Robotics and Computer Engineering - Master's theses

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    An Open-Source Robotic Study Companion for University Students
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2023) Baksh, Farnaz; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    This thesis presents an evidence-based approach and develops an affordable and effective Robotic Study Companion (RSC) prototype for university students. It addresses the lack of social robots tailored to higher education and the scarcity of open-source educational platforms. Through a comprehensive literature review on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), social and companion robots, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, this work identifies trends and best practices for educational social robots. The research systematically reviews select social robots, examining their applications, technical features, design, and human-centric interaction. It explores the human perspective of HRI, focusing on users in educational settings. Based on these insights, functional and non-functional requirements are established for the RSC, inspiring its design and development. The RSC prototype, built using off-the-shef components and leveraging OpenAI's large language models, demonstrates its potential to simplify complex concepts for students. The long-term goal is to enhance the RSC's design, durability, and commercial viability.
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    Analysis of variations in orbital parameters of CubeSats
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2014) Ploom, Indrek; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja tehnoloogiateaduskond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Käesolev töö uurib variatsioone kuupsatelliitide orbitaalparameetrites, et selgitada kuidas orbitaalparameetrid ajas muutuvad, millised omavahelised seosed on parameetrite vahel, kuidas nad mõjutavad satelliidi eluiga ning kuidas erinevad häirivad jõud mõjutavad orbiite. Töö tulemused on suunatud rahvusvahelisele/ülemaailmsele nanosatelliitide arendajate huvigruppidele. Kuupsatelliidi standard on osutunud populaarseks ja huvi järjest kasvab. Missiooni planeerimise ja satelliidi disaini seisukohast on väga oluline teada seda, kuidas satelliidi eluiga on seotud tema massi, suuruse, kuju, orbitaalparameetritega ning kuivõrd suure mõjuga erinevad häirivad jõud orbiidis hälbeid tekitavad. Kuupsatelliitide orbitaalparameetrite käitumist ei ole varem uuritud, küll aga on varasemalt uuritud üksikuid suuremaid satelliite väga täpselt mõõdetud parameetritega. Käesolev töö ei tee ise mõõtmisi vaid kasutab massiliselt ära vähem täpsemaid ja vabalt kättesaadavaid ajaloolisi orbiidi andmeid Two-Line Element (TLE) formaadis, mis oma esialgses lähenduses on mõeldud raadioamatööridele ja hobi-astronoomidele. TLE-s sisalduvate värskete hetke- orbiidiandmete ja erinevates tarkvarades rakendatud liikumismudelitega on võimalik ennustada objekti liikumist ning suunata oma antennid suhtluseks õigeaegselt vajalikus suunas. Töö uurib ka TLE-de sobivust orbitaalkäitumise analüüsiks ja tulemuste kasutatavust tegeliku missiooni planeerimise ja disaini juures. Töö käik on olnud väga huvitav ja kestnud umbes aasta, See on hõlmanud muuhulgas andmete kogumist, töötlust, kvaliteedi hindamist. Tööd (MySQL) andmebaasiga – andmete jaoks sobiliku struktuuri loomist, andmetega täitmist ja sobival kujul andmete esitamist. Andmeanalüüsi, mille osana kasutati ka GNUPlot nimelist tarkvara orbitaalparameetritele graafilise vormi andmiseks.
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    Assessing Event-Based Localization Algorithms for Vehicular Off-Road Applications
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2023) Salumets, Sten; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Event cameras, with their high temporal resolution and dynamic range, represent a promising technology for localization applications. Yet, their performance in off-road environments remains untested. This thesis addresses this gap by assessing three eventbased localization methods in off-road settings. A conventional frame-based method is included as a benchmark for comparison. The effectiveness of each method is assessed by comparing computed trajectories with ground truth data. The findings indicate that current publicly available event-based methods are not yet mature enough to provide accurate and robust performance in off-road environments. The study underscores the need for further research to fully harness the potential of event cameras in these challenging settings.
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    Assessment of ethnic and gender bias in automated first impression analysis
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2022) Krull, Friedrich; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    This thesis aims to investigate possible gender and ethnic biases in state-of-the-art deep learning methods in first impression analysis. Analysing a person with some software, businesses want to find the best candidate, without the person being judged by their gender or ethnicity. To achieve this, a first impression dataset about the big five personality traits, with additional information about the person’s gender and ethnic background, was used. Biases were both investigated with models trained on balanced and imbalanced data, where balanced here refers to the number of frames used from people classified as Asian, African-American, or Caucasian in the dataset. The results with both the balanced and imbalanced datasets were similar. With all the models the accuracy for Asians was much higher compared to others, which may come from the fact that the dataset did not include enough variance in the Asian data, so when evaluating, all Asians were seen similarly.
