Visual Control System Research Articles

Adaptive Visual Concept for Controlling Cyber-Physical Production Modules based on Cognitive Associations

Flexibilization of production systems and processes increases the functional complexity of the control systems for means of production in the factory. However, perceived complexity should be reduced. Highly perceived complexity requires specific training for workers and increases the number of potential errors and accidents. This paper compares three visual control system approaches to reduce the negative impacts of this complexity: classic, cognitive intuitive and cognitive reflective associative. Furthermore, the feasibility of implementing associative concepts to adapt control systems to the user’s cognitive background has been analyzed and the technical requirements for its implementation are described.

Magneto-inductive systems as a method to reduce the environmental risks of the existing systems of incoming quality control of metallurgical raw materials

The advantages of automated systems for magnetic inductive incoming quality control of raw materials of large metallurgical enterprises are demonstrated. Environmental risks under the existing visual control system were assessed.

Visual Control System Based on Nociception-Analgesia Index for Patients in a Vegetative State/Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome and Minimally Conscious State

Considering people who are in a coma, doctors have to rely on physical clues and information provided by monitoring systems. It is commonly used for patients in a vegetative state, as contact with them is difficult. Taking into account the typical workload of the doctor, they require several tools to monitor the coma depth, since it is hard to perform a clinical evaluation hourly. Therefore, visual perception and monitoring of physical state for coma personnel proved to be more convenient for prompt decision-making. In a number of cases, it would be possible to make a prognosis for their recovery and monitor effectiveness of treatment courses. Visual control system based on RGB led strips according to the ANI range of values was created. In conclusion, the connecting scheme of ANI monitor with the implementation of visual object was presented.

Visual control and data transmission system by Li-Fi technology for patients in a vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and minimally conscious state

Due to the development of high technologies, there is a need to use computer systems to support the increasingly complex types of human activities. It provides high accuracy and speed of various research and medical examinations. Taking into account the daily workload of doctors in the Intensive Care Unit, remote medical diagnostics systems are being implemented in many referral hospitals to predict the course of diseases. Decision-making is the result of processing certain information, the medical history patients based on the use of accumulated knowledge. Therefore, it can be concluded that automatic and visual control systems make the diagnosis process more accurate and easier. The aim of the work is to develop an optoelectronic system for visual monitoring and data transmission for patients in a coma by Li-Fi technology.

Image Guided Visual Tracking Control System for Unmanned Multirotor Aerial Vehicle with Uncertainty

This paper presents a wavelet-based image guided tracking control system for unmanned multirotor aerial vehicle system with the presence of uncertainty. The visual signals for the visual tracking process are developed by using wavelet coefficients. The design uses a multiresolution interaction matrix with half and details images to relate the time-variation of wavelet coefficients with the velocity of the aerial vehicle and controller. The proposed design is evaluated on a virtual quadrotor aerial vehicle system to demonstrate the effectiveness of the wavelet-based visual tracking system without using an image processing unit in the presence of uncertainty. In contrast to the classical visual tracking technique, the wavelet-based method does not require an image processing task.

Visual control system for grip of glasses oriented to assistance robotics

Assistance robotics is presented as a means of improving the quality of life of people with disabilities, an application case is presented in assisted feeding. This paper presents the development of a system based on artificial intelligence techniques, for the grip of a glass, so that it does not slip during its manipulation by means of a robotic arm, as the liquid level varies. A faster R-CNN is used for the detection of the glass and the arm's gripper, and from the data obtained by the network, the mass of the beverage is estimated, and a delta of distance between the gripper and the liquid. These estimated values are used as inputs for a fuzzy system which has as output the torque that the motor that drives the gripper must exert. It was possible to obtain a 97.3% accuracy in the detection of the elements of interest in the environment with the faster R-CNN, and a 76% performance in the grips of the glass through the fuzzy algorithm.

Badminton motion capture with visual image detection of picking robotics

In the process of strawberry easily broken fruit picking, in order to reduce the damage rate of the fruit, improves accuracy and efficiency of picking robot, field put forward a motion capture system based on international standard badminton edge feature detection and capture automation algorithm process of night picking robot badminton motion capture techniques training methods. The badminton motion capture system can analyze the game video in real time and obtain the accuracy rate of excellent badminton players and the technical characteristics of badminton motion capture through motion capture. The purpose of this article is to apply the high-precision motion capture vision control system to the design of the vision control system of the robot in the night picking process, so as to effectively improve the observation and recognition accuracy of the robot in the night picking process, so as to improve the degree of automation of the operation. This paper tests the reliability of the picking robot vision system. Taking the environment of picking at night as an example, image processing was performed on the edge features of the fruits picked by the picking robot. The results show that smooth and enhanced image processing can successfully extract edge features of fruit images. The accuracy of the target recognition rate and the positioning ability of the vision system of the picking robot were tested by the edge feature test. The results showed that the accuracy of the target recognition rate and the positioning ability of the motion edge of the vision system were far higher than 91%, satisfying the automation demand of the picking robot operation with high precision.

