O uso de modelos de manobras representa um auxilio importante no projeto de veículos marinhos, permitindo a verificação do desempenho destes veículos, desenvolver o sistema de piloto automático, dentre outras aplicações durante a fase de projeto. Na área de veículos submarinos, seus modelos são tradicionalmente baseados em equações de movimento que incluem expressões polinomiais para representar os esforços hidrodinâmicos. Estes modelos são derivados de uma expansão em série de Taylor de forças e momentos, sendo representados em função das variáveis de movimento. Entretanto, estes modelos limitam a representatividade dos esforços hidrodinâmicos, e, especialmente para os termos de segunda ou mais altas ordens, eles requerem ensaios custosos em tanque de provas para identificar corretamente cada um dos coeficientes polinomiais. Esta dependência em ensaios de tanque de provas tem um impacto critico, ou até mesmo não realístico, durante o desenvolvimento de veículos autônomos submarinos, AUVs, de baixo ou médio custo. Utilizando métodos atuais da fluidodinâmica computacional (CFD), este trabalho propõe um roteiro alternativo para definir os modelos de manobras não lineares para uma classe de AUVs. As simulações de CFD, verificados e validados por normas rigorosas, são utilizados como base para derivar as funções não lineares que representam os esforços hidrodinâmicos, devido variações na velocidade lateral, velocidade angular e deflexão dos lemes. A abordagem numérica é complementada pelo uso de modelos analíticos e semi-empíricos oriundos da indústria de mísseis, que tiveram que ser melhorados com informações retiradas das simulações de CFD. Ajustes adicionais e derivações nos intervalos de confiança para as estimativas produzidas por métodos numéricos também são fornecidos pelo uso de modelos analíticos e semi-empíricos. Adotando o AUV Pirajuba como caso de estudo, a validação dos modelos de manobra foi realizada em duas etapas. Primeiro, são comparadas as estimativas dos esforços hidrodinâmicos com as medições em tanque de provas de um modelo cativo, e em seguida a resposta dinâmica dos modelos de manobras são comparadas com aquelas obtidas por ensaios em mar, sempre utilizando critérios de verificação e validação. Este tipo de análise indicou uma validação dos esforços hidrodinâmicos e do movimento para grande parte dos ensaios, sendo que nos demais casos o AUV teve seu comportamento dinâmico bem reproduzido. Este resultado demonstra que a metodologia proposta pode ser utilizada para estimar o modelo de manobra de um AUV típico, gerando uma solução de menor custo para a fase de desenvolvimento destes veículos. / The use of maneuvering models represents an important assistance in the project of marine vessels, allowing for the evaluation of the vehicle performance, the autopilot system development, among other tasks during the design phase. In the field of underwater vehicles, those models commonly are based on equations of motion that include polynomial expressions for representing the hydrodynamic efforts. They are derived from Taylor series expansion of forces and moments represented as functions of the motion variables. However, those models limit the representativeness of the hydrodynamic efforts, and, especially for the second order or higher terms, they require expensive trials in towing tank facilities to correctly identify each polynomic coefficient. This dependence on intensive tank tests has a critical impact, or is even unrealistic during the development of middle or low cost autonomous underwater vehicles, AUVs. Using current methods of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), this work proposes an alternative roadmap to construct nonlinear manoeuvring models, which can be applied to a class of AUVs. CFD simulations, verified and validated by rigorous standards, are used as basis to derive nonlinear functions that represent the hydrodynamic efforts due to variations in lateral velocity, angular rate and rudder deflection. The numerical approach is complemented by the use of analytical and semi-empirical models derived from missile industry, which have been improved according to the information taken from the CFD simulations. Further adjustments and derivation of confidence intervals to the estimates produced by the numerical method are also provided by the use of analytical and semi-empirical models. Adopting the Pirajuba AUV as a test bed, the manoeuvring model validation was carried out in two stages. Firstly, estimates of hydrodynamic efforts are compared with measurements obtained from experiments using a captive model in a towing tank. In the second step, the dynamic response predicted by the maneuvering model was compared with the output measured during free model trials. This type of analysis validated the hydrodynamic efforts and motion in most of the experiments, whereas for the remaining cases the AUV had its dynamic behavior well reproduced. This result demonstrates that the proposed methodology can be used to estimate the maneuvering model of a typical type AUV, generating a lower cost solution for the development phase of the vehicle.

