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96 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2015

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Exploiting Object Similarity in 3D Reconstruction

Zhou, C., Güney, F., Wang, Y., Geiger, A.

In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), December 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Despite recent progress, reconstructing outdoor scenes in 3D from movable platforms remains a highly difficult endeavor. Challenges include low frame rates, occlusions, large distortions and difficult lighting conditions. In this paper, we leverage the fact that the larger the reconstructed area, the more likely objects of similar type and shape will occur in the scene. This is particularly true for outdoor scenes where buildings and vehicles often suffer from missing texture or reflections, but share similarity in 3D shape. We take advantage of this shape similarity by locating objects using detectors and jointly reconstructing them while learning a volumetric model of their shape. This allows us to reduce noise while completing missing surfaces as objects of similar shape benefit from all observations for the respective category. We evaluate our approach with respect to LIDAR ground truth on a novel challenging suburban dataset and show its advantages over the state-of-the-art.

pdf suppmat [BibTex]

2015

Zhou, C., Güney, F., Wang, Y., Geiger, A. Exploiting Object Similarity in 3D Reconstruction In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), December 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat [BibTex]

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FollowMe: Efficient Online Min-Cost Flow Tracking with Bounded Memory and Computation

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

In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), December 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
One of the most popular approaches to multi-target tracking is tracking-by-detection. Current min-cost flow algorithms which solve the data association problem optimally have three main drawbacks: they are computationally expensive, they assume that the whole video is given as a batch, and they scale badly in memory and computation with the length of the video sequence. In this paper, we address each of these issues, resulting in a computationally and memory-bounded solution. First, we introduce a dynamic version of the successive shortest-path algorithm which solves the data association problem optimally while reusing computation, resulting in faster inference than standard solvers. Second, we address the optimal solution to the data association problem when dealing with an incoming stream of data (i.e., online setting). Finally, we present our main contribution which is an approximate online solution with bounded memory and computation which is capable of handling videos of arbitrary length while performing tracking in real time. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms on the KITTI and PETS2009 benchmarks and show state-of-the-art performance, while being significantly faster than existing solvers.

pdf suppmat video project [BibTex]

Lenz, P., Geiger, A., Urtasun, R. FollowMe: Efficient Online Min-Cost Flow Tracking with Bounded Memory and Computation In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), December 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat video project [BibTex]

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Intrinsic Depth: Improving Depth Transfer with Intrinsic Images

Kong, N., Black, M. J.

In IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 3514-3522, December 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We formulate the estimation of dense depth maps from video sequences as a problem of intrinsic image estimation. Our approach synergistically integrates the estimation of multiple intrinsic images including depth, albedo, shading, optical flow, and surface contours. We build upon an example-based framework for depth estimation that uses label transfer from a database of RGB and depth pairs. We combine this with a method that extracts consistent albedo and shading from video. In contrast to raw RGB values, albedo and shading provide a richer, more physical, foundation for depth transfer. Additionally we train a new contour detector to predict surface boundaries from albedo, shading, and pixel values and use this to improve the estimation of depth boundaries. We also integrate sparse structure from motion with our method to improve the metric accuracy of the estimated depth maps. We evaluate our Intrinsic Depth method quantitatively by estimating depth from videos in the NYU RGB-D and SUN3D datasets. We find that combining the estimation of multiple intrinsic images improves depth estimation relative to the baseline method.

pdf suppmat YouTube official video poster Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Kong, N., Black, M. J. Intrinsic Depth: Improving Depth Transfer with Intrinsic Images In IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 3514-3522, December 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat YouTube official video poster Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Detailed Full-Body Reconstructions of Moving People from Monocular RGB-D Sequences

Bogo, F., Black, M. J., Loper, M., Romero, J.

