Distributed System for Domestic Robot Operation Using Computer Vision
Marcel-Titus Marginean
D.Sc. in IT, DISSERTATION Defense on 4/26/2016 at 12:00pm in YR459
Abstract:
This dissertation research aims to study, propose, and start to develop an integrated home automation (domotic) system in the form of an Intelligent House infrastructure. We envision the model of the fully integrated Smart House of the future as being a self-sufficient intelligent system able to take care of the inhabitants, with the robots becoming just the autonomous mobile components of the assisted living environment. So far Computer Vision (CV) seems to be the most promising technology to allow robot navigation in domestic environments, therefore a large part of the works is focusing on the aspects of using CV for domestic robot operations and addressing challenges that come with it.
The work began by proposing a distributed processing architecture for controlling a robot operating in a domestic environment and navigating it using computer vision. The system is composed of a set of fixed cameras mounted on the walls near the ceiling overlooking the various rooms, a set of networked computers located in the house, home automation devices communicating with domotic computers and one or more mobile units (robots) having on board their own camera and processing equipment. We are taking advantage of the already existing Wi-Fi and wired networks in any modern house to provide the communication between equipment and this allows us to keep the cost of the system within an affordable range.
The first task we handled on the Computer Vision side of work was to implement an object tracking algorithm by fusing together multiple well knows CV operations into a multi-paradigm tracker. The MP-Tracker algorithm developed runs inside a Camera Module receiving images from a fixed camera, detecting moving objects, and sending information about them to other components in the system.
To tie all the modules together, we developed a new communication protocol sDOMO designed from the beginning as a protocol for domestic home automation and robotic systems. A major area of concern for using robots and generally any automation device in domestic environments is the security and privacy of the inhabitants. To address this concern we designed sDOMO to implement a self-sufficient home-centered automation network where the devices are able to perform their duties over the house network and any access to the outside world would be strictly controlled. The protocol has multiple layers of security and privacy protection and is being offered as an open source project for general purpose home automation and building of robotic systems.