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    Augmented reality (AR) for enabling human-robot collaboration with ROS robots
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2022) Rybalskii, Igor; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    With current industrialization trends on the reintroduction of human into the manufacturing process and development of augmented reality I propose the interface, which uses Augmented reality to allow the operator to interact with robotic systems, such as manipulators and mobile robots. 2 interfaces were created: one for manipulators and one for mobile robots. Both of them are developed to work on Microsoft Hololens 2 augmented reality glasses and robots, running ROS. Interface for manipulators allows user to control the robot by sending end-effector goals and previewing the goal joint states of the manipulator. Interface for mobile robots allows the user to send navigation goals and preview the robot’s movement trajectory. Interfaces were developed using Unity game engine. Developed interfaces were tested with UR5e manipulator and Robotont mobile robot.
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    Automating data management system of 1.5-meter telescope at Tartu Observatory
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2020) Suchockas, Laimonas; Eenmäe, Tõnis; Ramler, Heleri; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
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    Autonomous motion planning for spacecrafts near small solar system bodies: simultaneously refining the gravitational field model and re-planning gravity dependant maneuvers
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2020) Paul, Aditya Savio; Otte, MichaelW.; Allik, Viljo; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Small solar system bodies can be better studied while orbiting in their vicinity. However, orbital motion around such bodies is challenging due to their irregular and weaker gravity as compared to larger bodies. Moreover, a-priori paths developed by earth-based measurements tend to generate monolithic trajectories. Dynamic path planning in space has the potential to improve the study of small solar system bodies. Fine-grained motion plans require detailed knowledge of the gravitational forces, that can be measured in the sphere of influence. The gravity models can be analysed for mass and material distribution across the body. We propose a method for autonomous motion planning around small solar system bodies that simultaneously measures and refines the gravitational model. The trajectories are replanned considering the updated model to perform stable orbital maneuvers eventually providing a high fidelity gravity model. The research shall enable the spacecraft to perform autonomous maneuvers, design landing strategies and scout for in-situ resources.
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    Avatud robotplatvorm Robotont
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2019) Raudmäe, Renno; Kruusamäe, Karl, supervisor; Vunder, Veiko, supervisor; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Robootika osakaal maailmas on tõusmas ning suur osa sellest tuleneb teenindusrobootikas kasutatavatest mobiilsetest platvormidest, mis tingib erakordselt suure nõudluse robootika inseneride järele. Käesoleva magistritöö eesmärgiks oli ROSi toetava haridusliku robotplatvormi Robotont arendamine. Lõputöö raames seati töökorda kuus Robotont generatsioon 1 ning valmisid õppematerjalid antud platvormile. Loodi Robotont generatsioon 2 mehaanika disain, lahendus, dokumenteerimise keskkond ning toodeti 17 Robotont generatsioon kahte. Valminud robotite töökindlust testiti mitmetes töötubades ja Tartu Ülikooli Narva Kolledžis kursusel „Robotite programmeerimine ROS vahenditega“.
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    Broadcast Systems: Alamouti Index Coding
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Atanda, Abdulazeez Olaseni; Skachek, Vitaly, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Consider a wireless broadcast channel with a number of receivers, where each receiver possesses some side information. In an index coding problem, the transmitter aims at delivering different messages to different receivers. It is desirable to minimize the total number of message transmissions in order to improve the bandwidth efficiency. It is known that the minimum number of transmissions can be achieved by solving a minimum rank problem for a given side information graph, which is a known NP-hard problem. In this thesis, the index coding problem over additive white Gaussian noise and Rayleigh fading channels is studied. Modulation techniques, such as phase shift keying and quadrature amplitude modulation, are tested, and it is shown that a careful choice of modulation can improve the performance. It is also shown that a careful choice of a generator matrix can provide for further performance gains, in particular for ”prioritized” receivers. A probabilistic soft information detection (PSID) is compared to a simple hard decision scheme, and the PSID performance is shown superior in achieving a lower error rate. Additional improvement in performance is achieved by using diversity, when employing two transmit and two receive antenna system in conjunction with the Alamouti code. All these techniques provide for the lower error rates and higher throughput when compared to the traditional schemes.
