• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.279-282
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• 2017

Kinect depth sensor, a depth camera developed by Microsoft as a natural user interface for game appeared as a very useful tool in computer vision field. In this paper, due to kinect's depth sensor and its high frame rate, we developed a distance measurement system using Kinect camera to test it for unmanned vehicles which need vision systems to perceive the surrounding environment like human do in order to detect objects in their path. Therefore, kinect depth sensor is used to detect objects in its field of view and enhance the distance measurement system from objects to the vision sensor. Detected object is identified in accuracy way to determine if it is a real object or a pixel nose to reduce the processing time by ignoring pixels which are not a part of a real object. Using depth segmentation techniques along with Open CV library for image processing, we can identify present objects within Kinect camera's field of view and measure the distance from them to the sensor. Tests show promising results that this system can be used as well for autonomous vehicles equipped with low-cost range sensor, Kinect camera, for further processing depending on the application type when they reach a certain distance far from detected objects.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.270-279
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• 2005

Under the research project supported by Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), we have conducted the development of GPR systems for landmine detection. Until 2005, we have finished development of two prototype GPR systems, namely ALIS (Advanced Landmine Imaging System) and SAR-GPR (Synthetic Aperture Radar-Ground Penetrating Radar). ALIS is a novel landmine detection sensor system combined with a metal detector and GPR. This is a hand-held equipment, which has a sensor position tracking system, and can visualize the sensor output in real time. In order to achieve the sensor tracking system, ALIS needs only one CCD camera attached on the sensor handle. The CCD image is superimposed with the GPR and metal detector signal, and the detection and identification of buried targets is quite easy and reliable. Field evaluation test of ALIS was conducted in December 2004 in Afghanistan, and we demonstrated that it can detect buried antipersonnel landmines, and can also discriminate metal fragments from landmines. SAR-GPR (Synthetic Aperture Radar-Ground Penetrating Radar) is a machine mounted sensor system composed of B GPR and a metal detector. The GPR employs an array antenna for advanced signal processing for better subsurface imaging. SAR-GPR combined with synthetic aperture radar algorithm, can suppress clutter and can image buried objects in strongly inhomogeneous material. SAR-GPR is a stepped frequency radar system, whose RF component is a newly developed compact vector network analyzers. The size of the system is 30cm x 30cm x 30 cm, composed from six Vivaldi antennas and three vector network analyzers. The weight of the system is 17 kg, and it can be mounted on a robotic arm on a small unmanned vehicle. The field test of this system was carried out in March 2005 in Japan.