Render-in-the-loop aerial robotics simulator: Case Study on Yield Estimation in Indoor Agriculture

Abstract

Inspired by recent promising results in sim-to-real transfer in deep learning we built a realistic simulation environment combining a Robot Operating System (ROS)-compatible physics simulator (Gazebo) with Cycles, the realistic production rendering engine from Blender. The proposed simulator pipeline allows us to simulate near-realistic RGB-D images. To showcase the capabilities of the simulator pipeline we propose a case study that focuses on indoor robotic farming. We developed a solution for sweet pepper yield estimation task. Our approach to yield estimation starts with aerial robotics control and trajectory planning, combined with deep learning-based pepper detection, and a clustering approach for counting fruit. The results of this case study show that we can combine real time dynamic simulation with near realistic rendering capabilities to simulate complex robotic systems.

Code and data availability

植物フェノタイピング解析を再現する公開資産であることを、入力本文と直接リンクから確認できなかったため保留しました。

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