Deep learning for perception tasks

In recent years large advances have been made in the field of machine learning, driven by novel deep learning methods. Deep learning is a research field that focusses on creating neural networks. This field has seen a rapid advance due to an increase in computational power, availability of large amounts of data and a wide variety of novel...

Human centric object perception for service robots

The research interests and applicability of robotics have diversified and seen a<br/>tremendous growth in recent years. There has been a shift from industrial robots operating in constrained settings to consumer robots working in dynamic environments associated closely with everyday human activities. Personal service robots to assist elderly,...

Active Vision for Humanoid Robots

Human perception is an active process. By altering its viewpoint rather than passively observing surroundings and by operating on sequences of images rather than on a single frame, the human visual system has the ability to explore the most relevant information based on knowledge, therefore when growing up a human is able to develop cognitive...

Active Grasp Synthesis for Grasping Unknown Objects

Manipulation is a key feature for robots which are designed to work in daily environments like homes, offices and streets. These robots do not often have manipulators that are specialized for specific tasks, but grippers that can grasp the target object. This makes grasping a crucial ability that enables many manipulation tasks. Robotic grasping...

Robust Augmented Reality

The field of Computer Vision is concerned with problems that involve interfacing computers with their surrounding environment through cameras. Consequently artificial vision systems can replace human perception in many tasks. Recent advances in technology, such as increase in computational power, good quality low cost CMOS cameras, improvement...

Reinforcement Learning on autonomous humanoid robots

Service robots have the potential to be of great value in households, health care and other labor intensive environments. However, these environments are typically unique, not very structured and frequently changing, which makes it difficult to make service robots robust and versatile through manual programming. Having robots learn to solve...

Recognizing surgical patterns

In the Netherlands, each year over 1700 patients die from preventable surgical errors. Numerous initiatives to improve surgical practice have had some impact, but problems persist. Despite the introduction of checklists and protocols, patient safety in surgery remains a continuing challenge. This is complicated by some surgeons viewing their own...

Pose estimation for mobile devices and augmented reality

In this thesis we introduce the reader to the field of Augmented Reality (AR) and describe aspects of an AR system. We show the current uses in treatment of phobias, games, sports and industry. We present the challenges for Optical See-Through Augmented Reality in which the real world is perceived normally by the user and is augmented with...

Automated Design of Application-Specific Smart Camera Architectures

Parallel heterogeneous multiprocessor systems are often shunned in embedded system design, not only because of their design complexity but because of the programming burden. Programs for such systems are architecture-dependent: the application developer needs architecture-specific knowledge to implement his algorithms, as each processor has its...

Range imaging and visual servoing for industrial applications

High-tech systems play a key role in Printed Circuit Board (PCB) manufacturing. Two of these systems are presented in this thesis. The first system is range imaging, which is a measuring technique for determining three-dimensional shape. The second system is visual servoing, which is a method of adaptively controlling a mechanical system by...

Sensor fusion in head pose tracking for augmented reality

The focus of this thesis is on studying diverse techniques, methods and sensors for position and orientation determination with application to augmented reality applications. In Chapter 2 we reviewed a variety of existing techniques and systems for position determination. From a practical point of view, we discussed the need for a mobile system...

Fault-tolerant architectures for nanoelectronic and quantum devices

The progress in CMOS technology has entered the sub-micron realm, and the technology will approach its limits within about 15 years. Already various novel information processing devices, based on quantum mechanical effects at the nanometer scale, have been widely investigated and some have been successfully demonstrated at the circuit level....