Abstract-The state of the art in computer vision has rapidly advanced over the past decade largely aided by shared image datasets. However, most of these datasets tend to consist of assorted collections of images from the web that do not include 3D information or pose information. Furthermore, they target the problem of object category recognition-whereas solving the problem of object instance recognition might be sufficient for many robotic tasks. To address these issues, we present a highquality, large-scale dataset of 3D object instances, with accurate calibration information for every image. We anticipate that "solving" this dataset will effectively remove many perceptionrelated problems for mobile, sensing-based robots.The contributions of this work consist of: (1) BigBIRD, a dataset of 100 objects (and growing), composed of, for each object, 600 3D point clouds and 600 high-resolution (12 MP) images spanning all views, (2) a method for jointly calibrating a multi-camera system, (3) details of our data collection system, which collects all required data for a single object in under 6 minutes with minimal human effort, and (4) multiple software components (made available in open source), used to automate multi-sensor calibration and the data collection process. All code and data are available at

Titanium- and chromium-based carbides are attractive coating materials to impart wear resistance. Suspension plasma spraying (SPS) is a relatively new thermal spray process which has shown a facile ability to use sub-micron and nano-sized feedstock to deposit high-performance coatings. The specific novelty of this work lies in the processing of fine-sized titanium and chromium carbides (TiC and Cr3C2) in the form of aqueous suspensions to fabricate wear-resistant coatings by SPS. The resulting coatings were characterized by surface morphology, microstructure, phase constitution, and micro-hardness. The abrasive, erosive, and sliding wear performance of the SPS-processed TiC and Cr3C2 coatings was also evaluated. The results amply demonstrate that SPS is a promising route to manufacture superior wear-resistant carbide-based coatings with minimal in situ oxidation during their processing.

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