Bionic Visual Control for Probe-and-Drogue Autonomous Aerial Refueling

The probe-and-drogue autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) docking suffers the multiwind disturbances leading to the low accuracy of receiver position control and drogue relative position estimation. This article proposes a bionic visual navigation control system in a hardware-in-loop simulation environment and further develops an AAR outfield experiment platform for promoting the success of probe-and-drogue AAR docking. The drogue region and markers are detected by the biological method imitating the eagle-eye color vision mechanism. The different visual navigation methods based on the ellipse fitting, marker matching, and marker prediction are, respectively, applied to the three possible situations in AAR docking for precise pose estimation. Moreover, a relative position control scheme of the receiver, which is constructed by back-stepping design technique and gain-adaptive equivalent sliding mode control, is proposed to compensate multi-wind disturbances and model uncertainties. Fuzzy logic position strategy is designed to compensate swing of the drogue caused by the multiwind disturbances. The AAR outfield experiment platform contains two unmanned aerial vehicles to verify a part of the proposed navigation control method. Extensive experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the bionic visual navigation control system for the high accuracy of the visual navigation and antidisturbance position control.

Система визуального менеджмента в организации: принципы построения и практические инструменты реализации

The paper presents the results of the study of the visual control system in organizations. The enterprises of various sectors of the economy are selected as an object of the research. In modern economic realities, the efficiency of the organization's activities largely depends not only on the introduction of innovations in production, but also on the structural reform of the management model. Today the issues of growth of labor productivity are actively discussed at all levels of government. These issues are a priority task for the management of various companies, regardless of area of activity. It has been proved that the application of the principles and tools of lean manufacturing, many of which do not require high implementation costs, can be used for increasing the efficiency of the organization. The importance of study of visual management tools has been emphasized; the advantages of visual management tools (reduction of losses, reduction of the production cycle, ensuring the timely delivery of stocks to warehouses, etc.) have been listed. The rules for implementation of the visual management tools in the activities of any enterprise are discussed in detail. The visual management tools should reflect the requirements for safety, production or performance any standard operation; they should be simple and unambiguous in understanding and sufficiently illustrative and noticeable from afar. There has been taken an attempt to highlight a number of universal visual management tools using the scientific principles of building the system that can be applied in the work of many organizations, regardless of type of activity and form of ownership

Research on Visual Perception Technology of Autonomous Driving Based on Improved Convolutional Neural Network

With the continuous development of the world’s scientific and technological level and the continuous progress of society and economy, driverless cars have become the key research targets of the existing automotive industry. Based on the convolutional neural network theory, this paper redesigned the Faster R-CNN network framework to improve the target recognition accuracy and apply it to the unmanned visual perception system. At the same time, the improved algorithm is used to test the cars under different simulated travel conditions. The computer vision system toolbox of MATLAB was used to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm, and the driving scene designer was used to construct multi-sensor fusion and simulated road scenes, and the corresponding visual control system was designed to effectively realize the automatic code generation. The experimental results show that the average detection accuracy of the improved algorithm is higher, the algorithm is more feasible and robust, and it is helpful to promote the development of driverless cars.

Visual Feedback Control of a Rat Ankle Angle Using a Wirelessly Powered Two-Channel Neurostimulator.

Peripheral nerve disconnections cause severe muscle atrophy and consequently, paralysis of limbs. Reinnervation of denervated muscle by transplanting motor neurons and applying Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) onto peripheral nerves is an important procedure for preventing irreversible degeneration of muscle tissues. After the reinnervation of denervated muscles, multiple peripheral nerves should be stimulated independently to control joint motion and reconstruct functional movements of limbs by the FES. In this study, a wirelessly powered two-channel neurostimulator was developed with the purpose of applying selective FES to two peripheral nerves—the peroneal nerve and the tibial nerve in a rat. The neurostimulator was designed in such a way that power could be supplied wirelessly, from a transmitter coil to a receiver coil. The receiver coil was connected, in turn, to the peroneal and tibial nerves in the rat. The receiver circuit had a low pass filter to allow detection of the frequency of the transmitter signal. The stimulation of the nerves was switched according to the frequency of the transmitter signal. Dorsal/plantar flexion of the rat ankle joint was selectively induced by the developed neurostimulator. The rat ankle joint angle was controlled by changing the stimulation electrode and the stimulation current, based on the Proportional Integral (PI) control method using a visual feedback control system. This study was aimed at controlling the leg motion by stimulating the peripheral nerves using the neurostimulator.