The use of teams of coordinated mobile robots in industrial settings such as underground mining, toxic waste cleanup and material storage and handling, is a viable and reliable approach to solving such problems that require or involve automation. In this thesis, abilities a team of mobile robots should demonstrate in order to successfully perform a mission in industrial settings are identified as a set of functional components. These components are related to navigation and obstacle avoidance, localization, task achieving behaviors and mission planning. The thesis focuses on designing and developing functional components applicable to diverse missions involving teams of mobile robots; in detail, the following are presented: 1. A navigation and obstacle avoidance technique to safely navigate the robot in an unknown environment. The technique relies on information retrieved by the robot's vision system and sonar sensors to identify and avoid surrounding obstacles. 2. A localization method based on Kalman filtering and Fuzzy logic to estimate the robot's position. The method uses information derived by multiple robot sensors such as vision system, odometer, laser range finder, GPS and IMU. 3. A target tracking and collision avoidance technique based on information derived by a vision system and a laser range finder. The technique is applicable in scenarios where an intruder is identified in the patrolling area. 4. A limited lookahead control methodology responsible for mission planning. The methodology is based on supervisory control theory and it is responsible for task allocation between the robots of the team. The control methodology considers situations where a robot may fail during operation. The performance of each functional component has been verified through extensive experimentation in indoor and outdoor environments. As a case study, a warehouse patrolling application is considered to demonstrate the effectiveness of the mission planning component.

<p>This Master’s thesis describes an evaluation of the stream-based knowledge pro-cessing middleware framework DyKnow in multi-UAV traffic monitoring applica-tions performed at Saab Aerosystems. The purpose of DyKnow is “to providegeneric and well-structured software support for the processes involved in gen-erating state, object, and event abstractions about the environments of complexsystems." It does this by providing the concepts of streams, sources, computa-tional units (CUs), entity frames and chronicles.</p><p>This evaluation is divided into three parts: A general quality evaluation ofDyKnow using the ISO 9126-1 quality model, a discussion of a series of questionsregarding the specific use and functionality of DyKnow and last, a performanceevaluation. To perform parts of this evaluation, a test application implementinga traffic monitoring scenario was developed using DyKnow and the Java AgentDEvelopment Framework (JADE).</p><p>The quality evaluation shows that while DyKnow suffers on the usability side,the suitability, accuracy and interoperability were all given high marks.</p><p>The results of the performance evaluation high-lights the factors that affect thememory and CPU requirements of DyKnow. It is shown that the most significantfactor in the demand placed on the CPU is the number of CUs and streams. Italso shows that DyKnow may suffer dataloss and severe slowdown if the CPU istoo heavily utilized. However, a reasonably sized DyKnow application, such as thescenario implemented in this report, should run without problems on systems atleast half as fast as the one used in the tests.</p>

ITC/USA 2012 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Eighth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2012 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The system described in this paper can monitor utility usage in commercial and residential structures, and send an alert message over conventional cell phone networks when it detects an anomalous condition. Such a condition could indicate a utility outage, structure failure, HVAC system failure, water leak, etc. The microcontroller-based system can measure electrical current, carbon monoxide, methane, liquid propane, temperature, barometric pressure, and altitude using a wired and wireless sensor network. The microcontroller displays the measurements on local and external graphical user interface, and sends SMS alert messages when necessary. The system may be retrofitted into existing structures.

