Papers by Emanuele Frontoni
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
ABSTRACT In this paper a framework for simulation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), oriented to... more ABSTRACT In this paper a framework for simulation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), oriented to rotary wings aerial vehicles, is presented. It allows UAV simulations for stand-alone agents or multi-agents exchanging data in cooperative scenarios. The framework, based on modularity and stratification in different specialized layers, allows an easy switching from simulated to real environments, thus reducing testing and debugging times. CAD modelling supports the framework mainly with respect to extraction of geometrical parameters and virtualization. Useful applications of the framework include pilot training, testing and validation of UAVs control strategies, especially in an educational context, and simulation of complex missions.
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2016 24th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED), 2016
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Linear buffer strips (BS) along watercourses are commonly adopted to reduce runoff , accumulation... more Linear buffer strips (BS) along watercourses are commonly adopted to reduce runoff , accumulation of bank-top sediments and the leaking of pesticides into fresh-waters, which strongly increase water pollution. However, the monitoring of their conditions is a difficult task because they are scattered over wide rural areas. This work demonstrates the benefits of using a standard data layer and Augmented Reality (AR) in watershed control and outlines the guideline of a novel approach for the health-check of linear BS. We designed a mobile environmental monitoring system for smart maintenance of riverbanks by embedding the AR technology within a Geographical Information System (GIS). From the technological point of view, the system's architecture consists of a cloud-based service for data sharing, using a standard data layer, and of a mobile device provided with a GPS based AR engine for augmented data visualization. The proposed solution aims to ease the overall inspection process by reducing the time required to run a survey. Indeed, ordinary operational survey conditions are usually performed basing the fieldwork on just classical digitized maps. Our application proposes to enrich inspections by superimposing information on the device screen with the same point of view of the camera, providing an intuitive visualization of buffer strip location. This way, the inspection officer can quickly and dynamically access relevant information overlaying geographic features, comments and other contents in real time. The solution has been tested in fieldwork to prove at what extent this cutting-edge technology contributes to an effective monitoring over large territorial settings. The aim is to encourage officers, land managers and practitioners toward more effective monitoring and management practices.
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Eye tracking technology is becoming easier and cheaper to use, resulting in its increasing applic... more Eye tracking technology is becoming easier and cheaper to use, resulting in its increasing application to numerous fields of research. Recent years have seen rapid developments in this area. In light of the foregoing, in the context of Cultural Heritage (CH), the definition of a modern approach to understand how individuals perceive art is challenging. Despite the art perception is highly subjective and variable according to knowledge and experience, more recently, several scientific study and enterprises started to quantify how subjects observe art by the application of the eye-tracking technology. The aim of this study was to understand the visual behaviour of subjects looking at paintings, using eye-tracking technology, in order to define a protocol for optimizing an existing Augmented Reality (AR) application that allows the visualiza-tion of digital contents through a display. The stimuli used are three famous paintings preserved at the National Gallery of Marche (Urbino, Marche Region, Italy). We applied eye-tracking to have a deeper understanding of people visual activities in front of these paintings and to analyse how digital contents eventually influence their behaviour. The description of the applied procedure and the preliminary results are presented .
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Highly accelerated life test (HALT) is a test
methodology to evaluate reliability of mechanical a... more Highly accelerated life test (HALT) is a test
methodology to evaluate reliability of mechanical and
electromechanical devices. HALT is often used on devices
that must be guaranteed for high reliability over a long
time span. HALT simulates the life cycle of the device,
usually until it experiments a failure. HALT tests are used
to assess reliability of devices at the end of the production
cycle, but are also used to improve the design and manufacturing
process, allowing to find and correct potential
problems when changes to the production process are less
costly. HALT tests are usually difficult and time consuming,
and there is a strong need for their automation. This
paper proposes a methodology to design software and
hardware for HALT automated tests. The goals pursued
are to standardize the test process, to reduce the need for
manual commands at the minimum and to simplify the
data gathering process. The methodology proposed starts
from domain requirement analysis and is conceived to
be as general as possible, with the goal to make it easily
extensible and adaptable to multiple testing domains.
Finally, the paper reports on a case study describing a
HALT test device designed according to the proposed
methodology and currently in use to test electromechanical
actuators.