Functional connectivity at rest captures individual differences in visual search.

Brain functional connectivity is supposed to capture personal and lifetime learning experiences and contribute to generating individual differences in cognitive abilities. We tested this possibility using the visual search task as a measure of visual information processing and the functioning of the visual attention control system. Forty-two undergraduate students completed a functional MRI study with a resting-state session and a visual search task scan. The visual attention and control systems were studied by investigating the functional connectivity of the primary visual area, the posterior parietal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex because these areas have been closely related to the visual search task. A pairwise resting-state functional connectivity analysis was conducted between these regions, followed by a correlation analysis with the behavioral measures from the visual search task. Results showed that higher connectivity values between the posterior parietal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were positively correlated with faster response speed. The posterior parietal cortex has been related to the formation of priority maps and the integration of sensory and executive information. Inhibitory control, performance monitoring during top-down cognitive tasks, and target detection have been associated with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. In light of these results, we suggest that a priori enhanced connectivity between these regions defines individual differences in visual information processing and the ability to adapt to cognitive demands.

Dynamic Visual Tracking for Robot Manipulator Using Adaptive Fading Kalman Filter

This paper focuses on the problem of visual tracking of a moving target with the temporary occlusion of image feature, a dynamic visual tracking control system for robot manipulator is developed by using adaptive fading Kalman filter (AFKF). The estimation of the residual covariance is used to compute the forgetting factor to automatically adjust the weight of the image observation data for improving the visual state estimation accuracy. When the target features are occluded, the prediction of missing observation sequence are generated by using the predicted compensation noise and preorder observation sequence to determine the forgetting factor for estimating the missing visual states. Then, a parameter adaptive law with projection error compensation is designed to realize the visual tracking with uncertain camera parameters. Finally, the trajectory tracking experiments based on a real robot platform is carried out to verify the performance of the proposed state estimator and tracking controller. The results show that the proposed method can accurately realize the visual tracking with the occluded trajectory and inaccurate camera parameters, which improves the flexibility of dynamic visual tracking of robot manipulator.

Design and Test of a Sorting Device Based on Machine Vision

At present, the sorting of agricultural products in China mainly relies on manual labour, which results in low efficiency, and the development of corresponding automatic equipment lags behind. The grasping method based on machine vision has been widely used in industry, and can provide a reference for the automatic sorting of agricultural products. In this paper, an automatic sorting device for agricultural products was designed. The grasping mechanism adopted a 4-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) manipulator, and the machine vision control system adopted a monocular camera, which can realize the positioning and classification of the grasp-target. First, the geometric model of the manipulator was established, and the kinematics model of the manipulator was established via the Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) parameter method. Next, the kinematics analysis and verification were carried out. Then, Zhang Zhengyou calibration method was used to calibrate the camera. An image processing method based on histogram correction was proposed. Based on this, a target positioning algorithm based on the pinhole imaging principle and a target classification algorithm based on the area threshold were established. Finally, an automatic sorting test platform for agricultural products using a visual servo was built. Target classification, positioning and sorting tests were conducted using tomatoes and oranges as the test objects. The test results show that the success rate of the target positioning is close to 98%, that of the target classification is close to 98% and that of the grasping is close to 95%. Furthermore, the sorting time of a single target object can be as fast as 1 second, which can meet the requirements of automatic sorting for common agricultural products. The automatic sorting device for agricultural products has a simple structure, reliable performance and low costs. The structure and algorithms proposed in this paper are simple, reliable, and highly efficient and thus can easily realize technology transplantation. These relevant methods provide a theoretical reference for the development of an automatic sorting device for agricultural products.

Intelligent Strawberry Assisted Picking Mechanism

The intelligent fruit assisted picking mechanical device, which is composed of a mechanical claw, a mechanical arm, a rotatable base, a visual control system and a motion control system. The vision processing system uses the camera to obtain the position information of the fruit and estimate the ripeness of the fruit according to the image characteristics. The collected information is transmitted to the STM32F103 controller, and then control the precise action of the actuator by an algorithm combining expert rules and PID, implement the use of sickle - type mechanical claw automatically pick ripe fruit. The picking device is reasonable in design, has high intelligence, and has important promotion value for picking different fruits.

