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Andreas Greiner

Publications and source records attributed to Andreas Greiner.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

VoxelFix: Post-Hoc Semantic Correction of Completed 3D Voxel Maps

Semantic 3D maps are increasingly constructed automatically for aerial robotics by integrating learned semantic predictions into 3D representations. While this avoids costly manual 3D annotation, errors in the perception and mapping pipeline can persist in the resulting map, reducing its reliability for downstream autonomous tasks. Existing 3D semantic map refinement methods either rely on the original observations, treat occupancy as part of the prediction problem, or apply non-learned local regularization to completed maps. Instead, we study post-hoc semantic correction, asking whether semantic accuracy can be recovered directly from the completed map while keeping its geometry and occupancy fixed. We introduce \method, a graph-based model that corrects voxel labels based on local geometry and neighboring semantic information. To obtain training pairs, we corrupt contiguous regions of annotated OccuFly maps according to class confusions observed in upstream maps. We evaluate \method on completed OccuFly maps generated from predictions of four independently trained 2D segmentation models. \method consistently improves mIoU by 4.23--5.00 percentage points, with gains broadly distributed across the evaluated semantic classes and particularly strong improvements for tree, roof, and wall. Results on an independently reconstructed out-of-distribution aerial scene further suggest that the learned correction can transfer beyond the environments seen during training.

cs.CV

SafeLand: Safe Autonomous Landing in Unknown Environments with Bayesian Semantic Mapping

Autonomous landing of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) in unknown, dynamic environments poses significant safety challenges, particularly near people and infrastructure, as UAVs transition to routine urban and rural operations. Existing methods often rely on prior maps, heavy sensors like LiDAR, static markers, or fail to handle non-cooperative dynamic obstacles like humans, limiting generalization and real-time performance. To address these challenges, we introduce SafeLand, a lean, vision-based system for safe autonomous landing (SAL) that requires no prior information and operates only with a camera and a lightweight height sensor. Our approach constructs an online semantic ground map via deep learning-based semantic segmentation, optimized for embedded deployment and trained on a consolidation of seven curated public aerial datasets (achieving 70.22% mIoU across 20 classes), which is further refined through Bayesian probabilistic filtering with temporal semantic decay to robustly identify metric-scale landing spots. A behavior tree then governs adaptive landing, iteratively validates the spot, and reacts in real time to dynamic obstacles by pausing, climbing, or rerouting to alternative spots, maximizing human safety. We extensively evaluate our method in 200 simulations and 60 end-to-end field tests across industrial, urban, and rural environments at altitudes up to 100m, demonstrating zero false negatives for human detection. Compared to the state of the art, SafeLand achieves sub-second response latency, substantially lower than previous methods, while maintaining a superior success rate of 95%. To facilitate further research in aerial robotics, we release SafeLand's segmentation model as a plug-and-play ROS package, available at https://github.com/markus-42/SafeLand.

cs.RO

How Microplastics cross the Buoyancy Barrier: A multi-scale Study

Microplastics (MPs), though less dense than water, are frequently recovered from sediments in aqueous environments, indicating they can cross the buoyancy barrier. We quantify eco-corona mediated MP-sediment attraction and MP transport from the nanoscale to the macroscale, linking all scales to a coherent mechanism explaining how MP overcome buoyancy and settle in sediments through interaction with suspended sediment. Colloidal probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM) detected attractive forces (0.15 - 17 mN/m) enabling heteroaggregation. Microscale tests confirmed aggregation and on larger scales sediment retention more than doubled with an eco-corona. Simulations showed that environmental shear force ($4 \cdot 10^{-4} mN/m$) cannot disrupt aggregates. In sedimentation columns, biofilm-covered MPs settled twice as often as plain MPs in bentonite suspensions. MP retention increased by 32 %. These results demonstrate that eco-corona/biofilm-mediated heteroaggregation is a robust pathway for MP sinking, accumulation, and retention in sediment beds. By identifying physical interaction thresholds and aggregation stability, we provide mechanistic insight into MP fate, highlight probable accumulation hotspots, and offer an evidence base for improved risk assessment and environmental modelling.

cond-mat.soft