthesis)

[BibTex]

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Magnetic Imaging of Nanostructured Systems with Transmission X-Ray Microscopy

Eimüller, T.

Bayrische Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, 2002 (phdthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Eimüller, T. Magnetic Imaging of Nanostructured Systems with Transmission X-Ray Microscopy Bayrische Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, 2002 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Ab-initio Berechnung der Spinwellenspektren von Eisen, Kobalt und Nickel

Grotheer, O.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2002 (phdthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Grotheer, O. Ab-initio Berechnung der Spinwellenspektren von Eisen, Kobalt und Nickel Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2002 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Kernspinresonanzuntersuchungen zur Diffusion von Wasserstoff in kubischen Lavesphasen

Eberle, U.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2002 (phdthesis)

mms

[BibTex]

mms Eberle, U. Kernspinresonanzuntersuchungen zur Diffusion von Wasserstoff in kubischen Lavesphasen Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2002 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]