This thesis explores three topics in the field of cost estimation for Unmanned Autonomous Systems. First, we propose a common definition of an Unmanned Autonomous System. We accomplish this through exhausting the literature in the areas cost estimation, autonomy in its current form, and how such advanced systems might be integrated into their environment. Second, we introduce a method to estimate the cost of Unmanned Autonomous Systems utilizing existing parametric cost estimation tools: SEER–HDR, COCOMO II, COSYSMO, and two cost estimating relationships–weight and performance. This discussion is guided by focusing on how current tools attempt to account for emergent systems. We also attempt to address challenges surrounding autonomy. To address these challenges from a cost perspective, this thesis recommends modifications to parameters within COCOMO II–via the use of object-oriented function points in lieu of current methods, and COSYSMO–via the introduction of two cost drivers namely, TVED and HRI-T. Third, we conduct analysis on four current Army Unmanned Autonomous Systems in an attempt to establish early trends within existing estimates. Finally, we explore areas of further research and discuss the implications of how pursing a more adequate cost model will lead to a better understanding of this ill-defined paradigm. *This material is based upon work supported by the Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program under Grant No. N00244-15-1-0008. The views expressed in written materials or publications, and/or made by speakers, moderators, and presenters, do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Naval Postgraduate School nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Organizations owning HPC infrastructures are facing difficulties in managing their resources. These difficulties come from the need to provide concurrent resource access to different application types while considering that users might have different performance objectives for their applications. Cloud computing brings more flexibility and better resource control, promising to improve the user's satisfaction in terms of perceived Quality of Service. Nevertheless, current cloud solutions provide limited support for users to express or use various resource management policies and they don't provide any support for application performance objectives.In this thesis, we present an approach that addresses this challenge in an unique way. Our approach provides a fully decentralized resource control by allocating resources through a proportional-share market, while applications run in autonomous virtual environments capable of scaling the application demand according to user performance objectives.The combination of currency distribution and dynamic resource pricing ensures fair resource utilization.We evaluated our approach in simulation and on the Grid'5000 testbed. Our results show that our approach can enable the co-habitation of different resource usage policies on the infrastructure, improving resource utilisation.

This thesis considers the cooperation and coordination of multi vehicle systems cohesively in order to keep the formation geometry and provide the string stability. We first present the modeling of aerial and road vehicles representing different motion characteristics suitable for cooperative operations. Then, a set of three dimensional cohesive motion coordination and formation control schemes for teams of autonomous vehicles is proposed. The two main components of these schemes are i) platform free high level online trajectory generation algorithms and ii) individual trajectory tracking controllers. High level algorithms generate the desired trajectories for three dimensional leader-follower structured tight formations, and then distributed controllers provide the individual control of each agent for tracking the desired trajectories. The generic goal of the control scheme is to move the agents while maintaining the formation geometry. We propose a distributed control scheme to solve this problem utilizing the notions of graph rigidity and persistence as well as techniques of virtual target tracking and smooth switching. The distributed control scheme is developed by modeling the agent kinematics as a single-velocity integrator; nevertheless, extension to the cases with simplified kinematic and dynamic models of fixed-wing autonomous aerial vehicles and quadrotors is discussed. The cohesive cooperation in three dimensions is so beneficial for surveillance and reconnaissance activities with optimal geometries, operation security in military activities, more viable with autonomous flying, and future aeronautics aspects, such as fractionated spacecraft and tethered formation flying. We then focus on motion control task modeling for three dimensional agent kinematics and considering parametric uncertainties originated from inertial measurement noise. We design an adaptive controller to perform the three dimensional motion control task, paying attention to the parametric uncertainties, and employing a recently developed immersion and invariance based scheme. Next, the cooperative driving of road vehicles in a platoon and string stability concepts in one-dimensional traffic are discussed. Collaborative driving of commercial vehicles has significant advantages while platooning on highways, including increased road-capacity and reduced traffic congestion in daily traffic. Several companies in the automotive sector have started implementing driver assistance systems and adaptive cruise control (ACC) support, which enables implementation of high level cooperative algorithms with additional softwares and simple electronic modifications. In this context, the cooperative adaptive cruise control approach are discussed for specific urban and highway platooning missions. In addition, we provide details of vehicle parameters, mathematical models of control structures, and experimental tests for the validation of our models. Moreover, the impact of vehicle to vehicle communication in the existence of static road-side units are given. Finally, we propose a set of stability guaranteed controllers for highway platooning missions. Formal problem definition of highway platooning considering constant and velocity dependent spacing strategies, and formal string stability analysis are included. Additionally, we provide the design of novel intervehicle distance based priority coefficient of feed-forward filter for robust platooning. In conclusion, the importance of increasing level of autonomy of single agents and platoon topology is discussed in performing cohesive coordination and collaborative driving missions and in mitigating sensory errors. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the performance of our cohesive motion and string stable controllers, in addition we discuss application in formation control of autonomous multi-agent systems.

