We study a class of computer vision settings wherein one can modify the design of the objects being recognized. We develop a framework that leverages this capability--and deep networks' unusual sensitivity to input perturbations--to design "robust objects," i.e., objects that are explicitly optimized to be confidently classified. Our framework yields improved performance on standard benchmarks, a simulated robotics environment, and physical-world experiments.

Future planetary exploration missions demand high-performance, fault-tolerant computing to enable autonomous Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) and Lander Vision System (LVS) operations during Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL). This paper evaluates the deployment of GNC and LVS algorithms on next-generation multi-core processors--HPSC, Snapdragon VOXL2, and AMD Xilinx Versal--demonstrating up to 15x speedup for LVS image processing and over 250x speedup for Guidance for Fuel-Optimal Large Divert (GFOLD) trajectory optimization compared to legacy spaceflight hardware. To ensure computational reliability, we present ARBITER (Asynchronous Redundant Behavior Inspection for Trusted Execution and Recovery), a Multi-Core Voting (MV) mechanism that performs real-time fault detection and correction across redundant cores. ARBITER is validated in both static optimization tasks (GFOLD) and dynamic closed-loop control (Attitude Control System). A fault injection study further identifies the gradient computation stage in GFOLD as the most sensitive to bit-level errors, motivating selective protection strategies and vector-based output arbitration. This work establishes a scalable and energy-efficient architecture for future missions, including Mars Sample Return, Enceladus Orbilander, and Ceres Sample Return, where onboard autonomy, low latency, and fault resilience are critical.

This paper presents an integrated robotic fused deposition modeling additive manufacturing system featuring closed-loop thermal control and intelligent in-situ defect correction using a 6-degree of freedom robotic arm and an Oak-D camera. The robot arm end effector was modified to mount an E3D hotend thermally regulated by an IoT microcontroller, enabling precise temperature control through real-time feedback. Filament extrusion system was synchronized with robotic motion, coordinated via ROS2, ensuring consistent deposition along complex trajectories. A vision system based on OpenCV detects layer-wise defects position, commanding autonomous re-extrusion at identified sites. Experimental validation demonstrated successful defect mitigation in printing operations. The integrated system effectively addresses challenges real-time quality assurance. Inverse kinematics were used for motion planning, while homography transformations corrected camera perspectives for accurate defect localization. The intelligent system successfully mitigated surface anomalies without interrupting the print process. By combining real-time thermal regulation, motion control, and intelligent defect detection & correction, this architecture establishes a scalable and adaptive robotic additive manufacturing framework suitable for aerospace, biomedical, and industrial applications.

We investigate a suite of image generation models that produce images from simple random processes.

Quality control is a critical aspect of manufacturing, particularly in ensuring the proper assembly of small components in production lines. Existing solutions often rely on single-view imaging or manual inspection, which are prone to errors due to occlusions, restricted perspectives, or lighting inconsistencies. These limitations require the installation of additional inspection stations, which could disrupt the assembly line and lead to increased downtime and costs. This paper introduces a novel multi-view quality control module designed to address these challenges, integrating a multi-camera imaging system with advanced object detection algorithms. By capturing images from three camera views, the system provides comprehensive visual coverage of components of an assembly process. A tailored image fusion methodology combines results from multiple views, effectively resolving ambiguities and enhancing detection reliability. To support this system, we developed a unique dataset comprising annotated images across diverse scenarios, including varied lighting conditions, occlusions, and angles, to enhance applicability in real-world manufacturing environments. Experimental results show that our approach significantly outperforms single-view methods, achieving high precision and recall rates in the identification of improperly fastened small assembly parts such as screws. This work contributes to industrial automation by overcoming single-view limitations, and providing a scalable, cost-effective, and accurate quality control mechanism that ensures the reliability and safety of the assembly line. The dataset used in this study is publicly available to facilitate further research in this domain.

This paper presents a comprehensive refurbishment of the interactive robotic art installation Standards and Double Standards by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The installation features an array of belts suspended from the ceiling, each actuated by stepper motors and dynamically oriented by a vision-based tracking system that follows the movements of exhibition visitors. The original system was limited by oscillatory dynamics, resulting in torsional and pendulum-like vibrations that constrained rotational speed and reduced interactive responsiveness. To address these challenges, the refurbishment involved significant upgrades to both hardware and motion control algorithms. A detailed mathematical model of the flying belt system was developed to accurately capture its dynamic behavior, providing a foundation for advanced control design. An input shaping method, formulated as a convex optimization problem, was implemented to effectively suppress vibrations, enabling smoother and faster belt movements. Experimental results demonstrate substantial improvements in system performance and audience interaction. This work exemplifies the integration of robotics, control engineering, and interactive art, offering new solutions to technical challenges in real-time motion control and vibration damping for large-scale kinetic installations.

To maximize palm oil yield and quality, it is essential to harvest palm fruit at the optimal maturity stage. This project aims to develop an automated computer vision system capable of accurately classifying palm fruit images into five ripeness levels. We employ deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to classify palm fruit images based on their maturity stage. A shallow CNN serves as the baseline model, while transfer learning and fine-tuning are applied to pre-trained ResNet50 and InceptionV3 architectures. The study utilizes a publicly available dataset of over 8,000 images with significant variations, which is split into 80\% for training and 20\% for testing. The proposed deep CNN models achieve test accuracies exceeding 85\% in classifying palm fruit maturity stages. This research highlights the potential of deep learning for automating palm fruit ripeness assessment, which can contribute to optimizing harvesting decisions and improving palm oil production efficiency.

Robots need robust and flexible vision systems to perceive and reason about their environments beyond geometry. Most of such systems build upon deep learning approaches. As autonomous robots are commonly deployed in initially unknown environments, pre-training on static datasets cannot always capture the variety of domains and limits the robot's vision performance during missions. Recently, self-supervised as well as fully supervised active learning methods emerged to improve robotic vision. These approaches rely on large in-domain pre-training datasets or require substantial human labelling effort. To address these issues, we present a recent adaptive planning framework for efficient training data collection to substantially reduce human labelling requirements in semantic terrain monitoring missions. To this end, we combine high-quality human labels with automatically generated pseudo labels. Experimental results show that the framework reaches segmentation performance close to fully supervised approaches with drastically reduced human labelling effort while outperforming purely self-supervised approaches. We discuss the advantages and limitations of current methods and outline valuable future research avenues towards more robust and flexible robotic vision systems in unknown environments.

This work introduces a novel bio-inspired reconfigurable stereo vision system for robotics, leveraging omnidirectional cameras and a novel algorithm to achieve flexible visual capabilities. Inspired by the adaptive vision of various species, our visual system addresses traditional stereo vision limitations, i.e., immutable camera alignment with narrow fields of view, by introducing a reconfigurable stereo vision system to robotics. Our key innovations include the reconfigurable stereo vision strategy that allows dynamic camera alignment, a robust depth measurement system utilizing a nonrectified geometrical method combined with a deep neural network for feature matching, and a geometrical compensation technique to enhance visual accuracy. Implemented on a metamorphic robot, this vision system demonstrates its great adaptability to various scenarios by switching its configurations of 316{\deg} monocular with 79{\deg} binocular field for fast target seeking and 242{\deg} monocular with 150{\deg} binocular field for detailed close inspection.