13 accepted papers
Underwater environments pose significant challenges for visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems due to limited visibility, inadequate illumination, and sporadic loss of structural features in images. Addressing these challenges, this paper introduces a novel, tightly-coupled Acou…
Oversmoothing is a fundamental challenge in graph neural networks (GNNs): as the number of layers increases, node embeddings become increasingly similar, and model performance drops sharply. Traditionally, oversmoothing has been quantified using metrics that measure the similarity of neighbouring no…
Accurate prediction of soft tissue deformation from endoscopic video is critical for robot-assisted, image-guided interventions. However, it remains challenging due to occlusions, complex dynamics, and the absence of direct physical measurements. Existing vision-based approaches often impose rigid o
Radar has become an essential sensor for autonomous navigation, especially in challenging environments where camera and LiDAR sensors fail. 4D single-chip millimeter-wave radar systems, in particular, have drawn increasing attention thanks to their ability to provide spatial and Doppler information
Transfer learning is a powerful paradigm for leveraging knowledge from source domains to enhance learning in a target domain. However, traditional transfer learning approaches often focus on scalar or multivariate data within Euclidean spaces, limiting their applicability to complex data structures…
Maps of LiDAR Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) are often represented as point clouds. They usually take up a huge amount of storage space for large-scale environments, otherwise much structural detail may not be kept. In this paper, a novel paradigm of LiDAR mapping and odometry is desig…
This paper introduces a novel sonar odometry system that estimates the relative spatial transformation between two sonar image frames. Considering the unique challenges, such as low resolution and high noise, of sonar imagery for odometry and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), the propose…
In this paper, we propose using online public maps, e.g., OpenStreetMap (OSM), for large-scale radar-based localization without needing a prior sensing map. This can potentially extend the localization system to anywhere worldwide without building, saving, or maintaining a sensing map, as long as an…
The extrinsic parameters play a crucial role in multi-sensor fusion, such as visual-inertial Simultaneous Localization and Mapping(SLAM), as they enable the accurate alignment and integration of measurements from different sensors. However, extrinsic calibration is challenging in scenarios, such as…
Increasing the density of the 3D LiDAR point cloud is appealing for many applications in robotics. However, high-density LiDAR sensors are usually costly and still limited to a level of coverage per scan (e.g., 128 channels). Meanwhile, denser point cloud scans and maps mean larger volumes to store…
Robots that autonomously navigate real-world 3D cluttered environments need to safely traverse terrain with abrupt changes in surface normals and elevations. In this letter, we present the development of a novel sim-to-real pipeline for a mobile robot to effectively learn how to navigate real-world
Underwater scenarios are challenging for visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) due to limited visibility and intermittently losing structures in image views. In this paper, we propose a visual acoustic bundle adjustment system which fuses a camera and a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) in a…
Rescue robots can be used in urban search and rescue (USAR) applications to perform the important task of exploring unknown cluttered environments. Due to the unpredictable nature of these environments, deep learning techniques can be used to perform these tasks. In this letter, we present the first