This thesis examines an automated method to detect surface deformations on automotive panels for the purpose of quality control along a manufacturing assembly line. Automation in the automotive manufacturing industry is becoming more prominent, but quality control is still largely performed by human workers. Quality control is important in the context of automotive body panels as deformations can occur along the assembly line such as inadequate handling of parts or tools around a vehicle during assembly, rack storage, and shipping from subcontractors. These defects are currently identified and marked, before panels are either rectified or discarded. This work attempts to develop an automated system to detect deformations to alleviate the dependence on human workers in quality control and improve performance by increasing speed and accuracy. Some techniques make use of an ideal CAD model behaving as a master work, and panels scanned on the assembly line are compared to this model to determine the location of deformations. This thesis presents a solution for detecting deformations of various scales without a master work. It also focuses on automated analysis requiring minimal intuitive operator-set parameters and provides the ability to classify the deformations as dings, which are deformations that protrude from the surface, or dents, which are depressions into the surface. A complete automated deformation detection system is proposed, comprised of a feature extraction module, segmentation module, and classification module, which outputs the locations of deformations when provided with the 3D mesh of an automotive panel. Two feature extraction techniques are proposed. The first is a general feature extraction technique for 3D meshes using octrees for multi-resolution analysis and evaluates the amount of surface variation to locate deformations. The second is specifically designed for the purpose of deformation detection, and analyzes multi-resolution cross-sections of a 3D mesh to locate deformations based on their estimated size. The performance of the proposed automated deformation detection system, and all of its sub-modules, is tested on a set of meshes which represent differing characteristics of deformations in surface panels, including deformations of different scales. Noisy, low resolution meshes are captured from a 3D acquisition, while artificial meshes are generated to simulate ideal acquisition conditions. The proposed system shows accurate results in both ideal situations as well as non-ideal situations under the condition of noise and complex surface curvature by extracting only the deformations of interest and accurately classifying them as dings or dents.

Les progrès des dispositifs d'imagerie médicale permettent l'obtention d'images volumiques, qui contiennent une grande quantité d'information. Une approche efficace de traitement de ces images consiste à utiliser la connaissance a priori de la forme des objets à analyser, et à employer des méthodes intrinsèquement tridimensionnelles. Les modèles déformables répondent à ces deux critères. Nous proposons de formaliser les modèles déformables et leur évolution dans une image dite de données, en distinguant cinq composantes : caractéristiques de liaison, représentation géométrique, déformation, déformabilité, et contrôle. Nous décrivons trois modèles déformables. Nous employons le modèle surfacique des delta-snakes pour reconstruire des objets à partir de points répartis sur leur surface. Nous approximons cette surface par une carte de distance octree-spline. Nous avons mis au point des outils interactifs pour compléter des données manquantes ou déformer directement la surface. Nous proposons ensuite pour ce même type d'application un modèle implicite à base de primitives générant un champ potentiel local. Les primitives sont placées interactivement, ou automatiquement sélectionnées dans l'axe médian discret des données. L'optimisation des paramètres des primitives mène à une représentation compacte des objets. Nous reconstruisons par ces deux modèles des objets numérisés par des capteurs de distance ou segmentés dans des images volumiques. Notre dernier modèle est volumique. Sa déformation hiérarchique par un octree-spline minimise la distance généralisée entre ses caractéristiques et celles des données, sous le contrôle de l'algorithme de Levenberg-Marquardt, et dans les limites imposées par une fonction de régularisation. Nous avons établi un algorithme de calcul de distance généralisée itérée dans un arbre k-d. Nous appliquons ce modèle à la segmentation d'images volumiques. D'autres types d'applications ont également été réalisées.

