@phdthesis{Bleier2023, author = {Bleier, Michael}, title = {Underwater Laser Scanning - Refractive Calibration, Self-calibration and Mapping for 3D Reconstruction}, isbn = {978-3-945459-45-4}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-32269}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-322693}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2023}, abstract = {There is great interest in affordable, precise and reliable metrology underwater: Archaeologists want to document artifacts in situ with high detail. In marine research, biologists require the tools to monitor coral growth and geologists need recordings to model sediment transport. Furthermore, for offshore construction projects, maintenance and inspection millimeter-accurate measurements of defects and offshore structures are essential. While the process of digitizing individual objects and complete sites on land is well understood and standard methods, such as Structure from Motion or terrestrial laser scanning, are regularly applied, precise underwater surveying with high resolution is still a complex and difficult task. Applying optical scanning techniques in water is challenging due to reduced visibility caused by turbidity and light absorption. However, optical underwater scanners provide significant advantages in terms of achievable resolution and accuracy compared to acoustic systems. This thesis proposes an underwater laser scanning system and the algorithms for creating dense and accurate 3D scans in water. It is based on laser triangulation and the main optical components are an underwater camera and a cross-line laser projector. The prototype is configured with a motorized yaw axis for capturing scans from a tripod. Alternatively, it is mounted to a moving platform for mobile mapping. The main focus lies on the refractive calibration of the underwater camera and laser projector, the image processing and 3D reconstruction. For highest accuracy, the refraction at the individual media interfaces must be taken into account. This is addressed by an optimization-based calibration framework using a physical-geometric camera model derived from an analytical formulation of a ray-tracing projection model. In addition to scanning underwater structures, this work presents the 3D acquisition of semi-submerged structures and the correction of refraction effects. As in-situ calibration in water is complex and time-consuming, the challenge of transferring an in-air scanner calibration to water without re-calibration is investigated, as well as self-calibration techniques for structured light. The system was successfully deployed in various configurations for both static scanning and mobile mapping. An evaluation of the calibration and 3D reconstruction using reference objects and a comparison of free-form surfaces in clear water demonstrate the high accuracy potential in the range of one millimeter to less than one centimeter, depending on the measurement distance. Mobile underwater mapping and motion compensation based on visual-inertial odometry is demonstrated using a new optical underwater scanner based on fringe projection. Continuous registration of individual scans allows the acquisition of 3D models from an underwater vehicle. RGB images captured in parallel are used to create 3D point clouds of underwater scenes in full color. 3D maps are useful to the operator during the remote control of underwater vehicles and provide the building blocks to enable offshore inspection and surveying tasks. The advancing automation of the measurement technology will allow non-experts to use it, significantly reduce acquisition time and increase accuracy, making underwater metrology more cost-effective.}, subject = {Selbstkalibrierung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Karch2002, author = {Karch, Oliver}, title = {Where am I? - Indoor localization based on range measurements}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-8442}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2002}, abstract = {Nowadays, robotics plays an important role in increasing fields of application. There exist many environments or situations where mobile robots instead of human beings are used, since the tasks are too hazardous, uncomfortable, repetitive, or costly for humans to perform. The autonomy and the mobility of the robot are often essential for a good solution of these problems. Thus, such a robot should at least be able to answer the question "Where am I?". This thesis investigates the problem of self-localizing a robot in an indoor environment using range measurements. That is, a robot equipped with a range sensor wakes up inside a building and has to determine its position using only its sensor data and a map of its environment. We examine this problem from an idealizing point of view (reducing it into a pure geometric one) and further investigate a method of Guibas, Motwani, and Raghavan from the field of computational geometry to solving it. Here, so-called visibility skeletons, which can be seen as coarsened representations of visibility polygons, play a decisive role. In the major part of this thesis we analyze the structures and the occurring complexities in the framework of this scheme. It turns out that the main source of complication are so-called overlapping embeddings of skeletons into the map polygon, for which we derive some restrictive visibility constraints. Based on these results we are able to improve one of the occurring complexity bounds in the sense that we can formulate it with respect to the number of reflex vertices instead of the total number of map vertices. This also affects the worst-case bound on the preprocessing complexity of the method. The second part of this thesis compares the previous idealizing assumptions with the properties of real-world environments and discusses the occurring problems. In order to circumvent these problems, we use the concept of distance functions, which model the resemblance between the sensor data and the map, and appropriately adapt the above method to the needs of realistic scenarios. In particular, we introduce a distance function, namely the polar coordinate metric, which seems to be well suited to the localization problem. Finally, we present the RoLoPro software where most of the discussed algorithms are implemented (including the polar coordinate metric).}, subject = {Autonomer Roboter}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Heck2005, author = {Heck, Klaus}, title = {Wireless LAN performance studies in the context of 4G networks}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-14896}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Wireless communication is nothing new. The first data transmissions based on electromagnetic waves have been successfully performed at the end of the 19th century. However, it took almost another century until the technology was ripe for mass market. The first mobile communication systems based on the transmission of digital data were introduced in the late 1980s. Within just a couple of years they have caused a revolution in the way people communicate. The number of cellular phones started to outnumber the fixed telephone lines in many countries and is still rising. New technologies in 3G systems, such as UMTS, allow higher data rates and support various kinds of multimedia services. Nevertheless, the end of the road in wireless communication is far from being reached. In the near future, the Internet and cellular phone systems are expected to be integrated to a new form of wireless system. Bandwidth requirements for a rich set of wireless services, e.g.\ video telephony, video streaming, online gaming, will be easily met. The transmission of voice data will just be another IP based service. On the other hand, building such a system is by far not an easy task. The problems in the development of the UMTS system showed the high complexity of wireless systems with support for bandwidth-hungry, IP-based services. But the technological challenges are just one difficulty. Telecommunication systems are planned on a world-wide basis, such that standard bodies, governments, institutions, hardware vendors, and service providers have to find agreements and compromises on a number of different topics. In this work, we provide the reader with a discussion of many of the topics involved in the planning of a Wireless LAN system that is capable of being integrated into the 4th generation mobile networks (4G) that is being discussed nowadays. Therefore, it has to be able to cope with interactive voice and video traffic while still offering high data rates for best effort traffic. Let us assume a scenario where a huge office complex is completely covered with Wireless LAN access points. Different antenna systems are applied in order to reduce the number of access points that are needed on the one hand, while optimizing the coverage on the other. No additional infrastructure is implemented. Our goal is to evaluate whether the Wireless LAN technology is capable of dealing with the various demands of such a scenario. First, each single access point has to be capable of supporting best-effort and Quality of Service (QoS) demanding applications simultaneously. The IT infrastructure in our scenario consists solely of Wireless LAN, such that it has to allow users surfing the Web, while others are involved in voice calls or video conferences. Then, there is the problem of overlapping cells. Users attached to one access point produce interference for others. However, the QoS support has to be maintained, which is not an easy task. Finally, there are nomadic users, which roam from one Wireless LAN cell to another even during a voice call. There are mechanisms in the standard that allow for mobility, but their capabilities for QoS support are yet to be studied. This shows the large number of unresolved issues when it comes to Wireless LAN in the context of 4G networks. In this work we want to tackle some of the problems.}, subject = {Drahtloses lokales Netz}, language = {en} }