Publications | Perceiving Systems - Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

43 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2019

Generating 3D People in Scenes without People

Zhang, Y., Hassan, M., Neumann, H., Black, M. J., Tang, S.

arXiv:1912.02923, December 2019 (article)

Abstract

We present a fully-automatic system that takes a 3D scene and generates plausible 3D human bodies that are posed naturally in that 3D scene. Given a 3D scene without people, humans can easily imagine how people could interact with the scene and the objects in it. However, this is a challenging task for a computer as solving it requires (1) the generated human bodies should be semantically plausible with the 3D environment, e.g. people sitting on the sofa or cooking near the stove; (2) the generated human-scene interaction should be physically feasible in the way that the human body and scene do not interpenetrate while, at the same time, body-scene contact supports physical interactions. To that end, we make use of the surface-based 3D human model SMPL-X. We first train a conditional variational autoencoder to predict semantically plausible 3D human pose conditioned on latent scene representations, then we further refine the generated 3D bodies using scene constraints to enforce feasible physical interaction. We show that our approach is able to synthesize realistic and expressive 3D human bodies that naturally interact with 3D environment. We perform extensive experiments demonstrating that our generative framework compares favorably with existing methods, both qualitatively and quantitatively. We believe that our scene-conditioned 3D human generation pipeline will be useful for numerous applications; e.g. to generate training data for human pose estimation, in video games and in VR/AR.

PDF link (url) [BibTex]

2019

Zhang, Y., Hassan, M., Neumann, H., Black, M. J., Tang, S. Generating 3D People in Scenes without People arXiv:1912.02923, December 2019 (article)

PDF link (url) [BibTex]

Learning Multi-Human Optical Flow

Ranjan, A., Hoffmann, D. T., Tzionas, D., Tang, S., Romero, J., Black, M. J.

International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV), December 2019 (article)

Abstract

The optical flow of humans is well known to be useful for the analysis of human action. Recent optical flow methods focus on training deep networks to approach the problem. However, the training data used by them does not cover the domain of human motion. Therefore, we develop a dataset of multi-human optical flow and train optical flow networks on this dataset. We use a 3D model of the human body and motion capture data to synthesize realistic flow fields in both single-and multi-person images. We then train optical flow networks to estimate human flow fields from pairs of images. We demonstrate that our trained networks are more accurate than a wide range of top methods on held-out test data and that they can generalize well to real image sequences. The code, trained models and the dataset are available for research.

Paper poster link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Ranjan, A., Hoffmann, D. T., Tzionas, D., Tang, S., Romero, J., Black, M. J. Learning Multi-Human Optical Flow International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV), December 2019 (article)

Paper poster link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Decoding subcategories of human bodies from both body- and face-responsive cortical regions

Foster, C., Zhao, M., Romero, J., Black, M. J., Mohler, B. J., Bartels, A., Bülthoff, I.

NeuroImage, 202(15):116085, November 2019 (article)

Abstract

Our visual system can easily categorize objects (e.g. faces vs. bodies) and further differentiate them into subcategories (e.g. male vs. female). This ability is particularly important for objects of social significance, such as human faces and bodies. While many studies have demonstrated category selectivity to faces and bodies in the brain, how subcategories of faces and bodies are represented remains unclear. Here, we investigated how the brain encodes two prominent subcategories shared by both faces and bodies, sex and weight, and whether neural responses to these subcategories rely on low-level visual, high-level visual or semantic similarity. We recorded brain activity with fMRI while participants viewed faces and bodies that varied in sex, weight, and image size. The results showed that the sex of bodies can be decoded from both body- and face-responsive brain areas, with the former exhibiting more consistent size-invariant decoding than the latter. Body weight could also be decoded in face-responsive areas and in distributed body-responsive areas, and this decoding was also invariant to image size. The weight of faces could be decoded from the fusiform body area (FBA), and weight could be decoded across face and body stimuli in the extrastriate body area (EBA) and a distributed body-responsive area. The sex of well-controlled faces (e.g. excluding hairstyles) could not be decoded from face- or body-responsive regions. These results demonstrate that both face- and body-responsive brain regions encode information that can distinguish the sex and weight of bodies. Moreover, the neural patterns corresponding to sex and weight were invariant to image size and could sometimes generalize across face and body stimuli, suggesting that such subcategorical information is encoded with a high-level visual or semantic code.

paper pdf DOI [BibTex]

Foster, C., Zhao, M., Romero, J., Black, M. J., Mohler, B. J., Bartels, A., Bülthoff, I. Decoding subcategories of human bodies from both body- and face-responsive cortical regions NeuroImage, 202(15):116085, November 2019 (article)

paper pdf DOI [BibTex]

Active Perception based Formation Control for Multiple Aerial Vehicles

Tallamraju, R., Price, E., Ludwig, R., Karlapalem, K., Bülthoff, H. H., Black, M. J., Ahmad, A.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Robotics and Automation Letters, 4(4):4491-4498, IEEE, October 2019 (article)

Abstract

We present a novel robotic front-end for autonomous aerial motion-capture (mocap) in outdoor environments. In previous work, we presented an approach for cooperative detection and tracking (CDT) of a subject using multiple micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs). However, it did not ensure optimal view-point configurations of the MAVs to minimize the uncertainty in the person's cooperatively tracked 3D position estimate. In this article, we introduce an active approach for CDT. In contrast to cooperatively tracking only the 3D positions of the person, the MAVs can actively compute optimal local motion plans, resulting in optimal view-point configurations, which minimize the uncertainty in the tracked estimate. We achieve this by decoupling the goal of active tracking into a quadratic objective and non-convex constraints corresponding to angular configurations of the MAVs w.r.t. the person. We derive this decoupling using Gaussian observation model assumptions within the CDT algorithm. We preserve convexity in optimization by embedding all the non-convex constraints, including those for dynamic obstacle avoidance, as external control inputs in the MPC dynamics. Multiple real robot experiments and comparisons involving 3 MAVs in several challenging scenarios are presented.

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Tallamraju, R., Price, E., Ludwig, R., Karlapalem, K., Bülthoff, H. H., Black, M. J., Ahmad, A. Active Perception based Formation Control for Multiple Aerial Vehicles IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Robotics and Automation Letters, 4(4):4491-4498, IEEE, October 2019 (article)

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

3D Morphable Face Models - Past, Present and Future

Egger, B., Smith, W. A. P., Tewari, A., Wuhrer, S., Zollhoefer, M., Beeler, T., Bernard, F., Bolkart, T., Kortylewski, A., Romdhani, S., Theobalt, C., Blanz, V., Vetter, T.

arxiv preprint arXiv:1909.01815, September 2019 (article)

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a detailed survey of 3D Morphable Face Models over the 20 years since they were first proposed. The challenges in building and applying these models, namely capture, modeling, image formation,and image analysis, are still active research topics, and we review the state-of-the-art in each of these areas. We also look ahead, identifying unsolved challenges, proposing directions for future research and highlighting the broad range of current and future applications.

paper project page [BibTex]

Egger, B., Smith, W. A. P., Tewari, A., Wuhrer, S., Zollhoefer, M., Beeler, T., Bernard, F., Bolkart, T., Kortylewski, A., Romdhani, S., Theobalt, C., Blanz, V., Vetter, T. 3D Morphable Face Models - Past, Present and Future arxiv preprint arXiv:1909.01815, September 2019 (article)

paper project page [BibTex]

Learning and Tracking the 3D Body Shape of Freely Moving Infants from RGB-D sequences

Hesse, N., Pujades, S., Black, M., Arens, M., Hofmann, U., Schroeder, S.

Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), 2019 (article)

Abstract

Statistical models of the human body surface are generally learned from thousands of high-quality 3D scans in predefined poses to cover the wide variety of human body shapes and articulations. Acquisition of such data requires expensive equipment, calibration procedures, and is limited to cooperative subjects who can understand and follow instructions, such as adults. We present a method for learning a statistical 3D Skinned Multi-Infant Linear body model (SMIL) from incomplete, low-quality RGB-D sequences of freely moving infants. Quantitative experiments show that SMIL faithfully represents the RGB-D data and properly factorizes the shape and pose of the infants. To demonstrate the applicability of SMIL, we fit the model to RGB-D sequences of freely moving infants and show, with a case study, that our method captures enough motion detail for General Movements Assessment (GMA), a method used in clinical practice for early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders in infants. SMIL provides a new tool for analyzing infant shape and movement and is a step towards an automated system for GMA.

pdf Journal DOI [BibTex]

Hesse, N., Pujades, S., Black, M., Arens, M., Hofmann, U., Schroeder, S. Learning and Tracking the 3D Body Shape of Freely Moving Infants from RGB-D sequences Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), 2019 (article)

pdf Journal DOI [BibTex]

Perceptual Effects of Inconsistency in Human Animations

Kenny, S., Mahmood, N., Honda, C., Black, M. J., Troje, N. F.

ACM Trans. Appl. Percept., 16(1):2:1-2:18, Febuary 2019 (article)

Abstract

The individual shape of the human body, including the geometry of its articulated structure and the distribution of weight over that structure, influences the kinematics of a person’s movements. How sensitive is the visual system to inconsistencies between shape and motion introduced by retargeting motion from one person onto the shape of another? We used optical motion capture to record five pairs of male performers with large differences in body weight, while they pushed, lifted, and threw objects. From these data, we estimated both the kinematics of the actions as well as the performer’s individual body shape. To obtain consistent and inconsistent stimuli, we created animated avatars by combining the shape and motion estimates from either a single performer or from different performers. Using these stimuli we conducted three experiments in an immersive virtual reality environment. First, a group of participants detected which of two stimuli was inconsistent. Performance was very low, and results were only marginally significant. Next, a second group of participants rated perceived attractiveness, eeriness, and humanness of consistent and inconsistent stimuli, but these judgements of animation characteristics were not affected by consistency of the stimuli. Finally, a third group of participants rated properties of the objects rather than of the performers. Here, we found strong influences of shape-motion inconsistency on perceived weight and thrown distance of objects. This suggests that the visual system relies on its knowledge of shape and motion and that these components are assimilated into an altered perception of the action outcome. We propose that the visual system attempts to resist inconsistent interpretations of human animations. Actions involving object manipulations present an opportunity for the visual system to reinterpret the introduced inconsistencies as a change in the dynamics of an object rather than as an unexpected combination of body shape and body motion.

publisher pdf DOI [BibTex]

Kenny, S., Mahmood, N., Honda, C., Black, M. J., Troje, N. F. Perceptual Effects of Inconsistency in Human Animations ACM Trans. Appl. Percept., 16(1):2:1-2:18, Febuary 2019 (article)

publisher pdf DOI [BibTex]

The Virtual Caliper: Rapid Creation of Metrically Accurate Avatars from 3D Measurements

Pujades, S., Mohler, B., Thaler, A., Tesch, J., Mahmood, N., Hesse, N., Bülthoff, H. H., Black, M. J.

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 25, pages: 1887,1897, IEEE, 2019 (article)

Abstract

Creating metrically accurate avatars is important for many applications such as virtual clothing try-on, ergonomics, medicine, immersive social media, telepresence, and gaming. Creating avatars that precisely represent a particular individual is challenging however, due to the need for expensive 3D scanners, privacy issues with photographs or videos, and difficulty in making accurate tailoring measurements. We overcome these challenges by creating “The Virtual Caliper”, which uses VR game controllers to make simple measurements. First, we establish what body measurements users can reliably make on their own body. We find several distance measurements to be good candidates and then verify that these are linearly related to 3D body shape as represented by the SMPL body model. The Virtual Caliper enables novice users to accurately measure themselves and create an avatar with their own body shape. We evaluate the metric accuracy relative to ground truth 3D body scan data, compare the method quantitatively to other avatar creation tools, and perform extensive perceptual studies. We also provide a software application to the community that enables novices to rapidly create avatars in fewer than five minutes. Not only is our approach more rapid than existing methods, it exports a metrically accurate 3D avatar model that is rigged and skinned.

Project Page IEEE Open Access IEEE Open Access PDF DOI [BibTex]

Pujades, S., Mohler, B., Thaler, A., Tesch, J., Mahmood, N., Hesse, N., Bülthoff, H. H., Black, M. J. The Virtual Caliper: Rapid Creation of Metrically Accurate Avatars from 3D Measurements IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 25, pages: 1887,1897, IEEE, 2019 (article)

Project Page IEEE Open Access IEEE Open Access PDF DOI [BibTex]

2013

Branch&Rank for Efficient Object Detection

Lehmann, A., Gehler, P., VanGool, L.

International Journal of Computer Vision, Springer, December 2013 (article)

Abstract

Ranking hypothesis sets is a powerful concept for efficient object detection. In this work, we propose a branch&rank scheme that detects objects with often less than 100 ranking operations. This efficiency enables the use of strong and also costly classifiers like non-linear SVMs with RBF-TeX kernels. We thereby relieve an inherent limitation of branch&bound methods as bounds are often not tight enough to be effective in practice. Our approach features three key components: a ranking function that operates on sets of hypotheses and a grouping of these into different tasks. Detection efficiency results from adaptively sub-dividing the object search space into decreasingly smaller sets. This is inherited from branch&bound, while the ranking function supersedes a tight bound which is often unavailable (except for rather limited function classes). The grouping makes the system effective: it separates image classification from object recognition, yet combines them in a single formulation, phrased as a structured SVM problem. A novel aspect of branch&rank is that a better ranking function is expected to decrease the number of classifier calls during detection. We use the VOC’07 dataset to demonstrate the algorithmic properties of branch&rank.

pdf link (url) [BibTex]

2013

Lehmann, A., Gehler, P., VanGool, L. Branch&Rank for Efficient Object Detection International Journal of Computer Vision, Springer, December 2013 (article)

pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Extracting Postural Synergies for Robotic Grasping

Romero, J., Feix, T., Ek, C., Kjellstrom, H., Kragic, D.

