Steve Petkovsek - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Steve Petkovsek
Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXIX: Algorithms and Techniques, 2012
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013
This paper presents the rationale for focusing educational robotics projects on the development o... more This paper presents the rationale for focusing educational robotics projects on the development of humanoid assistive robots. We discuss our first experience of such projects and their presentation at the international assistive robotics competition RoboWaiter 2012.The RoboWaiter challenge is to create a robot that autonomously, accurately, and efficiently performs an assistive food fetch task in a model kitchen.Since its inception in 2009, only wheeled robots have participated in the competition, while our effort is to introduce a humanoid category.In the paper we describethe design considerations of our humanoid robots, named "Technion Ed" and "Trinity College Maximus", and their performance at the competition.The educational implementation of the Technion project was in the framework of a school outreach robotics course, the Trinity project was carried out by an independent study team.
Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVIII: Algorithms and Techniques, 2011
This paper presents improvements made to Q, an autonomous ground vehicle designed to participate ... more This paper presents improvements made to Q, an autonomous ground vehicle designed to participate in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC). For the 2010 IGVC, Q was upgraded with a new parallelized software architecture and a new vision processor. Improvements were made to the power system reducing the number of batteries required for operation from six to one. In previous years, a single state machine was used to execute the bulk of processing activities including sensor interfacing, data processing, path planning, navigation algorithms and motor control. This inefficient approach led to poor software performance and made it difficult to maintain or modify. For IGVC 2010, the team implemented a modular parallel architecture using the National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW programming language. The new architecture divides all the necessary tasks - motor control, navigation, sensor data collection, etc. into well-organized components that execute in parallel, providing considerable flexibility and facilitating efficient use of processing power. Computer vision is used to detect white lines on the ground and determine their location relative to the robot. With the new vision processor and some optimization of the image processing algorithm used last year, two frames can be acquired and processed in 70ms. With all these improvements, Q placed 2nd in the autonomous challenge.
The goal of the Gaze Controlled Human Computer Interface project is to design and construct a non... more The goal of the Gaze Controlled Human Computer Interface project is to design and construct a non-invasive gaze-tracking system that will determine where a user is looking on a computer screen in real time. To accomplish this, a fixed illumination source consisting of Infrared (IR) Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) is used to produce corneal reflections on the user’s eyes. These reflections are captured with a video camera and compared to the relative location of the user’s pupils. From this comparison, a correlation matrix can be created and the approximate location of the screen that the user is looking at can be determined. The final objective is to allow the user to manipulate a cursor on the computer screen simply by looking at different boxes in a grid on the monitor. The project includes design of the hardware setup to provide a suitable environment for glint detection, image processing of the user’s eyes to determine pupil location, the implementation of a probabilistic algorithm...
2012 IEEE 11th International Conference on Signal Processing, 2012
Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXIX: Algorithms and Techniques, 2012
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013
This paper presents the rationale for focusing educational robotics projects on the development o... more This paper presents the rationale for focusing educational robotics projects on the development of humanoid assistive robots. We discuss our first experience of such projects and their presentation at the international assistive robotics competition RoboWaiter 2012.The RoboWaiter challenge is to create a robot that autonomously, accurately, and efficiently performs an assistive food fetch task in a model kitchen.Since its inception in 2009, only wheeled robots have participated in the competition, while our effort is to introduce a humanoid category.In the paper we describethe design considerations of our humanoid robots, named "Technion Ed" and "Trinity College Maximus", and their performance at the competition.The educational implementation of the Technion project was in the framework of a school outreach robotics course, the Trinity project was carried out by an independent study team.
Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVIII: Algorithms and Techniques, 2011
This paper presents improvements made to Q, an autonomous ground vehicle designed to participate ... more This paper presents improvements made to Q, an autonomous ground vehicle designed to participate in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC). For the 2010 IGVC, Q was upgraded with a new parallelized software architecture and a new vision processor. Improvements were made to the power system reducing the number of batteries required for operation from six to one. In previous years, a single state machine was used to execute the bulk of processing activities including sensor interfacing, data processing, path planning, navigation algorithms and motor control. This inefficient approach led to poor software performance and made it difficult to maintain or modify. For IGVC 2010, the team implemented a modular parallel architecture using the National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW programming language. The new architecture divides all the necessary tasks - motor control, navigation, sensor data collection, etc. into well-organized components that execute in parallel, providing considerable flexibility and facilitating efficient use of processing power. Computer vision is used to detect white lines on the ground and determine their location relative to the robot. With the new vision processor and some optimization of the image processing algorithm used last year, two frames can be acquired and processed in 70ms. With all these improvements, Q placed 2nd in the autonomous challenge.
The goal of the Gaze Controlled Human Computer Interface project is to design and construct a non... more The goal of the Gaze Controlled Human Computer Interface project is to design and construct a non-invasive gaze-tracking system that will determine where a user is looking on a computer screen in real time. To accomplish this, a fixed illumination source consisting of Infrared (IR) Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) is used to produce corneal reflections on the user’s eyes. These reflections are captured with a video camera and compared to the relative location of the user’s pupils. From this comparison, a correlation matrix can be created and the approximate location of the screen that the user is looking at can be determined. The final objective is to allow the user to manipulate a cursor on the computer screen simply by looking at different boxes in a grid on the monitor. The project includes design of the hardware setup to provide a suitable environment for glint detection, image processing of the user’s eyes to determine pupil location, the implementation of a probabilistic algorithm...
2012 IEEE 11th International Conference on Signal Processing, 2012