This thesis examines an automated method to detect surface deformations on automotive panels for the purpose of quality control along a manufacturing assembly line. Automation in the automotive manufacturing industry is becoming more prominent, but quality control is still largely performed by human workers. Quality control is important in the context of automotive body panels as deformations can occur along the assembly line such as inadequate handling of parts or tools around a vehicle during assembly, rack storage, and shipping from subcontractors. These defects are currently identified and marked, before panels are either rectified or discarded. This work attempts to develop an automated system to detect deformations to alleviate the dependence on human workers in quality control and improve performance by increasing speed and accuracy. Some techniques make use of an ideal CAD model behaving as a master work, and panels scanned on the assembly line are compared to this model to determine the location of deformations. This thesis presents a solution for detecting deformations of various scales without a master work. It also focuses on automated analysis requiring minimal intuitive operator-set parameters and provides the ability to classify the deformations as dings, which are deformations that protrude from the surface, or dents, which are depressions into the surface. A complete automated deformation detection system is proposed, comprised of a feature extraction module, segmentation module, and classification module, which outputs the locations of deformations when provided with the 3D mesh of an automotive panel. Two feature extraction techniques are proposed. The first is a general feature extraction technique for 3D meshes using octrees for multi-resolution analysis and evaluates the amount of surface variation to locate deformations. The second is specifically designed for the purpose of deformation detection, and analyzes multi-resolution cross-sections of a 3D mesh to locate deformations based on their estimated size. The performance of the proposed automated deformation detection system, and all of its sub-modules, is tested on a set of meshes which represent differing characteristics of deformations in surface panels, including deformations of different scales. Noisy, low resolution meshes are captured from a 3D acquisition, while artificial meshes are generated to simulate ideal acquisition conditions. The proposed system shows accurate results in both ideal situations as well as non-ideal situations under the condition of noise and complex surface curvature by extracting only the deformations of interest and accurately classifying them as dings or dents.

This thesis examines an automated method to detect surface deformations on automotive panels for the purpose of quality control along a manufacturing assembly line. Automation in the automotive manufacturing industry is becoming more prominent, but quality control is still largely performed by human workers. Quality control is important in the context of automotive body panels as deformations can occur along the assembly line such as inadequate handling of parts or tools around a vehicle during assembly, rack storage, and shipping from subcontractors. These defects are currently identified and marked, before panels are either rectified or discarded. This work attempts to develop an automated system to detect deformations to alleviate the dependence on human workers in quality control and improve performance by increasing speed and accuracy. Some techniques make use of an ideal CAD model behaving as a master work, and panels scanned on the assembly line are compared to this model to determine the location of deformations. This thesis presents a solution for detecting deformations of various scales without a master work. It also focuses on automated analysis requiring minimal intuitive operator-set parameters and provides the ability to classify the deformations as dings, which are deformations that protrude from the surface, or dents, which are depressions into the surface. A complete automated deformation detection system is proposed, comprised of a feature extraction module, segmentation module, and classification module, which outputs the locations of deformations when provided with the 3D mesh of an automotive panel. Two feature extraction techniques are proposed. The first is a general feature extraction technique for 3D meshes using octrees for multi-resolution analysis and evaluates the amount of surface variation to locate deformations. The second is specifically designed for the purpose of deformation detection, and analyzes multi-resolution cross-sections of a 3D mesh to locate deformations based on their estimated size. The performance of the proposed automated deformation detection system, and all of its sub-modules, is tested on a set of meshes which represent differing characteristics of deformations in surface panels, including deformations of different scales. Noisy, low resolution meshes are captured from a 3D acquisition, while artificial meshes are generated to simulate ideal acquisition conditions. The proposed system shows accurate results in both ideal situations as well as non-ideal situations under the condition of noise and complex surface curvature by extracting only the deformations of interest and accurately classifying them as dings or dents.

This thesis focuses on the analysis of the latest techniques for surface and solid binary voxelization of 3D models. It briefly describes current trends in this problematics and identifies a suitable method with an aim to parallelize the given solution on GPUs. It concretely explains the implementation process of the selected algorithm described in the paper Fast Parallel Surface and Solid Voxelization on GPUs , which produces a sparse voxel octree. The results are very close to those of the original authors. A new solution for extracting a smooth isosurface from this structure based on Marching Cubes is presented as well, providing up to 98 % reduction of the traversed cubes in higher resolutions. The resulting implementation is a framework usable for further voxel scene processing.