Robotics, IEEE Transactions on, 29(6):1342-1352, December 2013 (article)

[BibTex]

Romero, J., Feix, T., Ek, C., Kjellstrom, H., Kragic, D. Extracting Postural Synergies for Robotic Grasping Robotics, IEEE Transactions on, 29(6):1342-1352, December 2013 (article)

[BibTex]

Markov Random Field Modeling, Inference & Learning in Computer Vision & Image Understanding: A Survey

Wang, C., Komodakis, N., Paragios, N.

Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU), 117(11):1610-1627, November 2013 (article)

Abstract

In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of Markov Random Fields (MRFs) in computer vision and image understanding, with respect to the modeling, the inference and the learning. While MRFs were introduced into the computer vision field about two decades ago, they started to become a ubiquitous tool for solving visual perception problems around the turn of the millennium following the emergence of efficient inference methods. During the past decade, a variety of MRF models as well as inference and learning methods have been developed for addressing numerous low, mid and high-level vision problems. While most of the literature concerns pairwise MRFs, in recent years we have also witnessed significant progress in higher-order MRFs, which substantially enhances the expressiveness of graph-based models and expands the domain of solvable problems. This survey provides a compact and informative summary of the major literature in this research topic.

Publishers site pdf [BibTex]

Wang, C., Komodakis, N., Paragios, N. Markov Random Field Modeling, Inference & Learning in Computer Vision & Image Understanding: A Survey Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU), 117(11):1610-1627, November 2013 (article)

Publishers site pdf [BibTex]

Multi-robot cooperative spherical-object tracking in 3D space based on particle filters

Ahmad, A., Lima, P.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 61(10):1084-1093, October 2013 (article)

Abstract

This article presents a cooperative approach for tracking a moving spherical object in 3D space by a team of mobile robots equipped with sensors, in a highly dynamic environment. The tracker’s core is a particle filter, modified to handle, within a single unified framework, the problem of complete or partial occlusion for some of the involved mobile sensors, as well as inconsistent estimates in the global frame among sensors, due to observation errors and/or self-localization uncertainty. We present results supporting our approach by applying it to a team of real soccer robots tracking a soccer ball, including comparison with ground truth.

DOI [BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Lima, P. Multi-robot cooperative spherical-object tracking in 3D space based on particle filters Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 61(10):1084-1093, October 2013 (article)

DOI [BibTex]

Puppet Flow

Zuffi, S., Black, M. J.

(7), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2013 (techreport)

Abstract

We introduce Puppet Flow (PF), a layered model describing the optical flow of a person in a video sequence. We consider video frames composed by two layers: a foreground layer corresponding to a person, and background. We model the background as an affine flow field. The foreground layer, being a moving person, requires reasoning about the articulated nature of the human body. We thus represent the foreground layer with the Deformable Structures model (DS), a parametrized 2D part-based human body representation. We call the motion field defined through articulated motion and deformation of the DS model, a Puppet Flow. By exploiting the DS representation, Puppet Flow is a parametrized optical flow field, where parameters are the person's pose, gender and body shape.

pdf Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Zuffi, S., Black, M. J. Puppet Flow (7), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2013 (techreport)

pdf Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

D2.1.4 RoCKIn@Work - Innovation in Mobile Industrial Manipulation Competition Design, Rule Book, and Scenario Construction

(FP7-ICT-601012 Revision 0.7), RoCKIn - Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics, sep 2013 (techreport)

Abstract

RoCKIn is a EU-funded project aiming to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics through the design and implementation of competitions. An additional objective of RoCKIn is to increase public awareness of the current state-of-the-art in robotics in Europe and to demonstrate the innovation potential of robotics applications for solving societal challenges and improving the competitiveness of Europe in the global markets. In order to achieve these objectives, RoCKIn develops two competitions, one for domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and one for industrial robots in factories (RoCKIn-@Work). These competitions are designed around challenges that are based on easy-to-communicate and convincing user stories, which catch the interest of both the general public and the scientifc community. The latter is in particular interested in solving open scientific challenges and to thoroughly assess, compare, and evaluate the developed approaches with competing ones. To allow this to happen, the competitions are designed to meet the requirements of benchmarking procedures and good experimental methods. The integration of benchmarking technology with the competition concept is one of the main objectives of RoCKIn. This document describes the first version of the RoCKIn@Work competition, which will be held for the first time in 2014. The first chapter of the document gives a brief overview, outlining the purpose and objective of the competition, the methodological approach taken by the RoCKIn project, the user story upon which the competition is based, the structure and organization of the competition, and the commonalities and differences with the RoboCup@Work competition, which served as inspiration for RoCKIn@Work. The second chapter provides details on the user story and analyzes the scientific and technical challenges it poses. Consecutive chapters detail the competition scenario, the competition design, and the organization of the competition. The appendices contain information on a library of functionalities, which we believe are needed, or at least useful, for building competition entries, details on the scenario construction, and a detailed account of the benchmarking infrastructure needed — and provided by RoCKIn.

[BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Awaad, I., Amigoni, F., Berghofer, J., Bischoff, R., Bonarini, A., Dwiputra, R., Hegger, F., Hochgeschwender, N., Iocchi, L., Kraetzschmar, G., Lima, P., Matteucci, M., Nardi, D., Schneider, S. D2.1.4 RoCKIn@Work - Innovation in Mobile Industrial Manipulation Competition Design, Rule Book, and Scenario Construction (FP7-ICT-601012 Revision 0.7), RoCKIn - Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics, sep 2013 (techreport)

[BibTex]

D2.1.1 RoCKIn@Home - A Competition for Domestic Service Robots Competition Design, Rule Book, and Scenario Construction

(FP7-ICT-601012 Revision 0.7), RoCKIn - Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics, sep 2013 (techreport)

Abstract

RoCKIn is a EU-funded project aiming to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics through the design and implementation of competitions. An additional objective of RoCKIn is to increase public awareness of the current state-of-the-art in robotics in Europe and to demonstrate the innovation potential of robotics applications for solving societal challenges and improving the competitiveness of Europe in the global markets. In order to achieve these objectives, RoCKIn develops two competitions, one for domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and one for industrial robots in factories (RoCKIn-@Work). These competitions are designed around challenges that are based on easy-to-communicate and convincing user stories, which catch the interest of both the general public and the scientifc community. The latter is in particular interested in solving open scientific challenges and to thoroughly assess, compare, and evaluate the developed approaches with competing ones. To allow this to happen, the competitions are designed to meet the requirements of benchmarking procedures and good experimental methods. The integration of benchmarking technology with the competition concept is one of the main objectives of RoCKIn. This document describes the first version of the RoCKIn@Home competition, which will be held for the first time in 2014. The first chapter of the document gives a brief overview, outlining the purpose and objective of the competition, the methodological approach taken by the RoCKIn project, the user story upon which the competition is based, the structure and organization of the competition, and the commonalities and differences with the RoboCup@Home competition, which served as inspiration for RoCKIn@Home. The second chapter provides details on the user story and analyzes the scientific and technical challenges it poses. Consecutive chapters detail the competition scenario, the competition design, and the organization of the competition. The appendices contain information on a library of functionalities, which we believe are needed, or at least useful, for building competition entries, details on the scenario construction, and a detailed account of the benchmarking infrastructure needed — and provided by RoCKIn.

[BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Awaad, I., Amigoni, F., Berghofer, J., Bischoff, R., Bonarini, A., Dwiputra, R., Hegger, F., Hochgeschwender, N., Iocchi, L., Kraetzschmar, G., Lima, P., Matteucci, M., Nardi, D., Schneider, S. D2.1.1 RoCKIn@Home - A Competition for Domestic Service Robots Competition Design, Rule Book, and Scenario Construction (FP7-ICT-601012 Revision 0.7), RoCKIn - Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics, sep 2013 (techreport)

[BibTex]

Vision meets Robotics: The KITTI Dataset

Geiger, A., Lenz, P., Stiller, C., Urtasun, R.

International Journal of Robotics Research, 32(11):1231 - 1237 , Sage Publishing, September 2013 (article)

Abstract

We present a novel dataset captured from a VW station wagon for use in mobile robotics and autonomous driving research. In total, we recorded 6 hours of traffic scenarios at 10-100 Hz using a variety of sensor modalities such as high-resolution color and grayscale stereo cameras, a Velodyne 3D laser scanner and a high-precision GPS/IMU inertial navigation system. The scenarios are diverse, capturing real-world traffic situations and range from freeways over rural areas to inner-city scenes with many static and dynamic objects. Our data is calibrated, synchronized and timestamped, and we provide the rectified and raw image sequences. Our dataset also contains object labels in the form of 3D tracklets and we provide online benchmarks for stereo, optical flow, object detection and other tasks. This paper describes our recording platform, the data format and the utilities that we provide.

pdf DOI [BibTex]

Geiger, A., Lenz, P., Stiller, C., Urtasun, R. Vision meets Robotics: The KITTI Dataset International Journal of Robotics Research, 32(11):1231 - 1237 , Sage Publishing, September 2013 (article)

pdf DOI [BibTex]

D1.1 Specification of General Features of Scenarios and Robots for Benchmarking Through Competitions

(FP7-ICT-601012 Revision 1.0), RoCKIn - Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics, July 2013 (techreport)

Abstract

RoCKIn is a EU-funded project aiming to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics through the design and implementation of competitions. An additional objective of RoCKIn is to increase public awareness of the current state-of-the-art in robotics and the innovation potential of robotics applications. From these objectives several requirements for the work performed in RoCKIn can be derived: The RoCKIn competitions must start from convincing, easy-to-communicate user stories, that catch the attention of relevant stakeholders, the media, and the crowd. The user stories play the role of a mid- to long-term vision for a competition. Preferably, the user stories address economic, societal, or environmental problems. The RoCKIn competitions must pose open scientific challenges of interest to sufficiently many researchers to attract existing and new teams of robotics researchers for participation in the competition. The competitions need to promise some suitable reward, such as recognition in the scientific community, publicity for a team’s work, awards, or prize money, to justify the effort a team puts into the development of a competition entry. The competitions should be designed in such a way that they reward general, scientifically sound solutions to the challenge problems; such general solutions should score better than approaches that work only in narrowly defined contexts and are considred over-engineered. The challenges motivating the RoCKIn competitions must be broken down into suitable intermediate goals that can be reached with a limited team effort until the next competition and the project duration. The RoCKIn competitions must be well-defined and well-designed, with comprehensive rule books and instructions for the participants in order to guarantee a fair competition. The RoCKIn competitions must integrate competitions with benchmarking in order to provide comprehensive feedback for the teams about the suitability of particular functional modules, their overall architecture, and system integration. This document takes the first steps towards the RoCKIn goals. After outlining our approach, we present several user stories for further discussion within the community. The main objectives of this document are to identify and document relevant scenario features and the tasks and functionalities subject for benchmarking in the competitions.

[BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Awaad, I., Amigoni, F., Berghofer, J., Bischoff, R., Bonarini, A., Dwiputra, R., Fontana, G., Hegger, F., Hochgeschwender, N., Iocchi, L., Kraetzschmar, G., Lima, P., Matteucci, M., Nardi, D., Schiaffonati, V., Schneider, S. D1.1 Specification of General Features of Scenarios and Robots for Benchmarking Through Competitions (FP7-ICT-601012 Revision 1.0), RoCKIn - Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics, July 2013 (techreport)

[BibTex]

SocRob-MSL 2013 Team Description Paper for Middle Sized League

Messias, J., Ahmad, A., Reis, J., Serafim, M., Lima, P.

17th Annual RoboCup International Symposium 2013, July 2013 (techreport)

Abstract

This paper describes the status of the SocRob MSL robotic soccer team as required by the RoboCup 2013 qualification procedures. The team’s latest scientific and technical developments, since its last participation in RoboCup MSL, include further advances in cooperative perception; novel communication methods for distributed robotics; progressive deployment of the ROS middleware; improved localization through feature tracking and Mixture MCL; novel planning methods based on Petri nets and decision-theoretic frameworks; and hardware developments in ball-handling/kicking devices.

link (url) [BibTex]

Messias, J., Ahmad, A., Reis, J., Serafim, M., Lima, P. SocRob-MSL 2013 Team Description Paper for Middle Sized League 17th Annual RoboCup International Symposium 2013, July 2013 (techreport)

link (url) [BibTex]

Visualizing dimensionality reduction of systems biology data

Lehrmann, A. M., Huber, M., Polatkan, A. C., Pritzkau, A., Nieselt, K.

Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 1(27):146-165, Springer, July 2013 (article)

pdf SpRay [BibTex]

Lehrmann, A. M., Huber, M., Polatkan, A. C., Pritzkau, A., Nieselt, K. Visualizing dimensionality reduction of systems biology data Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 1(27):146-165, Springer, July 2013 (article)

pdf SpRay [BibTex]

Unscented Kalman Filtering on Riemannian Manifolds

Soren Hauberg, Francois Lauze, Kim S. Pedersen

Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, 46(1):103-120, Springer Netherlands, May 2013 (article)

Publishers site PDF [BibTex]

Soren Hauberg, Francois Lauze, Kim S. Pedersen Unscented Kalman Filtering on Riemannian Manifolds Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, 46(1):103-120, Springer Netherlands, May 2013 (article)

Publishers site PDF [BibTex]

Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction

Hennig, P., Kiefel, M.

Journal of Machine Learning Research, 14(1):843-865, March 2013 (article)

Abstract

Four decades after their invention, quasi-Newton methods are still state of the art in unconstrained numerical optimization. Although not usually interpreted thus, these are learning algorithms that fit a local quadratic approximation to the objective function. We show that many, including the most popular, quasi-Newton methods can be interpreted as approximations of Bayesian linear regression under varying prior assumptions. This new notion elucidates some shortcomings of classical algorithms, and lights the way to a novel nonparametric quasi-Newton method, which is able to make more efficient use of available information at computational cost similar to its predecessors.

website+code pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Hennig, P., Kiefel, M. Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction Journal of Machine Learning Research, 14(1):843-865, March 2013 (article)

website+code pdf link (url) [BibTex]

A Quantitative Analysis of Current Practices in Optical Flow Estimation and the Principles Behind Them

Sun, D., Roth, S., Black, M. J.