In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 2300-2308, December 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We accurately estimate the 3D geometry and appearance of the human body from a monocular RGB-D sequence of a user moving freely in front of the sensor. Range data in each frame is first brought into alignment with a multi-resolution 3D body model in a coarse-to-fine process. The method then uses geometry and image texture over time to obtain accurate shape, pose, and appearance information despite unconstrained motion, partial views, varying resolution, occlusion, and soft tissue deformation. Our novel body model has variable shape detail, allowing it to capture faces with a high-resolution deformable head model and body shape with lower-resolution. Finally we combine range data from an entire sequence to estimate a high-resolution displacement map that captures fine shape details. We compare our recovered models with high-resolution scans from a professional system and with avatars created by a commercial product. We extract accurate 3D avatars from challenging motion sequences and even capture soft tissue dynamics.

Video pdf Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Bogo, F., Black, M. J., Loper, M., Romero, J. Detailed Full-Body Reconstructions of Moving People from Monocular RGB-D Sequences In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 2300-2308, December 2015 (inproceedings)

Video pdf Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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3D Object Reconstruction from Hand-Object Interactions

Tzionas, D., Gall, J.

In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 729-737, December 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Recent advances have enabled 3d object reconstruction approaches using a single off-the-shelf RGB-D camera. Although these approaches are successful for a wide range of object classes, they rely on stable and distinctive geometric or texture features. Many objects like mechanical parts, toys, household or decorative articles, however, are textureless and characterized by minimalistic shapes that are simple and symmetric. Existing in-hand scanning systems and 3d reconstruction techniques fail for such symmetric objects in the absence of highly distinctive features. In this work, we show that extracting 3d hand motion for in-hand scanning effectively facilitates the reconstruction of even featureless and highly symmetric objects and we present an approach that fuses the rich additional information of hands into a 3d reconstruction pipeline, significantly contributing to the state-of-the-art of in-hand scanning.

pdf Project's Website Video Spotlight Extended Abstract YouTube DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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The fertilized forests Decision Forest Library

Lassner, C., Lienhart, R.

In ACM Transactions on Multimedia (ACMMM) Open-source Software Competition, October 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Since the introduction of Random Forests in the 80's they have been a frequently used statistical tool for a variety of machine learning tasks. Many different training algorithms and model adaptions demonstrate the versatility of the forests. This variety resulted in a fragmentation of research and code, since each adaption requires its own algorithms and representations. In 2011, Criminisi and Shotton developed a unifying Decision Forest model for many tasks. By identifying the reusable parts and specifying clear interfaces, we extend this approach to an object oriented representation and implementation. This has the great advantage that research on specific parts of the Decision Forest model can be done `locally' by reusing well-tested and high-performance components. Our fertilized forests library is open source and easy to extend. It provides components allowing for parallelization up to node optimization level to exploit modern many core architectures. Additionally, the library provides consistent and easy-to-maintain interfaces to C++, Python and Matlab and offers cross-platform and cross-interface persistence.

website and code pdf [BibTex]

Lassner, C., Lienhart, R. The fertilized forests Decision Forest Library In ACM Transactions on Multimedia (ACMMM) Open-source Software Competition, October 2015 (inproceedings)

website and code pdf [BibTex]

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Towards Probabilistic Volumetric Reconstruction using Ray Potentials

(Best Paper Award)

Ulusoy, A. O., Geiger, A., Black, M. J.

In 3D Vision (3DV), 2015 3rd International Conference on, pages: 10-18, Lyon, October 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
This paper presents a novel probabilistic foundation for volumetric 3-d reconstruction. We formulate the problem as inference in a Markov random field, which accurately captures the dependencies between the occupancy and appearance of each voxel, given all input images. Our main contribution is an approximate highly parallelized discrete-continuous inference algorithm to compute the marginal distributions of each voxel's occupancy and appearance. In contrast to the MAP solution, marginals encode the underlying uncertainty and ambiguity in the reconstruction. Moreover, the proposed algorithm allows for a Bayes optimal prediction with respect to a natural reconstruction loss. We compare our method to two state-of-the-art volumetric reconstruction algorithms on three challenging aerial datasets with LIDAR ground truth. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm compares favorably in terms of reconstruction accuracy and the ability to expose reconstruction uncertainty.

code YouTube pdf suppmat DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Ulusoy, A. O., Geiger, A., Black, M. J. Towards Probabilistic Volumetric Reconstruction using Ray Potentials In 3D Vision (3DV), 2015 3rd International Conference on, pages: 10-18, Lyon, October 2015 (inproceedings)

code YouTube pdf suppmat DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Moving-horizon Nonlinear Least Squares-based Multirobot Cooperative Perception

Ahmad, A., Bülthoff, H.

