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This paper considers the problem of routing and rebalancing a shared fleet of autonomous (i.e., self-driving) vehicles providing on-demand mobility within a capacitated transportation network, where congestion might disrupt throughput. We model the problem within a network flow framework and show that under relatively mild assumptions the rebalancing vehicles, if properly coordinated, do not lead to an increase in congestion (in stark contrast to common belief). From an algorithmic standpoint, such theoretical insight suggests that the problems of routing customers and rebalancing vehicles can be decoupled, which leads to a computationally-efficient routing and rebalancing algorithm for the autonomous vehicles. Numerical experiments and case studies corroborate our theoretical insights and show that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art point-to-point methods by avoiding excess congestion on the road. Collectively, this paper provides a rigorous approach to the problem of congestion-aware, system-wide coordination of autonomously driving vehicles, and to the characterization of the sustainability of such robotic systems.

Advances in animal motion tracking and pose recognition have been a game changer in the study of animal behavior. Recently, an increasing number of works go ‘deeper’ than tracking, and address automated recognition of animals’ internal states such as emotions and pain with the aim of improving animal welfare, making this a timely moment for a systematization of the field. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of computer vision-based research on recognition of pain and emotional states in animals, addressing both facial and bodily behavior analysis. We summarize the efforts that have been presented so far within this topic—classifying them across different dimensions, highlight challenges and research gaps, and provide best practice recommendations for advancing the field, and some future directions for research.

Despite the substantial progress achieved in the development and integration of augmented reality (AR) in surgical robotic and autonomous systems (RAS), the center of focus in most devices remains on improving end-effector dexterity and precision, as well as improved access to minimally invasive surgeries. This paper aims to provide a systematic review of different types of state-of-the-art surgical robotic platforms while identifying areas for technological improvement. We associate specific control features, such as haptic feedback, sensory stimuli, and human–robot collaboration, with AR technology to perform complex surgical interventions for increased user perception of the augmented world. Current researchers in the field have, for long, faced innumerable issues with low accuracy in tool placement around complex trajectories, pose estimation, and difficulty in depth perception during two-dimensional medical imaging. A number of robots described in this review, such as Novarad and SpineAssist, are analyzed in terms of their hardware features, computer vision systems (such as deep learning algorithms), and the clinical relevance of the literature. We attempt to outline the shortcomings in current optimization algorithms for surgical robots (such as YOLO and LTSM) whilst providing mitigating solutions to internal tool-to-organ collision detection and image reconstruction. The accuracy of results in robot end-effector collisions and reduced occlusion remain promising within the scope of our research, validating the propositions made for the surgical clearance of ever-expanding AR technology in the future.

Posture detection targeted towards providing assessments for the monitoring of health and welfare of pigs has been of great interest to researchers from different disciplines. Existing studies applying machine vision techniques are mostly based on methods using three-dimensional imaging systems, or two-dimensional systems with the limitation of monitoring under controlled conditions. Thus, the main goal of this study was to determine whether a two-dimensional imaging system, along with deep learning approaches, could be utilized to detect the standing and lying (belly and side) postures of pigs under commercial farm conditions. Three deep learning-based detector methods, including faster regions with convolutional neural network features (Faster R-CNN), single shot multibox detector (SSD) and region-based fully convolutional network (R-FCN), combined with Inception V2, Residual Network (ResNet) and Inception ResNet V2 feature extractions of RGB images were proposed. Data from different commercial farms were used for training and validation of the proposed models. The experimental results demonstrated that the R-FCN ResNet101 method was able to detect lying and standing postures with higher average precision (AP) of 0.93, 0.95 and 0.92 for standing, lying on side and lying on belly postures, respectively and mean average precision (mAP) of more than 0.93.

Reliable detection and classification of bacteria and other pathogens in the human body, animals, food, and water is crucial for improving and safeguarding public health. For instance, identifying the species and its antibiotic susceptibility is vital for effective bacterial infection treatment. Here we show that phase contrast time-lapse microscopy combined with deep learning is sufficient to classify four species of bacteria relevant to human health. The classification is performed on living bacteria and does not require fixation or staining, meaning that the bacterial species can be determined as the bacteria reproduce in a microfluidic device, enabling parallel determination of susceptibility to antibiotics. We assess the performance of convolutional neural networks and vision transformers, where the best model attained a class-average accuracy exceeding 98%. Our successful proof-of-principle results suggest that the methods should be challenged with data covering more species and clinically relevant isolates for future clinical use.

Computer vision is a subcategory of artificial intelligence focused on extraction of information from images and video. It provides a compelling new means for objective orthopaedic gait assessment in horses using accessible hardware, such as a smartphone, for markerless motion analysis. This study aimed to explore the lameness assessment capacity of a smartphone single camera (SC) markerless computer vision application by comparing measurements of the vertical motion of the head and pelvis to an optical motion capture multi-camera (MC) system using skin attached reflective markers. Twenty-five horses were recorded with a smartphone (60 Hz) and a 13 camera MC-system (200 Hz) while trotting two times back and forth on a 30 m runway. The smartphone video was processed using artificial neural networks detecting the horse’s direction, action and motion of body segments. After filtering, the vertical displacement curves from the head and pelvis were synchronised between systems using cross-correlation. This rendered 655 and 404 matching stride segmented curves for the head and pelvis respectively. From the stride segmented vertical displacement signals, differences between the two minima (MinDiff) and the two maxima (MaxDiff) respectively per stride were compared between the systems. Trial mean difference between systems was 2.2 mm (range 0.0–8.7 mm) for head and 2.2 mm (range 0.0–6.5 mm) for pelvis. Within-trial standard deviations ranged between 3.1–28.1 mm for MC and between 3.6–26.2 mm for SC. The ease of use and good agreement with MC indicate that the SC application is a promising tool for detecting clinically relevant levels of asymmetry in horses, enabling frequent and convenient gait monitoring over time.