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    Building an Efficient and Secure Software Supply Pipeline for Aerial Robotics Application
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2019) Arsovska, Dzvezdana; Kruusamäe, Karl, supersivor; Sheremet, Illia, supervisor; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used for wind turbine inspection need robust software testing and deployment strategies which go beyond the traditional pre-deployment validation on real hardware. The goal of this thesis is to implement secure software supply pipeline within a case organization and evaluate the results of the implementation. The pipeline leverages the Docker containerization environment coupled with the advancements in Continuous integration and Continuous delivery practices. The result of this thesis is an automated testing and delivery pipeline which can be used for testing single components as well as the system as a whole in an efficient way, effectively reducing the time and effort required to make a new release.
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    Capturing the sound of reed instruments via measurement of reed strain
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2023) Pihlap, Meelis; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    The sound from reed instruments (such as the bagpipe or the clarinet) is conventionally captured using microphones. Microphones capture all sound regardless of source, making it a volatile choice in live settings, where background noise (e.g. from other instruments) is prominent. As such, an instrument pickup for reed instruments is desirable for use in settings where an isolated signal is required. There are few existing reed instrument pickups and their installation often involves permanent changes to the instrument. A novel reed instrument pickup is introduced, which uses a strain gauge mounted directly to the oscillating tongue as the sensing element. The pickup is compared against a measurement microphone and the results show that after a filtering stage, the pickup sounds good enough to compete with the microphone.
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    Communications subsystem hardware and software development for the ESTCube-2 nanosatellite
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2021) Allaje, Kristo; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    One of the most crucial components of satellites is their communications subsystem. Without a functioning radio link, it would be challenging to receive telemetry and payload data from the satellite and send telecommands to it from the ground. ESTCube-2 is a 3U CubeSat from the Estonian Student Satellite Foundation that is expectedto launch in 2022. The mission of ESTCube-2 is to test various payloads inLEO. The primary payload being the plasma brake, similar to the Electric Solar Wind Sail (E-Sail) experiment on ESTCube-1. Due to the critical nature of the satellite communications system, it is essential to start with thorough testing early to reach high reliability by the launch. The goals for this master thesis are to test ESTCube-2 communications subsystem hardware and software, and to create an engineering model, to resolve any issues discovered.
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    Comparison of Water Detection Models for an Off-road Unmanned Ground Vehicle
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2023) Rustambayli, Fidan; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Water hazards can cause unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to become stuck or break down during an autonomous mission, damage electronic components and sensors, and require costly repairs or replacements, making it crucial for UGVs to identify water hazards in real-time, determine secure path around them, or reduce their speed when appropriate to cross them safely. This thesis proposes a water detection system for UGVs in off-road environment. The proposed approach combines convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with transfer learning, leveraging their capabilities for effective water detection. The thesis includes a comprehensive review of traditional sensor-based methods and recent deep learning-based techniques. Real-world data collected in off-road environments are utilized to evaluate the proposed approach, and the method achieves a 0.50 Mean-IoU score and 92.74% accuracy on the test dataset. We also include a comparative analysis of the method with a previous deep learning-based semantic segmentation method for water detection. The comparison provides insights into the relative strengths and weaknesses of these approaches for water detection in off-road environments. Overall, this thesis provides valuable insights into the use of deep learning for semantic segmentation in challenging environments.
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    Comprehensive Study on High Dynamic Range Tone Mapping with Subjective Tests
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Salahlı, Aygül; Anbarjafari, Gholamreza, juhendaja; Ozcinar, Cagri, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    A high dynamic range (HDR) image has a very wide range of luminance levels that traditional low dynamic range (LDR) displays cannot visualize. For this reason, HDR images are usually transformed to 8-bit representations, so that the alpha channel for each pixel is used as an exponent value, sometimes referred to as exponential notation [43]. Tone mapping operators (TMOs) are used to transform high dynamic range to low dynamic range domain by compressing pixels so that traditional LDR display can visualize them. The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyse differences and similarities between the wide range of tone mapping operators that are available in the literature. Each TMO has been analyzed using subjective studies considering different conditions, which include environment, luminance, and colour. Also, several inverse tone mapping operators, HDR mappings with exposure fusion, histogram adjustment, and retinex have been analysed in this study. 19 different TMOs have been examined using a variety of HDR images. Mean opinion score (MOS) is calculated on those selected TMOs by asking the opinion of 25 independent people considering candidates’ age, vision, and colour blindness.
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    Deep Learning Based Automated Job Candidate Interview Screening
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2019) Aktas, Kadir; Anbarjafari, Gholamreza, supervisor; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Traditional way of recruitment process is challenging for both the candidate and the employer. To apply for a job, the candidate needs to prepare a CV. On the other hand, the employer needs to check all the submitted CVs and analyze the candidate data manually. These aspects can make the process very time consuming, especially when there are many candidates. Furthermore, the manual analysis of the candidate data is very open to human bias. The thesis proposes an automated video interview analysis system, which eliminates the problems mentioned above.
