Meng, Wugang
A Hybrid Controller Design for Human-Assistive Piloting of an Underactuated Blimp
Meng, Wugang, Wu, Tianfu, Tao, Qiuyang, Zhang, Fumin
Abstract--This paper introduces a novel solution to the manual control challenge for indoor blimps. The problem's complexity arises from the conflicting demands of executing human commands while maintaining stability through automatic control for underactuated robots. To tackle this challenge, we introduced an assisted piloting hybrid controller with a preemptive mechanism, that seamlessly switches between executing human commands and activating automatic stabilization control. Our algorithm ensures that the automatic stabilization controller operates within the time delay between human observation and perception, providing assistance to the driver in a way that remains imperceptible. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly popular in various fields including military, agriculture, and significantly impact human perceptions of event causation transportation.
NuRF: Nudging the Particle Filter in Radiance Fields for Robot Visual Localization
Meng, Wugang, Wu, Tianfu, Yin, Huan, Zhang, Fumin
Can we localize a robot in radiance fields only using monocular vision? This study presents NuRF, a nudged particle filter framework for 6-DoF robot visual localization in radiance fields. NuRF sets anchors in SE(3) to leverage visual place recognition, which provides image comparisons to guide the sampling process. This guidance could improve the convergence and robustness of particle filters for robot localization. Additionally, an adaptive scheme is designed to enhance the performance of NuRF, thus enabling both global visual localization and local pose tracking. Real-world experiments are conducted with comprehensive tests to demonstrate the effectiveness of NuRF. The results showcase the advantages of NuRF in terms of accuracy and efficiency, including comparisons with alternative approaches. Furthermore, we report our findings for future studies and advancements in robot navigation in radiance fields.