(CS-10-03), Brown University, Department of Computer Science, January 2013 (techreport)

pdf [BibTex]

Sun, D., Roth, S., Black, M. J. A Quantitative Analysis of Current Practices in Optical Flow Estimation and the Principles Behind Them (CS-10-03), Brown University, Department of Computer Science, January 2013 (techreport)

pdf [BibTex]

Simultaneous Cast Shadows, Illumination and Geometry Inference Using Hypergraphs

Panagopoulos, A., Wang, C., Samaras, D., Paragios, N.

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), 35(2):437-449, 2013 (article)

pdf [BibTex]

Panagopoulos, A., Wang, C., Samaras, D., Paragios, N. Simultaneous Cast Shadows, Illumination and Geometry Inference Using Hypergraphs IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), 35(2):437-449, 2013 (article)

pdf [BibTex]

Random Forests for Real Time 3D Face Analysis

Fanelli, G., Dantone, M., Gall, J., Fossati, A., van Gool, L.

International Journal of Computer Vision, 101(3):437-458, Springer, 2013 (article)

Abstract

We present a random forest-based framework for real time head pose estimation from depth images and extend it to localize a set of facial features in 3D. Our algorithm takes a voting approach, where each patch extracted from the depth image can directly cast a vote for the head pose or each of the facial features. Our system proves capable of handling large rotations, partial occlusions, and the noisy depth data acquired using commercial sensors. Moreover, the algorithm works on each frame independently and achieves real time performance without resorting to parallel computations on a GPU. We present extensive experiments on publicly available, challenging datasets and present a new annotated head pose database recorded using a Microsoft Kinect.

data and code publisher's site pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Fanelli, G., Dantone, M., Gall, J., Fossati, A., van Gool, L. Random Forests for Real Time 3D Face Analysis International Journal of Computer Vision, 101(3):437-458, Springer, 2013 (article)

data and code publisher's site pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Markerless Motion Capture of Multiple Characters Using Multi-view Image Segmentation

Liu, Y., Gall, J., Stoll, C., Dai, Q., Seidel, H., Theobalt, C.

Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 35(11):2720-2735, 2013 (article)

Abstract

Capturing the skeleton motion and detailed time-varying surface geometry of multiple, closely interacting peoples is a very challenging task, even in a multicamera setup, due to frequent occlusions and ambiguities in feature-to-person assignments. To address this task, we propose a framework that exploits multiview image segmentation. To this end, a probabilistic shape and appearance model is employed to segment the input images and to assign each pixel uniquely to one person. Given the articulated template models of each person and the labeled pixels, a combined optimization scheme, which splits the skeleton pose optimization problem into a local one and a lower dimensional global one, is applied one by one to each individual, followed with surface estimation to capture detailed nonrigid deformations. We show on various sequences that our approach can capture the 3D motion of humans accurately even if they move rapidly, if they wear wide apparel, and if they are engaged in challenging multiperson motions, including dancing, wrestling, and hugging.

data and video pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Liu, Y., Gall, J., Stoll, C., Dai, Q., Seidel, H., Theobalt, C. Markerless Motion Capture of Multiple Characters Using Multi-view Image Segmentation Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 35(11):2720-2735, 2013 (article)

data and video pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Viewpoint and pose in body-form adaptation

Sekunova, A., Black, M., Parkinson, L., Barton, J. J. S.

Perception, 42(2):176-186, 2013 (article)

Abstract

Faces and bodies are complex structures, perception of which can play important roles in person identification and inference of emotional state. Face representations have been explored using behavioural adaptation: in particular, studies have shown that face aftereffects show relatively broad tuning for viewpoint, consistent with origin in a high-level structural descriptor far removed from the retinal image. Our goals were to determine first, if body aftereffects also showed a degree of viewpoint invariance, and second if they also showed pose invariance, given that changes in pose create even more dramatic changes in the 2-D retinal image. We used a 3-D model of the human body to generate headless body images, whose parameters could be varied to generate different body forms, viewpoints, and poses. In the first experiment, subjects adapted to varying viewpoints of either slim or heavy bodies in a neutral stance, followed by test stimuli that were all front-facing. In the second experiment, we used the same front-facing bodies in neutral stance as test stimuli, but compared adaptation from bodies in the same neutral stance to adaptation with the same bodies in different poses. We found that body aftereffects were obtained over substantial viewpoint changes, with no significant decline in aftereffect magnitude with increasing viewpoint difference between adapting and test images. Aftereffects also showed transfer across one change in pose but not across another. We conclude that body representations may have more viewpoint invariance than faces, and demonstrate at least some transfer across pose, consistent with a high-level structural description. Keywords: aftereffect, shape, face, representation

pdf from publisher abstract pdf link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Sekunova, A., Black, M., Parkinson, L., Barton, J. J. S. Viewpoint and pose in body-form adaptation Perception, 42(2):176-186, 2013 (article)

pdf from publisher abstract pdf link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Non-parametric hand pose estimation with object context

Romero, J., Kjellström, H., Ek, C. H., Kragic, D.

Image and Vision Computing , 31(8):555 - 564, 2013 (article)

Abstract

In the spirit of recent work on contextual recognition and estimation, we present a method for estimating the pose of human hands, employing information about the shape of the object in the hand. Despite the fact that most applications of human hand tracking involve grasping and manipulation of objects, the majority of methods in the literature assume a free hand, isolated from the surrounding environment. Occlusion of the hand from grasped objects does in fact often pose a severe challenge to the estimation of hand pose. In the presented method, object occlusion is not only compensated for, it contributes to the pose estimation in a contextual fashion; this without an explicit model of object shape. Our hand tracking method is non-parametric, performing a nearest neighbor search in a large database (.. entries) of hand poses with and without grasped objects. The system that operates in real time, is robust to self occlusions, object occlusions and segmentation errors, and provides full hand pose reconstruction from monocular video. Temporal consistency in hand pose is taken into account, without explicitly tracking the hand in the high-dim pose space. Experiments show the non-parametric method to outperform other state of the art regression methods, while operating at a significantly lower computational cost than comparable model-based hand tracking methods.

Publisher site pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Romero, J., Kjellström, H., Ek, C. H., Kragic, D. Non-parametric hand pose estimation with object context Image and Vision Computing , 31(8):555 - 564, 2013 (article)

Publisher site pdf link (url) [BibTex]

2011

High-quality reflection separation using polarized images

Kong, N., Tai, Y., Shin, S. Y.

IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 20(12):3393-3405, IEEE Signal Processing Society, December 2011 (article)

Abstract

In this paper, we deal with a problem of separating the effect of reflection from images captured behind glass. The input consists of multiple polarized images captured from the same view point but with different polarizer angles. The output is the high quality separation of the reflection layer and the background layer from the images. We formulate this problem as a constrained optimization problem and propose a framework that allows us to fully exploit the mutually exclusive image information in our input data. We test our approach on various images and demonstrate that our approach can generate good reflection separation results.

