CVMay 26
YOLO26-RipeLoc Lite: A lightweight architecture for tomato ripeness detection and picking point localization in greenhouse robotic harvestingRajmeet Singh, Manveen Kaur, Shahpour Alirezaee et al.
In greenhouse tomato production, automated harvesting requires accurate detection of ripe tomatoes, ripeness classification, and precise picking-point localization for robotic end-effectors. This paper proposes YOLO26-RipeLoc Lite, a lightweight deep learning architecture based on YOLO26 for simultaneous detection, ripeness classification, and center-point localization of greenhouse tomatoes. The model introduces three modifications: (1) a Lightweight Feature Pyramid Network (LFPN) with depthwise separable convolutions for efficient multi-scale fusion, (2) a Ripeness-Aware Attention Module (RAAM) with dual pooling and a learnable ripeness bias vector for enhanced color-texture discrimination, and (3) a Compact Detection Head (CDH) with shared convolutions and an integrated center-point regression branch for direct grasp planning. The model is evaluated on a custom dataset of 1,500 images with 6,227 instances (3,566 ripe, 2,661 unripe) from the SILAL greenhouse, Abu Dhabi, UAE. YOLO26-RipeLoc Lite achieves mAP@0.5 of 92.9% (95.2% ripe, 90.6% unripe) with the highest precision (95.2%) among all evaluated architectures using only 2.38M parameters. Post-training BatchNorm pruning at 30% reduces parameters to ~1.8M with negligible accuracy loss. Ablation studies confirm that greenhouse-aware HSV augmentation provides the largest improvement (+2.02 pp mAP@50), backbone freezing achieves peak precision (93.8%), and 3-phase progressive unfreezing yields the best localization quality (mAP@50:95 of 64.6%). Comparisons with YOLOv8n/s, YOLO11n/s, YOLO12n/s, and YOLO26s confirm superior accuracy-efficiency: 2.9 pp higher precision than YOLO12n with 7.0% fewer parameters and integrated center-point localization for robotic end-effector guidance.
ROApr 4
A Novel Hybrid PID-LQR Controller for Sit-To-Stand Assistance Using a CAD-Integrated Simscape Multibody Lower Limb ExoskeletonRanjeet Kumbhar, Rajmeet Singh, Appaso M Gadade et al.
Precise control of lower limb exoskeletons during sit-to-stand (STS) transitions remains a central challenge in rehabilitation robotics owing to the highly nonlinear, time-varying dynamics of the human-exoskeleton system and the stringent trajectory tracking requirements imposed by clinical safety. This paper presents the systematic design, simulation, and comparative evaluation of three control strategies: a classical Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller, a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), and a novel Hybrid PID-LQR controller applied to a bilateral lower limb exoskeleton performing the sit-to-stand transition. A high-fidelity, physics-based dynamic model of the exoskeleton is constructed by importing a SolidWorks CAD assembly directly into the MATLAB/Simulink Simscape Multibody environment, preserving accurate geometric and inertial properties of all links. Physiologically representative reference joint trajectories for the hip, knee, and ankle joints are generated using OpenSim musculoskeletal simulation and decomposed into three biomechanical phases: flexion-momentum (0-33%), momentum-transfer (34-66%), and extension (67-100%). The proposed Hybrid PID-LQR controller combines the optimal transient response of LQR with the integral disturbance rejection of PID through a tuned blending coefficient alpha = 0.65. Simulation results demonstrate that the Hybrid PID-LQR achieves RMSE reductions of 72.3% and 70.4% over PID at the hip and knee joints, respectively, reduces settling time by over 90% relative to PID across all joints, and limits overshoot to 2.39%-6.10%, confirming its superiority over both baseline strategies across all evaluated performance metrics and demonstrating strong translational potential for clinical assistive exoskeleton deployment.
ROMay 1, 2023
LSTM-based Preceding Vehicle Behaviour Prediction during Aggressive Lane Change for ACC ApplicationRajmeet Singh, Saeed Mozaffari, Mahdi Rezaei et al.
The development of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) systems aims to enhance the safety and comfort of vehicles by automatically regulating the speed of the vehicle to ensure a safe gap from the preceding vehicle. However, conventional ACC systems are unable to adapt themselves to changing driving conditions and drivers' behavior. To address this limitation, we propose a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) based ACC system that can learn from past driving experiences and adapt and predict new situations in real time. The model is constructed based on the real-world highD dataset, acquired from German highways with the assistance of camera-equipped drones. We evaluated the ACC system under aggressive lane changes when the side lane preceding vehicle cut off, forcing the targeted driver to reduce speed. To this end, the proposed system was assessed on a simulated driving environment and compared with a feedforward Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model and Model Predictive Control (MPC) model. The results show that the LSTM-based system is 19.25% more accurate than the ANN model and 5.9% more accurate than the MPC model in terms of predicting future values of subject vehicle acceleration. The simulation is done in Matlab/Simulink environment.