This thesis presents a use of 3D laser range finder designed for purposes of autnonomous mobile systems. The 3D scanner is built as extension of 2D laser range finder with rotation module. In the first section is described laser range finder SICK LMS 291 and his pitching construction along with used software tools. Second part deals with design and implementation of algorithms for data reading and their processing with methods of surface reconstruction, octree and object segmentation with Hough transform.

As the fidelity of computer generated imagery has increased, the need to digitally create convincing natural phenomena like fluids has become fundamental to the entertainment production industry. Because fluids are complex, the underlying physics must be computationally simulated. However, because a strictly physics-based approach is both computationally expensive and difficult to control, it does not lend itself well to the way artists and directors like to work. Directors require control to achieve their specific artistic vision. Furthermore, artistic workflows rely on quick iteration and the ability to apply changes late in the production process. In this dissertation we present novel techniques in adaptive simulation and fluid post-processing to improve artistic workflows for fluid simulation. Our methods reduce fluid simulation iteration time and provide a new way for artists to intelligently resize a wide range of volumetric data including fluid simulations. To reduce iteration time, we present a more cache-friendly linear octree structure for adaptive fluid simulation that reduces the overhead of previous octree-based methods. To increase the viability of reusable effects libraries, and to give artists intuitive control over simulations late in the production process we present a ``fluid carving" technique. Fluid carving uses seam carving methods to allow intelligent resizing on a variety of fluid phenomena without the need for costly re-simulation. We present methods that improve upon traditional seam carving approaches to address issues with scalability, non-rectangular boundaries, and that generalize to a variety of different visual effects data like particles, polygonal meshes, liquids, smoke, and fire. We achieve these improvements by guiding seams along user-defined lattices that can enclose regions of interest defined as OpenVDB grids with a wide range of shapes. These techniques significantly improve artist workflows for fluid simulation and allow visual entertainment to be produced in a more intuitive, cost-effective manner.

Many autonomous robots operating in unknown and unstructured environments rely on building a dense 3D map of it during exploration. What tasks the robot can perform depends on the information stored in this map. Most 3D maps currently in use store information required for robot control and environment reconstruction – is this point in space occupied, or safe to navigate to? To enable more complex tasks additional information is required. We introduce Semantic UFOMap, an open-source octree based mapping framework designed for online use on limited hardware. Capable of real-time fusion and querying of semantic instances into the map – enabling high-level robot tasks and human-robot interaction. The online capabilities are evaluated using ground-truth data, where we show competitive results compared to voxel hashing, with optimizations still available. Additionally, we demonstrate a potential application with a simulated autonomous exploration and object navigation experiment. The evaluation shows that Semantic UFOMap is capable of real-time online performance. Storing semantic information in the map has the potential to open up new autonomous robot applications and yield improvements in existing tasks. / Autonoma robotar som opererar i okända och ostrukturerade mijöer är ofta beroende av att skapa en 3D-karta under utforskning av området. Villka uppgifter roboten kan utföra beror på informationen som finns tillgänglig i kartan. De flesta nuvarande kartor som används sparar information som behövs för säker navigation och miljörekonstruktion – är den här positionen ett hinder, eller är den säker att navigera till? För att möjligjöra mer komplexa uppgifter behöver roboten ha tillgång till ytterligare information. Vi presenterar Semantic UFOMap, ett öppen källkods kartläggnings ramverk för realtids användning på begränsad hårdvara. Genom att klara av realtids integrering och sökning av semantiska instanser i kartan möjliggör ramverket mer komplexa uppgifter och öppnar upp fler användningsområden i människa-robot interaktion. Utvärdering görs med hjälp av inspelad data, vi visar konkurrenskraftiga resultat jämfört med voxel hashning, med optimering fortfarande tillgänglig. Ett användningsområde demonstreras med ett simulerat autonomt utforsknings och objektnavigerings experiment. Utvärderingen visar att Semantic UFOMap klarar av realtids applikationer. Att spara semantisk information i kartan har potential att öppna upp för nya användningsområden inom robotik och leda till förbättringar i befintliga uppgifter.