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    Design and Comparison of Attitude Control Modes for ESTCube-2
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Ofodile, Ikechukwu Chinonso; Slavinskis, Andris, juhendaja; Anbarjafari, Gholamreza, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    This thesis presents the attitude control problem of ESTCube-2. ESTCube-2 is a 3U CubeSat with a size of 10 x 10 x 30 cm and a weight of about 4 kg. It is the second satellite to be developed by the ESTCube Team and will be equipped with the E-Sail payload for the plasma break experiment, Earth observation camera, a high speed communication system, and a cold gas propulsion module. The satellite will make use of 3 electromagnetic coils, 3 reaction wheels and the cold gas thruster as actuators. The primary purpose of this work was to develop and compare control laws to ful ll the attitude control requirements of the ESTCube-2 mission. To achieve this, the spacecraft dynamics and environmental models are derived and analyzed. PD like controllers and LQR optimal controls are designed to ful ll the pointing requirements of the satellite in addition to the B-dot detumbling control law. Angular rate control law to spin up the satellite for tether deployment is also derived and presented. Simulations of the di erent controllers shows the performance with disturbances also added to the system. Finally recommendations and optimal control situations are presented based on the results.
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    Design and Implementation of a Cosmic Ray Muon Detector
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2019) Suurpere, Sander; Kiisk, Madis, supervisor; Georgadze, Anzori, supervisor; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Research in the recent two decades has proven detection devices based on cosmic ray muons to be a viable safe alternative to detection technologies using artificial ionizing radiation. Furthermore, some scientific groups have proved the use of other cosmic ray particles in combination with muons to be usable in the detection of illicit materials other than special nuclear materials (SNM). The thesis gives an overview of some of the methods that are used to detect cosmic ray muons and exploit them for practical applications. Additionally, the thesis describes the various steps that have to be taken to build a miniature scintillating detection plate. As a part of an ongoing project a single detection plate consisting of 256 fibres was designed along with several mechanical details needed for it to be functional. The experimental part consisted of constructing a real detector with an active scintillating area of approximately 70mmx70mm that is in principle capable of separating the hit location of a charged particle. The resulting work also highlighted many practical issues that usually cannot be found from literature.
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    Design and Implementation of a Generalized Resource Management Architecture in the TeMoto Software Framework
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2021) Kustavus, Allan; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    Autonomous robots are utilized in a wide range of domains, combining a large number of resources like sensors, actuators and algorithms to form a self-acting robotic system. Tools, such as ROS and TeMoto, have been developed to allow for handling and managing of resources composing such systems. While TeMoto is meant to handle dynamic and changing situations the current implementation of its Resource Registrar, a core TeMoto component tasked with allocating, deallocating and tracking of resources, is tightly coupled to ROS, making it difficult to modify and improve. As a result of this thesis, the Resource Registrar (RR) of TeMoto was completely redesigned to be extendable to other robotic middleware, such as ROS2, and to improve TeMoto’s robustness with features, e.g., full recovery of the RR, that were unattainable with the previous design.
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    Design of Dynamic Anisotropy for Soft Robotic Simulation Trainers
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2021) Muru, Johannes; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    A model based incorporation of stiff fibers into an elastomeric matrix to program the stiffness profile of a soft robotic cervix is presented. The proposed soft actuator is designed to have similar mechanical properties as various biological soft tissues. The stiffness profile of the cervix was verified with an original measurement setup, designed to dilate the robotic cervix. It is demonstrated that the stiffness profile of the cervix is controllable. The soft robotic cervix gives promise to developing a working prototype to be used in healthcare simulators.
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    Design, Testing and Analysis of an Affordable Direction of Arrival System Using Off-The-Shelf SDR Hardware and Software
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2022) Amor, Erik; Tartu Ülikool. Loodus- ja täppisteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Tehnoloogiainstituut
    The growing use of wireless communication increases the need for devices to determine the location of the signal source. Affordable, accessible and universal devices can have a great role in addressing this aside precision tools. Combining popular off-the-shelf radio receivers with direction of arrival algorithms could provide a convenient tool. The setup is proven to give sufficient results for several location applications using HackRF radio and signal processing in software. The accuracy of the system can be improved by characterising the system for each use case. After the setup is completed, such system can still be convenient to use for non-technical end user.