7th European Conference on Mobile Robots, pages: 1-8, September 2015 (conference)

Abstract
In this article we present an online estimator for multirobot cooperative localization and target tracking based on nonlinear least squares minimization. Our method not only makes the rigorous optimization-based approach applicable online but also allows the estimator to be stable and convergent. We do so by employing a moving horizon technique to nonlinear least squares minimization and a novel design of the arrival cost function that ensures stability and convergence of the estimator. Through an extensive set of real robot experiments, we demonstrate the robustness of our method as well as the optimality of the arrival cost function. The experiments include comparisons of our method with i) an extended Kalman filter-based online-estimator and ii) an offline-estimator based on full-trajectory nonlinear least squares.

DOI [BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Bülthoff, H. Moving-horizon Nonlinear Least Squares-based Multirobot Cooperative Perception 7th European Conference on Mobile Robots, pages: 1-8, September 2015 (conference)

DOI [BibTex]

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Perception of Strength and Power of Realistic Male Characters

Wellerdiek, A. C., Breidt, M., Geuss, M. N., Streuber, S., Kloos, U., Black, M. J., Mohler, B. J.

In Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Applied Perception, SAP’15, pages: 7-14, ACM, New York, NY, September 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We investigated the influence of body shape and pose on the perception of physical strength and social power for male virtual characters. In the first experiment, participants judged the physical strength of varying body shapes, derived from a statistical 3D body model. Based on these ratings, we determined three body shapes (weak, average, and strong) and animated them with a set of power poses for the second experiment. Participants rated how strong or powerful they perceived virtual characters of varying body shapes that were displayed in different poses. Our results show that perception of physical strength was mainly driven by the shape of the body. However, the social attribute of power was influenced by an interaction between pose and shape. Specifically, the effect of pose on power ratings was greater for weak body shapes. These results demonstrate that a character with a weak shape can be perceived as more powerful when in a high-power pose.

PDF DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Wellerdiek, A. C., Breidt, M., Geuss, M. N., Streuber, S., Kloos, U., Black, M. J., Mohler, B. J. Perception of Strength and Power of Realistic Male Characters In Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Applied Perception, SAP’15, pages: 7-14, ACM, New York, NY, September 2015 (inproceedings)

PDF DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Human Pose as Context for Object Detection

Srikantha, A., Gall, J.

British Machine Vision Conference, September 2015 (conference)

Abstract
Detecting small objects in images is a challenging problem particularly when they are often occluded by hands or other body parts. Recently, joint modelling of human pose and objects has been proposed to improve both pose estimation as well as object detection. These approaches, however, focus on explicit interaction with an object and lack the flexibility to combine both modalities when interaction is not obvious. We therefore propose to use human pose as an additional context information for object detection. To this end, we represent an object category by a tree model and train regression forests that localize parts of an object for each modality separately. Predictions of the two modalities are then combined to detect the bounding box of the object. We evaluate our approach on three challenging datasets which vary in the amount of object interactions and the quality of automatically extracted human poses.

pdf abstract Project Page [BibTex]

Srikantha, A., Gall, J. Human Pose as Context for Object Detection British Machine Vision Conference, September 2015 (conference)

pdf abstract Project Page [BibTex]

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Active Learning for Efficient Sampling of Control Models of Collectives

Schiendorfer, A., Lassner, C., Anders, G., Reif, W., Lienhart, R.