Efficiency Analysis and Improvement of an Intelligent Transportation System for the Application in Greenhouse

In view of the future lack of human resources due to the aging of the population, the automatic, Intelligent Mechatronic Systems (IMSs) and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) have broad application prospects. However, complex application scenarios and limited open design resources make designing highly efficient ITS systems still a challenging task. In this paper, the optimal load factor solving solution is established. By converting the three user requirements including working distance, time and load into load-related factors, the optimal result can be obtained among system complexity, efficiency and system energy consumption. A specialized visual navigation and motion control system has been proposed to simplify the path planning, navigation and motion control processes and to be accurately calculated in advance, thereby further improving the efficiency of the ITS system. The validity of the efficiency calculation formula and navigation control method proposed in this paper is verified. Under optimal conditions, the actual working mileage is expected to be 99.7%, and the energy consumption is 83.5% of the expected value, which provides sufficient redundancy for the system. In addition, the individual ITS reaches the rated operating efficiency of 95.86%; in other words, one ITS has twice the ability of a single worker. This proves the accuracy and efficiency of the designed ITS system.

Foreword to the special issue of the World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST 2017)

Foreword to the special issue of the World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST 2017)

Study on the visual tracking control technology of six-crawler machine

In this paper, the autonomous navigation of six-crawler machine is studied, and a visual tracking control method based on machine vision for fuzzy proportional–integral–derivative control of six-crawler machine is proposed. The steering principle of the six-crawler machine and the matching relationship between the steering angle and the speed of each crawler are introduced, and the control system is described in detail. Besides, the mathematical model for the unsteady steering is introduced to analyze the influence of deflection angle on the steering trajectory of the six-crawler machine. The image processing algorithm is programmed by LabVIEW software. After the image is fitted by graying, binary, filtering, edge detection, and least square method, the navigation line-fitting curve is obtained. The fuzzy proportional–integral–derivative control algorithm is programmed in the control system to control the six-crawler machine to drive along the navigation line. In order to obtain reasonable control parameters, a virtual prototype model of a six-crawler machine is established. In the CoLink module, the control algorithm of a six-crawler machine is established, and the co-simulation is carried out. By analyzing the simulation results, the control parameters of the fuzzy proportional–integral–derivative controller of the six-crawler machine are established. In order to verify the control effect of the visual tracking control system of the six-crawler machine, a physical prototype of the six-crawler machine is constructed and tested. The results show that the visual tracking control system of the six-crawler machine can complete the preset functions.

Bionic visual close-range navigation control system for the docking stage of probe-and-drogue autonomous aerial refueling

Bionic visual close-range navigation control system and method for the docking stage of probe-and-drogue autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) are developed in this paper. The reasonable bionic visual close-range navigation system is devised to obtain the accurate pose information of drogue which is connected to a flexible hose in the presence of multi-wind disturbances. Correspondingly, the biological eagle-eye-based color detection method is constructed on the basis of the eagle-eye color vision mechanism to detect the drogue region and markers. The different visual navigation methods based on marker matching and ellipse fitting are respectively applied for the two situations: the markers detected normally, and the drogue far away to receiver or the markers blocked partially. Moreover, due to the switch of different control targets and navigation methods (GPS or bionic visual navigation) for controllers in the docking stage, the different relative position precise controllers are designed to control the relative position between the tanker and receiver. The experimental results show that the bionic visual close-range navigation system and method effectively acquire the drogue's pose information in the entire visual docking stage and the designed controllers are suitable to the GPS and bionic visual navigation methods for changing and keeping the relative position between the tanker/receiver or probe/drogue.

Study on visual control system of acoustic in situ measurement technology for survey of seafloor sediment

A new kind of visual acoustic measurement system was developed to obtain the acoustic characteristics of seabed sediment and the working state of in situ measuring equipment in real time. The control unit of the system structure is mainly made up of the underwater control unit and the deck control unit. In comparison with similar traditional systems, the system can transmit the working video image, the measured acoustic data and the waveform synchronous from the underwater control equipment to the deck control unit through the connecting cable. Apart from self-contained in situ measurement, the working modes of it include visual online real-time control. In order to guarantee the stability and measurement precision of the video control system, the process control of in situ measurement was strictly tested in the experimental tank. In 2017, sea trials of the in situ measurement system was carried out in the South China Sea. In the process, data related to measurement, including the acoustic velocity and attenuation coefficient of the seabed sediment, were obtained as well. The results from sea trials show that the control process of the visual system is intuitive, reliable and accurate, and therefore it can be popularized and applied.