Encoder

Related papers: 20

About

An encoder is a component—whether hardware or software—that transforms raw input data into a structured internal representation suitable for downstream processing or control. In hardware contexts, encoders are physical sensors (typically optical or magnetic) attached to robot joints or wheels that convert rotational position and velocity into digital signals, enabling accurate odometry, kinematic calibration, and closed-loop motor control. In software and deep learning contexts, encoders are neural network modules that compress high-dimensional inputs—such as images, point clouds, or video sequences—into compact, information-rich feature representations. These learned embeddings power tasks like semantic segmentation, object detection, grasp detection, action recognition, and trajectory forecasting. Encoder-decoder architectures are especially prevalent, pairing the encoder's abstraction stage with a decoder that reconstructs or predicts outputs at the desired resolution or format. Encoders matter because they determine the quality and efficiency of information flow throughout a system: well-designed encoders reduce computational cost, improve generalization, and enable robots to perceive and reason about complex environments reliably, bridging the gap between raw sensor data and intelligent decision-making.

Top Cited Papers

Temporal Convolutional Networks for Action Segmentation and Detection

Colin Lea, M. D. Flynn, Renè Vidal, Austin Reiter, Gregory D. Hager

Citations: 2028 • 2017

Agricultural robot dataset for plant classification, localization and mapping on sugar beet fields

Nived Chebrolu, Philipp Lottes, Alexander Schaefer, Wera Winterhalter, Wolfram Burgard, Cyrill Stachniss

Citations: 327 • 2017

Industrial Robot Forward Calibration Method and Results

Daniel E. Whitney, C. Lozinski, J. M. Rourke

Citations: 315 • 1986

Social-BiGAT: Multimodal Trajectory Forecasting using Bicycle-GAN and\n Graph Attention Networks

Vineet Kosaraju, Amir Sadeghian, Roberto Martín-Martín, Ian Reid, S. Hamid Rezatofighi, Silvio Savarese

Citations: 278 • 2019

A technique to calibrate industrial robots with experimental verification

R.P. Judd, A.B. Knasinski

Citations: 255 • 1990

Hardware Implementation of a Real-Time Neural Network Controller With a DSP and an FPGA for Nonlinear Systems

Seul Jung, Sung Su Kim

Citations: 245 • 2007

PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection From Point Clouds

Alex Lang, Sourabh Vora, Holger Caesar, Lubing Zhou, Jiong Yang, Oscar Beijbom

Citations: 241 • 2019

Contextual encoder–decoder network for visual saliency prediction

Alexander Kröner, Mario Senden, Kurt Driessens, Rainer Goebel

Citations: 222 • 2020

Gyrodometry: a new method for combining data from gyros and odometry in mobile robots

J. Borenstein, L. Feng

Citations: 215 • 2002

Self-Supervised Model Adaptation for Multimodal Semantic Segmentation

Citations: 212 • 2019

LaneRCNN: Distributed Representations for Graph-Centric Motion Forecasting

Wenyuan Zeng, Ming Liang, Renjie Liao, Raquel Urtasun

Citations: 200 • 2021

Trajectory tracking control for navigation of the inverse pendulum type self-contained mobile robot

Yun‐Su Ha, Shin’ichi Yuta

Citations: 193 • 1996

RED: Reinforced Encoder-Decoder Networks for Action Anticipation

Jiyang Gao, Zhenheng Yang, Ram Nevatia

Citations: 191 • 2017

A Comparative Study of Real-Time Semantic Segmentation for Autonomous Driving

Mennatullah Siam, Mostafa Gamal, Moemen Abdel-Razek, Senthil Yogamani, Martin Jägersand, Hong Zhang

Citations: 178 • 2018

Significance of observation strategy on the design of robot calibration experiments

Morris R. Driels, Uday S. Pathre

Citations: 177 • 1990

On adaptive inverse dynamics control of rigid robots

Mark W. Spong, Roméo Ortega

Citations: 176 • 1990

Detecting object affordances with Convolutional Neural Networks

Anh‐Tu Nguyen, Dimitrios Kanoulas, Darwin G. Caldwell, Nikos G. Tsagarakis

Citations: 175 • 2016

Modeling and Identification of Elastic Robot Joints With Hysteresis and Backlash

Michael Ruderman, Frank Hoffmann, Torsten Bertram

Citations: 172 • 2009

VINS on wheels

Kejian J. Wu, Chao Guo, Γεώργιος Γεωργίου, Stergios I. Roumeliotis

Citations: 170 • 2017

Robust localization using relative and absolute position estimates

Amit Goel, Stergios I. Roumeliotis, Gaurav S. Sukhatme

Citations: 169 • 2003