In International Conference on Self-adaptive and Self-organizing Systems (SASO), September 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Many large-scale systems benefit from an organizational structure to provide for problem decomposition. A pivotal problem solving setting is given by hierarchical control systems familiar from hierarchical task networks. If these structures can be modified autonomously by, e.g., coalition formation and reconfiguration, adequate decisions on higher levels require a faithful abstracted model of a collective of agents. An illustrative example is found in calculating schedules for a set of power plants organized in a hierarchy of Autonomous Virtual Power Plants. Functional dependencies over the combinatorial domain, such as the joint costs or rates of change of power production, are approximated by repeatedly sampling input-output pairs and substituting the actual functions by piecewise linear functions. However, if the sampled data points are weakly informative, the resulting abstracted high-level optimization introduces severe errors. Furthermore, obtaining additional point labels amounts to solving computationally hard optimization problems. Building on prior work, we propose to apply techniques from active learning to maximize the information gained by each additional point. Our results show that significantly better allocations in terms of cost-efficiency (up to 33.7 % reduction in costs in our case study) can be found with fewer but carefully selected sampling points using Decision Forests.

code (hosted on github) [BibTex]

Schiendorfer, A., Lassner, C., Anders, G., Reif, W., Lienhart, R. Active Learning for Efficient Sampling of Control Models of Collectives In International Conference on Self-adaptive and Self-organizing Systems (SASO), September 2015 (inproceedings)

code (hosted on github) [BibTex]

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The Informed Sampler: A Discriminative Approach to Bayesian Inference in Generative Computer Vision Models

Jampani, V., Nowozin, S., Loper, M., Gehler, P. V.

In Computer Vision and Image Understanding, Special Issue on Generative Models in Computer Vision and Medical Imaging, 136, pages: 32-44, Elsevier, July 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Computer vision is hard because of a large variability in lighting, shape, and texture; in addition the image signal is non-additive due to occlusion. Generative models promised to account for this variability by accurately modelling the image formation process as a function of latent variables with prior beliefs. Bayesian posterior inference could then, in principle, explain the observation. While intuitively appealing, generative models for computer vision have largely failed to deliver on that promise due to the difficulty of posterior inference. As a result the community has favored efficient discriminative approaches. We still believe in the usefulness of generative models in computer vision, but argue that we need to leverage existing discriminative or even heuristic computer vision methods. We implement this idea in a principled way in our informed sampler and in careful experiments demonstrate it on challenging models which contain renderer programs as their components. The informed sampler, using simple discriminative proposals based on existing computer vision technology achieves dramatic improvements in inference. Our approach enables a new richness in generative models that was out of reach with existing inference technology.

arXiv-preprint pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Jampani, V., Nowozin, S., Loper, M., Gehler, P. V. The Informed Sampler: A Discriminative Approach to Bayesian Inference in Generative Computer Vision Models In Computer Vision and Image Understanding, Special Issue on Generative Models in Computer Vision and Medical Imaging, 136, pages: 32-44, Elsevier, July 2015 (inproceedings)

arXiv-preprint pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Subgraph decomposition for multi-target tracking

Tang, S., Andres, B., Andriluka, M., Schiele, B.

In 2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 5033-5041, IEEE, June 2015 (inproceedings)

PDF Proof-of-Lemma-1 DOI [BibTex]

Tang, S., Andres, B., Andriluka, M., Schiele, B. Subgraph decomposition for multi-target tracking In 2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 5033-5041, IEEE, June 2015 (inproceedings)

PDF Proof-of-Lemma-1 DOI [BibTex]

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The Stitched Puppet: A Graphical Model of 3D Human Shape and Pose

Zuffi, S., Black, M. J.

In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2015), pages: 3537-3546, June 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We propose a new 3D model of the human body that is both realistic and part-based. The body is represented by a graphical model in which nodes of the graph correspond to body parts that can independently translate and rotate in 3D as well as deform to capture pose-dependent shape variations. Pairwise potentials define a “stitching cost” for pulling the limbs apart, giving rise to the stitched puppet model (SPM). Unlike existing realistic 3D body models, the distributed representation facilitates inference by allowing the model to more effectively explore the space of poses, much like existing 2D pictorial structures models. We infer pose and body shape using a form of particle-based max-product belief propagation. This gives the SPM the realism of recent 3D body models with the computational advantages of part-based models. We apply the SPM to two challenging problems involving estimating human shape and pose from 3D data. The first is the FAUST mesh alignment challenge (http://faust.is.tue.mpg.de/), where ours is the first method to successfully align all 3D meshes. The second involves estimating pose and shape from crude visual hull representations of complex body movements.

pdf Extended Abstract poster code/project video DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Zuffi, S., Black, M. J. The Stitched Puppet: A Graphical Model of 3D Human Shape and Pose In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2015), pages: 3537-3546, June 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf Extended Abstract poster code/project video DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Displets: Resolving Stereo Ambiguities using Object Knowledge

Güney, F., Geiger, A.