This thesis presents the initial components of an integrated guidance, navigation, and control system for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such that they may map complex environments that may be hostile. The first part of this thesis presents an autonomous guidance system. For goal selection, the map is partitioned around the presence of obstacles and whether that area has been explored. To perform this partitioning, the Octree algorithm is implemented. In this thesis, we test this algorithm to find a parameter set that optimizes this algorithm. Having selected goal points, we perform a comparison of the LPA* and A* path planning algorithms with a custom heuristic that enables reckless or tactical maneuvers as the UAV maps the environment. For trajectory planning, the fMPC algorithm is applied to the feedback-linearized equations of motion of a quadcopter. For collision avoidance, standalone versions of 4 different constraint generation algorithms are evaluated to compare their resulting computation times, accuracy, and computed volume on a voxel map that simulates a 2-story house along with fixed paths that vary in length at fixed intervals as basis of tests. The second part of this thesis presents the theory of Model Reference Adaptive Control(MRAC) along with augmentation for output signal tracking and switched-dynamic systems. We then detail the development of longitudinal and lateral controllers a Quad-Rotor Tailsitter(QRBP) style UAV. In order to successfully implement the proposed controller on the QRBP, significant effort was placed upon physical design and testing apparatus. / Master of Science / For an autonomously operated, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), to operate, it requires a guidance system to determine where and how to go, and a control system to effectively actuate the guidance system's commands. In this thesis, we detail the characterization and optimization of the algorithms comprising the guidance system. We then delve into the theory of MRAC and apply it toward a control system for a QRBP. We then detail additional tools developed to support the testing of the QRBP.

[pt] O estágio atual das comunicações móveis é caracterizado por um crescimento espetacular da demanda em todos os tipos de ambientes, tanto urbanos densos como suburbanos e rurais . Os planejadores destes sistemas necessitam ferramentas eficientes e economicamente viáveis para a caracterização e projeto deles. O grande objetivo de um bom planejamento é uma boa cobertura, e um dos parâmetros de qualidade é a perda média de propagação. A principal técnica determinística utilizada para o cálculo da perda média de propagação em micro-células em áreas fortemente edificadas é o traçado de raios, a través de um de dois métodos alternativos: o método das imagens e o método de lançamento de raios. Este trabalho apresenta uma formulação detalhada do método de lançamento de raios e dos métodos assintóticos que foram usados afim de calcular os campos eletromagnéticos (direto, refletido e difratado) que permitem calcular a Perda Média de Propagação. Além do mais apresenta-se o método de discriminação espacial usado para acelerar o processo de cálculo. A metodologia proposta foi implementada em programa de computador e são apresentados alguns estudos de caso para ambientes específicos. / [en] The current period of the mobile communications is characterized by a spectacular growth of the demand in all the types of environments, not only in density urbanized cities as suburban and rural. The planners of these systems need efficient and economically viable tools for the design of these systems. The main goal of good planning is a good coverage, and one of the most adopted quality indicators is the path loss of propagation. The mostly used deterministic technique for calculation it in strongly built micro-cells is the tracing of rays, whether the method of the images or the method of launching of rays. This work presents a detailed formularization of the method of launching of rays and of the asymptotic methods which have been used in order to calculate the electromagnetic fields (direct, reflected and diffracted) which allow to calculate the Path Loss of Propagation. Besides it this shown the used method of space discrimination, which was employed to speed up the calculation. The methodology proposal was implemented in computer program and is presented some studies of case for specific environments.