SBIR Phase I: Fingertip Ranging with Micro Light-Field Cameras

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力在于它提供了一种新的测距能力，其质量、放置的简便性和部署的规模将在部件和机器人的相对位置存在不确定性的情况下为机器人操作带来新的机会。这些包括小批量生产(夹具不能具有成本效益)、在受限空间进行检查和维修(必须在执行器上携带3D传感)、危险情况(人的存在会导致生命危险)以及与人的协作互动(必须避免无意接触)。在拟议的开发中，机器人抓取将被授权在每个指尖进行动态3D范围映射，从而能够直接计算根据即将被操纵的几何和结构量身定做的轨迹和速度。将该技术扩展到3D视觉和对象建模这一更大的挑战，在不同的应用中提供了经济影响。这些包括自动和半自动车辆导航(无人机、汽车)、虚拟现实和增强现实界面、3D电话会议和通信、文化站点建模以及身临其境的电影院。在每个领域，可靠性和精确度的提高，功率和计算成本的降低，都可以带来性价比超过门槛的应用程序，使其成为可能。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将为机器人操作建立一个新的水平的实时被动视觉感知，为准确、精确和快速的掌握提供3D数据。由于双目成像系统基于匹配的方法不能在视差范围较大的复杂环境中提供可靠的深度测量，双目成像系统在近距离机器人领域尚未证明是成功的。目前使用少数相机的方法是基于匹配的，因此会出错，使用在覆盖范围内呈指数级的搜索所以成本很高，并且提供对世界(点云)的简明描述，因此描述能力较弱。所有这些都降低了它们处理的可靠性和它们在现实世界应用中的分析的实用性。该项目的技术与最新的晶片级集成模块包相结合，通过使用密集采样、扩展基线以及保持和利用图像的空间连续性来克服这些限制。技术挑战包括机械和电气设计，以实现微光场测距，在嵌入式处理器上进行分析，成像器/光学/系统的近场校准，以及这些与机器人控制的协调，以评估测量精度和精确度。该项目将在机器人指尖上产生高质量的帧速率光场范围。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project lies in its provision of a novel ranging capability whose quality, ease of placement, and scale in deployment will introduce new opportunities in robot operation in situations where there is uncertainty in the relative positions of parts and robots. These include small-batch production (where fixturing cannot be made cost effective), inspection and repair in confined spaces (where 3D sensing must be carried aboard the actuator), hazardous situations (where human presence incurs risk to life), and collaborative interaction with people (where inadvertent contact must be avoided). In the proposed development, robot grasp will be empowered with dynamic 3D range mapping at each fingertip, enabling direct computation of trajectories and velocities tailored to the geometry and structure about to be manipulated. Extension of the technology to the larger challenge of 3D vision and object modeling offers economic impact in diverse applications. These include autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle navigation (drones, cars), virtual reality and augmented reality interfaces, 3D teleconferencing and communication, cultural site modeling, and immersive cinema. Each is an area where increases in reliability and precision with decreases in power and computational cost can bring an application over the threshold in price/performance, into viability.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will establish a new level of real-time passive visual perception in near-range for robot operation, providing 3D data for accurate, precise and rapid grasp. Binocular imaging systems have not demonstrated success in near range robotics due to the inability of their match-based methods to deliver reliable depth measures in complex settings where disparity range is large. Current methods using a few cameras are based on matching so make mistakes, use search that is exponential in covered range so are expensive, and deliver parsimonious descriptions of the world (point clouds) so are weak in descriptive power. All of these diminish the reliability of their processing and the utility of their analysis in real-world applications. The technology of this project combined with recent wafer-level integration module packages overcomes these limitations through use of dense sampling, extended baselines, and maintaining and exploiting image spatial continuity. The technical challenge involves mechanical and electrical design to enable micro light-field ranging with analysis on an embedded processor, near-field calibration of imagers/optics/system, and coordination of these with robot control for assessing measurement accuracy and precision. The project will result in high-quality frame-rate light-field ranging on a robot fingertip.