Master's thesis: Robotic Anisotropic X-ray Dark-field Tomography: robot integration and collision detection

Abstract

Anisotropic X-ray Dark-field Tomography (AXDT) enables the visualization of microstructure orientations without having to explicitly resolve them. Based on the directionally dependent X-ray dark-field signal as measured by an X-ray grating interferometer and our spherical harmonics forward model, AXDT reconstructs spherical scattering functions for every volume position, which in turn allows the extraction of the microstructure orientations. Potential applications range from materials testing to medical diagnostics.

Tasks

Subject of this thesis is the device holding the sample into the X-ray beam when acquiring data for Anisotropic X-ray Dark-field Tomography (AXDT). The flexibility of the holding device is very crucial, as AXDT requires full angular sampling. In particular, a robot arm is to be integrated into an experimental AXDT setup, including controlling the robot as well as providing collision detection and prevention of the robot with the rest of the experimental setup via two depth cameras. A first prototype is to be implemented as a simulation based on ROS, demonstrating the feasibility of the approach and evaluating its potential for practical implementation.

Requirements

Interest in robotics, knowledge in C++

Contact

• Tobias Lasser