In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2015, pages: 4165-4175, June 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Stereo techniques have witnessed tremendous progress over the last decades, yet some aspects of the problem still remain challenging today. Striking examples are reflecting and textureless surfaces which cannot easily be recovered using traditional local regularizers. In this paper, we therefore propose to regularize over larger distances using object-category specific disparity proposals (displets) which we sample using inverse graphics techniques based on a sparse disparity estimate and a semantic segmentation of the image. The proposed displets encode the fact that objects of certain categories are not arbitrarily shaped but typically exhibit regular structures. We integrate them as non-local regularizer for the challenging object class 'car' into a superpixel based CRF framework and demonstrate its benefits on the KITTI stereo evaluation.

pdf abstract suppmat [BibTex]

Güney, F., Geiger, A. Displets: Resolving Stereo Ambiguities using Object Knowledge In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2015, pages: 4165-4175, June 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf abstract suppmat [BibTex]

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Object Scene Flow for Autonomous Vehicles

Menze, M., Geiger, A.

In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2015, pages: 3061-3070, IEEE, June 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
This paper proposes a novel model and dataset for 3D scene flow estimation with an application to autonomous driving. Taking advantage of the fact that outdoor scenes often decompose into a small number of independently moving objects, we represent each element in the scene by its rigid motion parameters and each superpixel by a 3D plane as well as an index to the corresponding object. This minimal representation increases robustness and leads to a discrete-continuous CRF where the data term decomposes into pairwise potentials between superpixels and objects. Moreover, our model intrinsically segments the scene into its constituting dynamic components. We demonstrate the performance of our model on existing benchmarks as well as a novel realistic dataset with scene flow ground truth. We obtain this dataset by annotating 400 dynamic scenes from the KITTI raw data collection using detailed 3D CAD models for all vehicles in motion. Our experiments also reveal novel challenges which can't be handled by existing methods.

pdf abstract suppmat DOI [BibTex]

Menze, M., Geiger, A. Object Scene Flow for Autonomous Vehicles In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2015, pages: 3061-3070, IEEE, June 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf abstract suppmat DOI [BibTex]

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Pose-Conditioned Joint Angle Limits for 3D Human Pose Reconstruction

Akhter, I., Black, M. J.

In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2015), pages: 1446-1455, June 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
The estimation of 3D human pose from 2D joint locations is central to many vision problems involving the analysis of people in images and video. To address the fact that the problem is inherently ill posed, many methods impose a prior over human poses. Unfortunately these priors admit invalid poses because they do not model how joint-limits vary with pose. Here we make two key contributions. First, we collected a motion capture dataset that explores a wide range of human poses. From this we learn a pose-dependent model of joint limits that forms our prior. The dataset and the prior will be made publicly available. Second, we define a general parameterization of body pose and a new, multistage, method to estimate 3D pose from 2D joint locations that uses an over-complete dictionary of human poses. Our method shows good generalization while avoiding impossible poses. We quantitatively compare our method with recent work and show state-of-the-art results on 2D to 3D pose estimation using the CMU mocap dataset. We also show superior results on manual annotations on real images and automatic part-based detections on the Leeds sports pose dataset.

pdf Extended Abstract video project/data/code poster DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Akhter, I., Black, M. J. Pose-Conditioned Joint Angle Limits for 3D Human Pose Reconstruction In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2015), pages: 1446-1455, June 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf Extended Abstract video project/data/code poster DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Efficient Sparse-to-Dense Optical Flow Estimation using a Learned Basis and Layers

Wulff, J., Black, M. J.