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Automated approaches to building detection in multi-source aerial data are important in many appl... more Automated approaches to building detection in multi-source aerial data are important in many applications, including map updating, city modeling, urban growth analysis and monitoring of informal settlements. This paper presents a comparative analysis of different methods for automated building detection in aerial images and laser data at different spatial resolutions. Five methods are tested in two study areas using features extracted at both pixel level and object level, but with the strong prerequisite of using the same training set for all methods. The evaluation of the methods is based on error measures obtained by superimposing the results on a manually generated reference map of each area. The results in both study areas show a better performance of the Dempster-Shafer and the AdaBoost methods, although these two methods also yield a number of unclassified pixels. The method of thresholding a normalized DSM performs well in terms of the detection rate and reliability in the less vegetated Mannheim study area, but also yields a high rate of false positive errors. The Bayesian methods perform better in the Memmingen study area where buildings have more or less the same heights.
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This paper aims to propose a novel idea of an embedded intelligent system where low cost embedded... more This paper aims to propose a novel idea of an embedded intelligent system where low cost embedded vision systems can analyze human behaviors to obtain interac-tivity and statistical data, mainly devoted to customer behavior analysis. In this project we addressed the need for new services into the shop, involving consumers more directly and instigating them to increase their satisfaction and, as a consequence, their purchases. To do this, technology is very important and allows making interactions between costumers and products and between customers and the environment of the shop a rich source of marketing analysis. We construct a novel system that uses vertical RGBD sensor for people counting and shelf interaction analysis, where the depth information is used to remove the affect of the appearance variation and to evaluate customers' activities inside the store and in front of the shelf, with products. Also group interactions are monitored and analyzed with the main goal of having a better knowledge of the customers' activities, using real data in real time. Even if preliminary, results are convincing and most of all the general architecture is affordable in this specific application, robust, easy to install and maintain and low cost.
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The importance of finding correct correspondences between two images is the major aspect in probl... more The importance of finding correct correspondences between two images is the major aspect in problems such as appearance-based robot localization and content-based image retrieval. Local feature matching has become a commonly used method to compare images, despite being highly probable that at least some of the matchings/correspondences it detects are incorrect. In this paper we describe a novel approach to local feature matching, named Feature Group Matching (FGM), to select stable features and obtain a more reliable similarity value between two images. The proposed technique is demonstrated to be translational, rotational and scaling invariant. Experimental evaluation was performed on large and heterogeneous datasets of images using SIFT and SURF, the actual state-of-art feature extractors. Results show that FGM avoids almost 95% of incorrect matchings, reduces the visual aliasing (number of images considered similar) and increases both robotic localization and image retrieval accuracy on the average of 13%.
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The main goal of the SIT-REM project is the design and the development of an interoperable web-GI... more The main goal of the SIT-REM project is the design and the development of an interoperable web-GIS environment for the information retrieval and data editing/updating of the geobotanical and wildlife map of Marche Region. The vegetation, plant landscape OPEN ACCESS ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2014, 3 2 and faunistic analysis allow the realization of a regional information system for wildlife-geobotanical data. A main characteristic of the SIT-REM is its flexibility and interoperability, in particular, its ability to be easily updated with the insertion of new types of environmental, faunal or socioeconomic data and to generate analyses at any geographical (from regional to local) or quantitative level of detail. Different query levels obtain the latter: spatial queries, hybrid query builder and WMSs usable by means of a GIS. SIT-REM has been available online for more than a year and its use over this period has produced extensive data about users' experiences.