Automated recognition of human facial expressions of pain and emotions is to a certain degree a solved problem, using approaches based on computer vision and machine learning. However, the application of such methods to horses has proven difficult. Major barriers are the lack of sufficiently large, annotated databases for horses and difficulties in obtaining correct classifications of pain because horses are non-verbal. This review describes our work to overcome these barriers, using two different approaches. One involves the use of a manual, but relatively objective, classification system for facial activity (Facial Action Coding System), where data are analyzed for pain expressions after coding using machine learning principles. We have devised tools that can aid manual labeling by identifying the faces and facial keypoints of horses. This approach provides promising results in the automated recognition of facial action units from images. The second approach, recurrent neural network end-to-end learning, requires less extraction of features and representations from the video but instead depends on large volumes of video data with ground truth. Our preliminary results suggest clearly that dynamics are important for pain recognition and show that combinations of recurrent neural networks can classify experimental pain in a small number of horses better than human raters.

This work proposes a comprehensive software framework for cloud-enabled autonomous drone navigation, featuring precise target tracking via image-based visual servoing (IBVS) coupled with a control scheme. In this study, a low-cost quadcopter running the ArduPilot firmware is evaluated within a simulation-in-the-loop (SITL) environment using a Gazebo-based simulation of a real-world mission. The tested software architecture can be seamlessly integrated with an onboard companion computer for real-time execution. The mission involves waypoint tracking, precise identification and descent onto visual markers using IBVS, along with real-time data visualization on a remote client connected via a cloud interface. Because the software architecture is versatile, it can accommodate any conventional or knowledge-based controller. To demonstrate the efficacy and robustness of the proposed architecture, the quadcopter was tested under challenging weather conditions, where it successfully completed the mission despite disturbances and sensor noise. Finally, the complete software architecture has been tested and implemented in the robot operating system (ROS).

Autonomous driving highly depends on depth information for safe driving. Recently, major improvements have been taken towards improving both supervised and self-supervised methods for depth reconstruction. However, most of the current approaches focus on single frame depth estimation, where quality limit is hard to beat due to limitations of supervised learning of deep neural networks in general. One of the way to improve quality of existing methods is to utilize temporal information from frame sequences. In this paper, we study intelligent ways of integrating recurrent block in common supervised depth estimation pipeline. We propose a novel method, which takes advantage of the convolutional gated recurrent unit (convGRU) and convolutional long short-term memory (convLSTM). We compare use of convGRU and convLSTM blocks and determine the best model for real-time depth estimation task. We carefully study training strategy and provide new deep neural networks architectures for the task of depth estimation from monocular video using information from past frames based on attention mechanism. We demonstrate the efficiency of exploiting temporal information by comparing our best recurrent method with existing image-based and video-based solutions for monocular depth reconstruction.

Automation in meat portioning plays a critical role in improving efficiency, accuracy, and consistency in food processing. Poultry and fish industries face challenges in achieving equal-weight portions due to irregular shapes, variable thickness, and inconsistent density, which affect segmentation accuracy. Addressing these issues is essential for reducing material waste, ensuring compliance with industry tolerances, and improving yield consistency. This study aimed to design, develop, and evaluate a laser-based machine vision system and volume segmentation algorithm capable of producing equal-weight portions of poultry and fish under realistic processing conditions. The proposed system employed a laser line profile sensor to capture three-dimensional point cloud data of meat surfaces. Data were processed using a Delaunay triangulation-based approach to compute object volume, assuming uniform density. An iterative volume segmentation algorithm determined optimal vertical and horizontal cutting lines to match target volumes. The system was tested on both modeling clay and real meat samples, including chicken breast and fish fillets. Statistical analyses included mean absolute error (MAE) to assess weight deviation, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to evaluate differences between cutting patterns, and Gage Repeatability & Reproducibility (Gage R&R) to assess measurement system reliability. For real meat tests, chicken breast portioning yielded %MAE between 4.53% and 5.96%, while fish fillet portioning achieved %MAE between 3.63% and 5.78%. Gage R&R analysis showed total measurement system variation below 10%, confirming high repeatability and reproducibility. Fish fillets exhibited lower variability due to flatter morphology and more complete point cloud acquisition. Modeling clay trials demonstrated consistent accuracy across different cutting configurations, with ANOVA revealing statistically significant differences between certain patterns. The developed laser-based machine vision system with volume segmentation reliably produced equal-weight portions for irregularly shaped raw meat products. The method-maintained accuracy within industry-accepted tolerances for both chicken and fish, while exhibiting robust performance under variations in sample placement and geometry. Future work should focus on increasing point cloud density for complex surfaces, integrating deep learning for adaptive cutting line adjustment based on variations in thickness and density, and extending the approach to other food products such as dairy and bakery items to broaden its industrial applicability.