In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2015), pages: 120-130, June 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We address the elusive goal of estimating optical flow both accurately and efficiently by adopting a sparse-to-dense approach. Given a set of sparse matches, we regress to dense optical flow using a learned set of full-frame basis flow fields. We learn the principal components of natural flow fields using flow computed from four Hollywood movies. Optical flow fields are then compactly approximated as a weighted sum of the basis flow fields. Our new PCA-Flow algorithm robustly estimates these weights from sparse feature matches. The method runs in under 300ms/frame on the MPI-Sintel dataset using a single CPU and is more accurate and significantly faster than popular methods such as LDOF and Classic+NL. The results, however, are too smooth for some applications. Consequently, we develop a novel sparse layered flow method in which each layer is represented by PCA-flow. Unlike existing layered methods, estimation is fast because it uses only sparse matches. We combine information from different layers into a dense flow field using an image-aware MRF. The resulting PCA-Layers method runs in 3.6s/frame, is significantly more accurate than PCA-flow and achieves state-of-the-art performance in occluded regions on MPI-Sintel.

pdf Extended Abstract Supplemental Material Poster Code Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Permutohedral Lattice CNNs

Kiefel, M., Jampani, V., Gehler, P. V.

In ICLR Workshop Track, May 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
This paper presents a convolutional layer that is able to process sparse input features. As an example, for image recognition problems this allows an efficient filtering of signals that do not lie on a dense grid (like pixel position), but of more general features (such as color values). The presented algorithm makes use of the permutohedral lattice data structure. The permutohedral lattice was introduced to efficiently implement a bilateral filter, a commonly used image processing operation. Its use allows for a generalization of the convolution type found in current (spatial) convolutional network architectures.

pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Kiefel, M., Jampani, V., Gehler, P. V. Permutohedral Lattice CNNs In ICLR Workshop Track, May 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf link (url) [BibTex]

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Consensus Message Passing for Layered Graphical Models

Jampani, V., Eslami, S. M. A., Tarlow, D., Kohli, P., Winn, J.

In Eighteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), 38, pages: 425-433, JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings, May 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Generative models provide a powerful framework for probabilistic reasoning. However, in many domains their use has been hampered by the practical difficulties of inference. This is particularly the case in computer vision, where models of the imaging process tend to be large, loopy and layered. For this reason bottom-up conditional models have traditionally dominated in such domains. We find that widely-used, general-purpose message passing inference algorithms such as Expectation Propagation (EP) and Variational Message Passing (VMP) fail on the simplest of vision models. With these models in mind, we introduce a modification to message passing that learns to exploit their layered structure by passing 'consensus' messages that guide inference towards good solutions. Experiments on a variety of problems show that the proposed technique leads to significantly more accurate inference results, not only when compared to standard EP and VMP, but also when compared to competitive bottom-up conditional models.

online pdf supplementary link (url) [BibTex]

Jampani, V., Eslami, S. M. A., Tarlow, D., Kohli, P., Winn, J. Consensus Message Passing for Layered Graphical Models In Eighteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), 38, pages: 425-433, JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings, May 2015 (inproceedings)

online pdf supplementary link (url) [BibTex]

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Shape Models of the Human Body for Distributed Inference

Zuffi, S.

Brown University, May 2015 (phdthesis)

Abstract
In this thesis we address the problem of building shape models of the human body, in 2D and 3D, which are realistic and efficient to use. We focus our efforts on the human body, which is highly articulated and has interesting shape variations, but the approaches we present here can be applied to generic deformable and articulated objects. To address efficiency, we constrain our models to be part-based and have a tree-structured representation with pairwise relationships between connected parts. This allows the application of methods for distributed inference based on message passing. To address realism, we exploit recent advances in computer graphics that represent the human body with statistical shape models learned from 3D scans. We introduce two articulated body models, a 2D model, named Deformable Structures (DS), which is a contour-based model parameterized for 2D pose and projected shape, and a 3D model, named Stitchable Puppet (SP), which is a mesh-based model parameterized for 3D pose, pose-dependent deformations and intrinsic body shape. We have successfully applied the models to interesting and challenging problems in computer vision and computer graphics, namely pose estimation from static images, pose estimation from video sequences, pose and shape estimation from 3D scan data. This advances the state of the art in human pose and shape estimation and suggests that carefully de ned realistic models can be important for computer vision. More work at the intersection of vision and graphics is thus encouraged.