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International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 2011
Traditionally, remote sensing has employed pixel-based classification techniques to deal with lan... more Traditionally, remote sensing has employed pixel-based classification techniques to deal with land use/land cover (LULC) studies. Generally, pixel-based approaches have been proven to work well with low spatial resolution imagery (e.g. Landsat or System Pour L'Observation de la Terre sensors). Now, however, commercially available high spatial resolution images (e.g. aerial Leica ADS40 and Vexcel UltraCam sensors, and satellite IKONOS, Quickbird, GeoEye and WorldView sensors) can be problematic for pixel-based analysis due to their tendency to oversample the scene. This is driving research towards object-based approaches. This article proposes a hybrid classification method with the aim of incorporating the advantages of supervised pixel-based classification into object-based approaches. The method has been developed for medium-scale (1:10,000) LULC mapping using ADS40 imagery with 1 m ground sampling distance. First, spatial information is incorporated into a pixel-based classification (AdaBoost classifier) by means of additional texture features (Haralick, Gabor, Law features), which can be selected ‘ad hoc’ according to optimal training samples (‘Relief-F’ approach, Mahalanobis distances). Then a rule-based approach sorts segmented regions into thematic CORINE Land Cover classes in terms of membership class percentages (a modified Winner-Takes-All approach) and shape parameters. Finally, ancillary data (roads, rivers, etc.) are exploited to increase classification accuracy. The experimental results show that the proposed hybrid approach allows the extraction of more LULC classes than conventional pixel-based methods, while improving classification accuracy considerably. A second contribution of this article is the assessment of classification reliability by implementing a stability map, in addition to confusion matrices.
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The development of reliable and precise indoor localization systems would considerably improve th... more The development of reliable and precise indoor localization systems would considerably improve the ability to investigate shopper movements and behavior inside retail environments. Previous approaches used either computer vision technologies or the analysis of signals emitted by communication devices (beacons). While computer vision approaches provide higher level of accuracy, beacons cover a wider operational area. In this paper, we propose a sensor fusion approach between active radio beacons and RGB-D cameras. This system, used in an intelligent retail environment where cameras are already installed for other purposes, allows an affordable environment setup and a low operational costs for customer indoor localization and tracking. We adopted a Kalman filter to fuse localization data from radio signals emitted by beacons are used to track users' mobile devices and RGB-D cameras used to refine position estimations. By combing coarse localization datasets from active beacons and RGB-D data from sparse cameras, we demonstrate that the indoor position estimation is strongly enhanced. The aim of this general framework is to provide retailers with useful information by analyzing consumer activities inside the store. To prove the robustness of our approach, several tests were conducted into a real indoor showroom by analyzing real customers behavior with encouraging results.
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Advances in Multimedia, 2014
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Handbook of Research on Emerging Digital Tools for Architectural Surveying, Modeling, and Representation, 2015
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ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 2010
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Papers by Emanuele Frontoni
methodology to evaluate reliability of mechanical and
electromechanical devices. HALT is often used on devices
that must be guaranteed for high reliability over a long
time span. HALT simulates the life cycle of the device,
usually until it experiments a failure. HALT tests are used
to assess reliability of devices at the end of the production
cycle, but are also used to improve the design and manufacturing
process, allowing to find and correct potential
problems when changes to the production process are less
costly. HALT tests are usually difficult and time consuming,
and there is a strong need for their automation. This
paper proposes a methodology to design software and
hardware for HALT automated tests. The goals pursued
are to standardize the test process, to reduce the need for
manual commands at the minimum and to simplify the
data gathering process. The methodology proposed starts
from domain requirement analysis and is conceived to
be as general as possible, with the goal to make it easily
extensible and adaptable to multiple testing domains.
Finally, the paper reports on a case study describing a
HALT test device designed according to the proposed
methodology and currently in use to test electromechanical
actuators.
methodology to evaluate reliability of mechanical and
electromechanical devices. HALT is often used on devices
that must be guaranteed for high reliability over a long
time span. HALT simulates the life cycle of the device,
usually until it experiments a failure. HALT tests are used
to assess reliability of devices at the end of the production
cycle, but are also used to improve the design and manufacturing
process, allowing to find and correct potential
problems when changes to the production process are less
costly. HALT tests are usually difficult and time consuming,
and there is a strong need for their automation. This
paper proposes a methodology to design software and
hardware for HALT automated tests. The goals pursued
are to standardize the test process, to reduce the need for
manual commands at the minimum and to simplify the
data gathering process. The methodology proposed starts
from domain requirement analysis and is conceived to
be as general as possible, with the goal to make it easily
extensible and adaptable to multiple testing domains.
Finally, the paper reports on a case study describing a
HALT test device designed according to the proposed
methodology and currently in use to test electromechanical
actuators.