The aim of this work is to find a method for removing haze from satellite imagery. This is done by taking two algorithms developed for images taken from the sur- face of the earth and adapting them for satellite images. The two algorithms are Single Image Haze Removal Using Dark Channel Prior by He et al. and Color Im- age Dehazing Using the Near-Infrared by Schaul et al. Both algorithms, altered to fit satellite images, plus the combination are applied on four sets of satellite images. The results are compared with each other and the unaltered images. The evaluation is both qualitative, i.e. looking at the images, and quantitative using three properties: colorfulness, contrast and saturated pixels. Both the qualitative and the quantitative evaluation determined that using only the altered version of Dark Channel Prior gives the result with the least amount of haze and whose colors look most like reality.

3D reconstruction is the process of constructing a three-dimensional model from images. It contains multiple steps where each step can induce errors. When doing 3D reconstruction of outdoor scenes, there are some types of scene content that regularly cause problems and affect the resulting 3D model. Two of these are water, due to its fluctuating nature, and sky because of it containing no useful (3D) data. These areas cause different problems throughout the process and do generally not benefit it in any way. Therefore, masking them early in the reconstruction chain could be a useful step in an outdoor scene reconstruction pipeline. Manual masking of images is a time-consuming and boring task and it gets very tedious for big data sets which are often used in large scale 3D reconstructions. This master thesis explores if this can be done automatically using Convolutional Neural Networks for semantic segmentation, and to what degree the masking would benefit a 3D reconstruction pipeline. / 3D-rekonstruktion är teknologin bakom att skapa 3D-modeller utifrån bilder. Det är en process med många steg där varje steg kan medföra fel. Vid 3D-rekonstruktion av stora utomhusmiljöer finns det vissa typer av bildinnehåll som ofta ställer till problem. Två av dessa är vatten och himmel. Vatten är problematiskt då det kan fluktuera mycket från bild till bild samt att det kan innehålla reflektioner som ger olika utseenden från olika vinklar. Himmel å andra sidan ska aldrig ge upphov till 3D-information varför den lika gärna kan maskas bort. Manuell maskning av bilder är väldigt tidskrävande och dyrt. Detta examensarbete undersöker huruvida denna maskning kan göras automatiskt med Faltningsnät för Semantisk Segmentering och hur detta skulle kunna förbättra en 3D-rekonstruktionsprocess.

Gaze tracking is the estimation of the point in space a person is “looking at”. This is widely used in both diagnostic and interactive applications, such as visual attention studies and human-computer interaction. The most common commercial solution used to track gaze today uses a combination of infrared illumination and one or more cameras. These commercial solutions are reliable and accurate, but often expensive. The aim of this thesis is to construct a simple single-camera gaze tracker from off-the-shelf components. The method used for gaze tracking is based on infrared illumination and a schematic model of the human eye. Based on images of reflections of specific light sources in the surfaces of the eye the user’s gaze point will be estimated. Evaluation is also performed on both the software and hardware components separately, and on the system as a whole. Accuracy is measured in spatial and angular deviation and the result is an average accuracy of approximately one degree on synthetic data and 0.24 to 1.5 degrees on real images at a range of 600 mm.