Publisher site [BibTex]

2011

Kong, N., Tai, Y., Shin, S. Y. High-quality reflection separation using polarized images IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 20(12):3393-3405, IEEE Signal Processing Society, December 2011 (article)

Publisher site [BibTex]

A human inspired gaze estimation system

Wulff, J., Sinha, P.

Journal of Vision, 11(11):507-507, ARVO, September 2011 (article)

Abstract

Estimating another person's gaze is a crucial skill in human social interactions. The social component is most apparent in dyadic gaze situations, in which the looker seems to look into the eyes of the observer, thereby signaling interest or a turn to speak. In a triadic situation, on the other hand, the looker's gaze is averted from the observer and directed towards another, specific target. This is mostly interpreted as a cue for joint attention, creating awareness of a predator or another point of interest. In keeping with the task's social significance, humans are very proficient at gaze estimation. Our accuracy ranges from less than one degree for dyadic settings to approximately 2.5 degrees for triadic ones. Our goal in this work is to draw inspiration from human gaze estimation mechanisms in order to create an artificial system that can approach the former's accuracy levels. Since human performance is severely impaired by both image-based degradations (Ando, 2004) and a change of facial configurations (Jenkins & Langton, 2003), the underlying principles are believed to be based both on simple image cues such as contrast/brightness distribution and on more complex geometric processing to reconstruct the actual shape of the head. By incorporating both kinds of cues in our system's design, we are able to surpass the accuracy of existing eye-tracking systems, which rely exclusively on either image-based or geometry-based cues (Yamazoe et al., 2008). A side-benefit of this combined approach is that it allows for gaze estimation despite moderate view-point changes. This is important for settings where subjects, say young children or certain kinds of patients, might not be fully cooperative to allow a careful calibration. Our model and implementation of gaze estimation opens up new experimental questions about human mechanisms while also providing a useful tool for general calibration-free, non-intrusive remote eye-tracking.

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Wulff, J., Sinha, P. A human inspired gaze estimation system Journal of Vision, 11(11):507-507, ARVO, September 2011 (article)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Detecting synchrony in degraded audio-visual streams

Dhandhania, K., Wulff, J., Sinha, P.

Journal of Vision, 11(11):800-800, ARVO, September 2011 (article)

Abstract

Even 8–10 week old infants, when presented with two dynamic faces and a speech stream, look significantly longer at the ‘correct’ talking person (Patterson & Werker, 2003). This is true even though their reduced visual acuity prevents them from utilizing high spatial frequencies. Computational analyses in the field of audio/video synchrony and automatic speaker detection (e.g. Hershey & Movellan, 2000), in contrast, usually depend on high-resolution images. Therefore, the correlation mechanisms found in these computational studies are not directly applicable to the processes through which we learn to integrate the modalities of speech and vision. In this work, we investigated the correlation between speech signals and degraded video signals. We found a high correlation persisting even with high image degradation, resembling the low visual acuity of young infants. Additionally (in a fashion similar to Graf et al., 2002) we explored which parts of the face correlate with the audio in the degraded video sequences. Perfect synchrony and small offsets in the audio were used while finding the correlation, thereby detecting visual events preceding and following audio events. In order to achieve a sufficiently high temporal resolution, high-speed video sequences (500 frames per second) of talking people were used. This is a temporal resolution unachieved in previous studies and has allowed us to capture very subtle and short visual events. We believe that the results of this study might be interesting not only to vision researchers, but, by revealing subtle effects on a very fine timescale, also to people working in computer graphics and the generation and animation of artificial faces.

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Dhandhania, K., Wulff, J., Sinha, P. Detecting synchrony in degraded audio-visual streams Journal of Vision, 11(11):800-800, ARVO, September 2011 (article)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

ISocRob-MSL 2011 Team Description Paper for Middle Sized League

Messias, J., Ahmad, A., Reis, J., Sousa, J., Lima, P.

15th Annual RoboCup International Symposium 2011, July 2011 (techreport)

Abstract

This paper describes the status of the ISocRob MSL robotic soccer team as required by the RoboCup 2011 qualification procedures. The most relevant technical and scientifical developments carried out by the team, since its last participation in the RoboCup MSL competitions, are here detailed. These include cooperative localization, cooperative object tracking, planning under uncertainty, obstacle detection and improvements to self-localization.

link (url) [BibTex]

Messias, J., Ahmad, A., Reis, J., Sousa, J., Lima, P. ISocRob-MSL 2011 Team Description Paper for Middle Sized League 15th Annual RoboCup International Symposium 2011, July 2011 (techreport)

link (url) [BibTex]

Trajectory Space: A Dual Representation for Nonrigid Structure from Motion

Akhter, I., Sheikh, Y., Khan, S., Kanade, T.

Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on, 33(7):1442-1456, IEEE, July 2011 (article)

Abstract

Existing approaches to nonrigid structure from motion assume that the instantaneous 3D shape of a deforming object is a linear combination of basis shapes. These basis are object dependent and therefore have to be estimated anew for each video sequence. In contrast, we propose a dual approach to describe the evolving 3D structure in trajectory space by a linear combination of basis trajectories. We describe the dual relationship between the two approaches, showing that they both have equal power for representing 3D structure. We further show that the temporal smoothness in 3D trajectories alone can be used for recovering nonrigid structure from a moving camera. The principal advantage of expressing deforming 3D structure in trajectory space is that we can define an object independent basis. This results in a significant reduction in unknowns, and corresponding stability in estimation. We propose the use of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) as the object independent basis and empirically demonstrate that it approaches Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for natural motions. We report the performance of the proposed method, quantitatively using motion capture data, and qualitatively on several video sequences exhibiting nonrigid motions including piecewise rigid motion, partially nonrigid motion (such as a facial expressions), and highly nonrigid motion (such as a person walking or dancing).

pdf project page [BibTex]

Akhter, I., Sheikh, Y., Khan, S., Kanade, T. Trajectory Space: A Dual Representation for Nonrigid Structure from Motion Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on, 33(7):1442-1456, IEEE, July 2011 (article)

pdf project page [BibTex]

Loose-limbed People: Estimating 3D Human Pose and Motion Using Non-parametric Belief Propagation

Sigal, L., Isard, M., Haussecker, H., Black, M. J.

International Journal of Computer Vision, 98(1):15-48, Springer Netherlands, May 2011 (article)

Abstract

We formulate the problem of 3D human pose estimation and tracking as one of inference in a graphical model. Unlike traditional kinematic tree representations, our model of the body is a collection of loosely-connected body-parts. In particular, we model the body using an undirected graphical model in which nodes correspond to parts and edges to kinematic, penetration, and temporal constraints imposed by the joints and the world. These constraints are encoded using pair-wise statistical distributions, that are learned from motion-capture training data. Human pose and motion estimation is formulated as inference in this graphical model and is solved using Particle Message Passing (PaMPas). PaMPas is a form of non-parametric belief propagation that uses a variation of particle filtering that can be applied over a general graphical model with loops. The loose-limbed model and decentralized graph structure allow us to incorporate information from "bottom-up" visual cues, such as limb and head detectors, into the inference process. These detectors enable automatic initialization and aid recovery from transient tracking failures. We illustrate the method by automatically tracking people in multi-view imagery using a set of calibrated cameras and present quantitative evaluation using the HumanEva dataset.

pdf publisher's site link (url) Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Sigal, L., Isard, M., Haussecker, H., Black, M. J. Loose-limbed People: Estimating 3D Human Pose and Motion Using Non-parametric Belief Propagation International Journal of Computer Vision, 98(1):15-48, Springer Netherlands, May 2011 (article)

pdf publisher's site link (url) Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Point-and-Click Cursor Control With an Intracortical Neural Interface System by Humans With Tetraplegia

Kim, S., Simeral, J. D., Hochberg, L. R., Donoghue, J. P., Friehs, G. M., Black, M. J.

IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 19(2):193-203, April 2011 (article)

Abstract

We present a point-and-click intracortical neural interface system (NIS) that enables humans with tetraplegia to volitionally move a 2D computer cursor in any desired direction on a computer screen, hold it still and click on the area of interest. This direct brain-computer interface extracts both discrete (click) and continuous (cursor velocity) signals from a single small population of neurons in human motor cortex. A key component of this system is a multi-state probabilistic decoding algorithm that simultaneously decodes neural spiking activity and outputs either a click signal or the velocity of the cursor. The algorithm combines a linear classifier, which determines whether the user is intending to click or move the cursor, with a Kalman filter that translates the neural population activity into cursor velocity. We present a paradigm for training the multi-state decoding algorithm using neural activity observed during imagined actions. Two human participants with tetraplegia (paralysis of the four limbs) performed a closed-loop radial target acquisition task using the point-and-click NIS over multiple sessions. We quantified point-and-click performance using various human-computer interaction measurements for pointing devices. We found that participants were able to control the cursor motion accurately and click on specified targets with a small error rate (< 3% in one participant). This study suggests that signals from a small ensemble of motor cortical neurons (~40) can be used for natural point-and-click 2D cursor control of a personal computer.

pdf publishers's site pub med link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Kim, S., Simeral, J. D., Hochberg, L. R., Donoghue, J. P., Friehs, G. M., Black, M. J. Point-and-Click Cursor Control With an Intracortical Neural Interface System by Humans With Tetraplegia IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 19(2):193-203, April 2011 (article)

pdf publishers's site pub med link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

A Database and Evaluation Methodology for Optical Flow

Baker, S., Scharstein, D., Lewis, J. P., Roth, S., Black, M. J., Szeliski, R.

International Journal of Computer Vision, 92(1):1-31, March 2011 (article)

Abstract

The quantitative evaluation of optical flow algorithms by Barron et al. (1994) led to significant advances in performance. The challenges for optical flow algorithms today go beyond the datasets and evaluation methods proposed in that paper. Instead, they center on problems associated with complex natural scenes, including nonrigid motion, real sensor noise, and motion discontinuities. We propose a new set of benchmarks and evaluation methods for the next generation of optical flow algorithms. To that end, we contribute four types of data to test different aspects of optical flow algorithms: (1) sequences with nonrigid motion where the ground-truth flow is determined by tracking hidden fluorescent texture, (2) realistic synthetic sequences, (3) high frame-rate video used to study interpolation error, and (4) modified stereo sequences of static scenes. In addition to the average angular error used by Barron et al., we compute the absolute flow endpoint error, measures for frame interpolation error, improved statistics, and results at motion discontinuities and in textureless regions. In October 2007, we published the performance of several well-known methods on a preliminary version of our data to establish the current state of the art. We also made the data freely available on the web at http://vision.middlebury.edu/flow/ . Subsequently a number of researchers have uploaded their results to our website and published papers using the data. A significant improvement in performance has already been achieved. In this paper we analyze the results obtained to date and draw a large number of conclusions from them.

pdf pdf from publisher Middlebury Flow Evaluation Website [BibTex]

Baker, S., Scharstein, D., Lewis, J. P., Roth, S., Black, M. J., Szeliski, R. A Database and Evaluation Methodology for Optical Flow International Journal of Computer Vision, 92(1):1-31, March 2011 (article)

pdf pdf from publisher Middlebury Flow Evaluation Website [BibTex]

Neural control of cursor trajectory and click by a human with tetraplegia 1000 days after implant of an intracortical microelectrode array

(J. Neural Engineering Highlights of 2011 Collection. JNE top 10 cited papers of 2010-2011.)

Simeral, J. D., Kim, S., Black, M. J., Donoghue, J. P., Hochberg, L. R.

J. of Neural Engineering, 8(2):025027, 2011 (article)

Abstract

The ongoing pilot clinical trial of the BrainGate neural interface system aims in part to assess the feasibility of using neural activity obtained from a small-scale, chronically implanted, intracortical microelectrode array to provide control signals for a neural prosthesis system. Critical questions include how long implanted microelectrodes will record useful neural signals, how reliably those signals can be acquired and decoded, and how effectively they can be used to control various assistive technologies such as computers and robotic assistive devices, or to enable functional electrical stimulation of paralyzed muscles. Here we examined these questions by assessing neural cursor control and BrainGate system characteristics on five consecutive days 1000 days after implant of a 4 × 4 mm array of 100 microelectrodes in the motor cortex of a human with longstanding tetraplegia subsequent to a brainstem stroke. On each of five prospectively-selected days we performed time-amplitude sorting of neuronal spiking activity, trained a population-based Kalman velocity decoding filter combined with a linear discriminant click state classifier, and then assessed closed-loop point-and-click cursor control. The participant performed both an eight-target center-out task and a random target Fitts metric task which was adapted from a human-computer interaction ISO standard used to quantify performance of computer input devices. The neural interface system was further characterized by daily measurement of electrode impedances, unit waveforms and local field potentials. Across the five days, spiking signals were obtained from 41 of 96 electrodes and were successfully decoded to provide neural cursor point-and-click control with a mean task performance of 91.3% ± 0.1% (mean ± s.d.) correct target acquisition. Results across five consecutive days demonstrate that a neural interface system based on an intracortical microelectrode array can provide repeatable, accurate point-and-click control of a computer interface to an individual with tetraplegia 1000 days after implantation of this sensor.

pdf pdf from publisher link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Simeral, J. D., Kim, S., Black, M. J., Donoghue, J. P., Hochberg, L. R. Neural control of cursor trajectory and click by a human with tetraplegia 1000 days after implant of an intracortical microelectrode array J. of Neural Engineering, 8(2):025027, 2011 (article)

pdf pdf from publisher link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Dorsal Stream: From Algorithm to Neuroscience

Jhuang, H.

PhD Thesis, MIT, 2011 (techreport)

pdf [BibTex]

Jhuang, H. Dorsal Stream: From Algorithm to Neuroscience PhD Thesis, MIT, 2011 (techreport)

pdf [BibTex]

Modelling pipeline for subject-specific arterial blood flow—A review

Igor Sazonov, Si Yong Yeo, Rhodri Bevan, Xianghua Xie, Raoul van Loon, Perumal Nithiarasu

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, 27(12):1868–1910, 2011 (article)

Abstract

In this paper, a robust and semi-automatic modelling pipeline for blood flow through subject-specific arterial geometries is presented. The framework developed consists of image segmentation, domain discretization (meshing) and fluid dynamics. All the three subtopics of the pipeline are explained using an example of flow through a severely stenosed human carotid artery. In the Introduction, the state-of-the-art of both image segmentation and meshing is presented in some detail, and wherever possible the advantages and disadvantages of the existing methods are analysed. Followed by this, the deformable model used for image segmentation is presented. This model is based upon a geometrical potential force (GPF), which is a function of the image. Both the GPF calculation and level set determination are explained. Following the image segmentation method, a semi-automatic meshing method used in the present study is explained in full detail. All the relevant techniques required to generate a valid domain discretization are presented. These techniques include generating a valid surface mesh, skeletonization, mesh cropping, boundary layer mesh construction and various mesh cosmetic methods that are essential for generating a high-quality domain discretization. After presenting the mesh generation procedure, how to generate flow boundary conditions for both the inlets and outlets of a geometry is explained in detail. This is followed by a brief note on the flow solver, before studying the blood flow through the carotid artery with a severe stenosis.

[BibTex]

Igor Sazonov, Si Yong Yeo, Rhodri Bevan, Xianghua Xie, Raoul van Loon, Perumal Nithiarasu Modelling pipeline for subject-specific arterial blood flow—A review International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, 27(12):1868–1910, 2011 (article)

[BibTex]

Geometrically Induced Force Interaction for Three-Dimensional Deformable Models

Si Yong Yeo, Xianghua Xie, Igor Sazonov, Perumal Nithiarasu

IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 20(5):1373 - 1387, 2011 (article)

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel 3-D deformable model that is based upon a geometrically induced external force field which can be conveniently generalized to arbitrary dimensions. This external force field is based upon hypothesized interactions between the relative geometries of the deformable model and the object boundary characterized by image gradient. The evolution of the deformable model is solved using the level set method so that topological changes are handled automatically. The relative geometrical configurations between the deformable model and the object boundaries contribute to a dynamic vector force field that changes accordingly as the deformable model evolves. The geometrically induced dynamic interaction force has been shown to greatly improve the deformable model performance in acquiring complex geometries and highly concave boundaries, and it gives the deformable model a high invariancy in initialization configurations. The voxel interactions across the whole image domain provide a global view of the object boundary representation, giving the external force a long attraction range. The bidirectionality of the external force field allows the new deformable model to deal with arbitrary cross-boundary initializations, and facilitates the handling of weak edges and broken boundaries. In addition, we show that by enhancing the geometrical interaction field with a nonlocal edge-preserving algorithm, the new deformable model can effectively overcome image noise. We provide a comparative study on the segmentation of various geometries with different topologies from both synthetic and real images, and show that the proposed method achieves significant improvements against existing image gradient techniques.

[BibTex]

Si Yong Yeo, Xianghua Xie, Igor Sazonov, Perumal Nithiarasu Geometrically Induced Force Interaction for Three-Dimensional Deformable Models IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 20(5):1373 - 1387, 2011 (article)

[BibTex]

Computational flow studies in a subject-specific human upper airway using a one-equation turbulence model. Influence of the nasal cavity

Prihambodo Saksono, Perumal Nithiarasu, Igor Sazonov, Si Yong Yeo

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, 87(1-5):96–114, 2011 (article)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the impact of including nasal cavity on airflow through a human upper respiratory tract. A computational study is carried out on a realistic geometry, reconstructed from CT scans of a subject. The geometry includes nasal cavity, pharynx, larynx, trachea and two generations of airway bifurcations below trachea. The unstructured mesh generation procedure is discussed in some length due to the complex nature of the nasal cavity structure and poor scan resolution normally available from hospitals. The fluid dynamic studies have been carried out on the geometry with and without the inclusion of the nasal cavity. The characteristic-based split scheme along with the one-equation Spalart–Allmaras turbulence model is used in its explicit form to obtain flow solutions at steady state. Results reveal that the exclusion of nasal cavity significantly influences the resulting solution. In particular, the location of recirculating flow in the trachea is dramatically different when the truncated geometry is used. In addition, we also address the differences in the solution due to imposed, equally distributed and proportionally distributed flow rates at inlets (both nares). The results show that the differences in flow pattern between the two inlet conditions are not confined to the nasal cavity and nasopharyngeal region, but they propagate down to the trachea.

[BibTex]

Prihambodo Saksono, Perumal Nithiarasu, Igor Sazonov, Si Yong Yeo Computational flow studies in a subject-specific human upper airway using a one-equation turbulence model. Influence of the nasal cavity International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, 87(1-5):96–114, 2011 (article)

[BibTex]

Predicting Articulated Human Motion from Spatial Processes

Soren Hauberg, Kim S. Pedersen

International Journal of Computer Vision, 94, pages: 317-334, Springer Netherlands, 2011 (article)

Publishers site Code Paper site PDF [BibTex]

Soren Hauberg, Kim S. Pedersen Predicting Articulated Human Motion from Spatial Processes International Journal of Computer Vision, 94, pages: 317-334, Springer Netherlands, 2011 (article)

Publishers site Code Paper site PDF [BibTex]

2005

Representing cyclic human motion using functional analysis

Ormoneit, D., Black, M. J., Hastie, T., Kjellström, H.

Image and Vision Computing, 23(14):1264-1276, December 2005 (article)

Abstract

We present a robust automatic method for modeling cyclic 3D human motion such as walking using motion-capture data. The pose of the body is represented by a time-series of joint angles which are automatically segmented into a sequence of motion cycles. The mean and the principal components of these cycles are computed using a new algorithm that enforces smooth transitions between the cycles by operating in the Fourier domain. Key to this method is its ability to automatically deal with noise and missing data. A learned walking model is then exploited for Bayesian tracking of 3D human motion.

pdf pdf from publisher DOI [BibTex]

2005

Ormoneit, D., Black, M. J., Hastie, T., Kjellström, H. Representing cyclic human motion using functional analysis Image and Vision Computing, 23(14):1264-1276, December 2005 (article)

pdf pdf from publisher DOI [BibTex]

1997

Recognizing facial expressions in image sequences using local parameterized models of image motion

Black, M. J., Yacoob, Y.

Int. Journal of Computer Vision, 25(1):23-48, 1997 (article)

Abstract

This paper explores the use of local parametrized models of image motion for recovering and recognizing the non-rigid and articulated motion of human faces. Parametric flow models (for example affine) are popular for estimating motion in rigid scenes. We observe that within local regions in space and time, such models not only accurately model non-rigid facial motions but also provide a concise description of the motion in terms of a small number of parameters. These parameters are intuitively related to the motion of facial features during facial expressions and we show how expressions such as anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness can be recognized from the local parametric motions in the presence of significant head motion. The motion tracking and expression recognition approach performed with high accuracy in extensive laboratory experiments involving 40 subjects as well as in television and movie sequences.

pdf pdf from publisher abstract video [BibTex]

1997

Black, M. J., Yacoob, Y. Recognizing facial expressions in image sequences using local parameterized models of image motion Int. Journal of Computer Vision, 25(1):23-48, 1997 (article)

pdf pdf from publisher abstract video [BibTex]

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