PDF [BibTex]

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From Scans to Models: Registration of 3D Human Shapes Exploiting Texture Information

Bogo, F.

University of Padova, March 2015 (phdthesis)

Abstract
New scanning technologies are increasing the importance of 3D mesh data, and of algorithms that can reliably register meshes obtained from multiple scans. Surface registration is important e.g. for building full 3D models from partial scans, identifying and tracking objects in a 3D scene, creating statistical shape models. Human body registration is particularly important for many applications, ranging from biomedicine and robotics to the production of movies and video games; but obtaining accurate and reliable registrations is challenging, given the articulated, non-rigidly deformable structure of the human body. In this thesis, we tackle the problem of 3D human body registration. We start by analyzing the current state of the art, and find that: a) most registration techniques rely only on geometric information, which is ambiguous on flat surface areas; b) there is a lack of adequate datasets and benchmarks in the field. We address both issues. Our contribution is threefold. First, we present a model-based registration technique for human meshes that combines geometry and surface texture information to provide highly accurate mesh-to-mesh correspondences. Our approach estimates scene lighting and surface albedo, and uses the albedo to construct a high-resolution textured 3D body model that is brought into registration with multi-camera image data using a robust matching term. Second, by leveraging our technique, we present FAUST (Fine Alignment Using Scan Texture), a novel dataset collecting 300 high-resolution scans of 10 people in a wide range of poses. FAUST is the first dataset providing both real scans and automatically computed, reliable "ground-truth" correspondences between them. Third, we explore possible uses of our approach in dermatology. By combining our registration technique with a melanocytic lesion segmentation algorithm, we propose a system that automatically detects new or evolving lesions over almost the entire body surface, thus helping dermatologists identify potential melanomas. We conclude this thesis investigating the benefits of using texture information to establish frame-to-frame correspondences in dynamic monocular sequences captured with consumer depth cameras. We outline a novel approach to reconstruct realistic body shape and appearance models from dynamic human performances, and show preliminary results on challenging sequences captured with a Kinect.

[BibTex]

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Active Learning for Abstract Models of Collectives

Schiendorfer, A., Lassner, C., Anders, G., Reif, W., Lienhart, R.

In 3rd Workshop on Self-optimisation in Organic and Autonomic Computing Systems (SAOS), March 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Organizational structures such as hierarchies provide an effective means to deal with the increasing complexity found in large-scale energy systems. In hierarchical systems, the concrete functions describing the subsystems can be replaced by abstract piecewise linear functions to speed up the optimization process. However, if the data points are weakly informative the resulting abstracted optimization problem introduces severe errors and exhibits bad runtime performance. Furthermore, obtaining additional point labels amounts to solving computationally hard optimization problems. Therefore, we propose to apply methods from active learning to search for informative inputs. We present first results experimenting with Decision Forests and Gaussian Processes that motivate further research. Using points selected by Decision Forests, we could reduce the average mean-squared error of the abstract piecewise linear function by one third.

code (hosted on github) pdf [BibTex]

Schiendorfer, A., Lassner, C., Anders, G., Reif, W., Lienhart, R. Active Learning for Abstract Models of Collectives In 3rd Workshop on Self-optimisation in Organic and Autonomic Computing Systems (SAOS), March 2015 (inproceedings)

code (hosted on github) pdf [BibTex]

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Long Range Motion Estimation and Applications

Sevilla-Lara, L.

Long Range Motion Estimation and Applications, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Febuary 2015 (phdthesis)

Abstract
Finding correspondences between images underlies many computer vision problems, such as optical flow, tracking, stereovision and alignment. Finding these correspondences involves formulating a matching function and optimizing it. This optimization process is often gradient descent, which avoids exhaustive search, but relies on the assumption of being in the basin of attraction of the right local minimum. This is often the case when the displacement is small, and current methods obtain very accurate results for small motions. However, when the motion is large and the matching function is bumpy this assumption is less likely to be true. One traditional way of avoiding this abruptness is to smooth the matching function spatially by blurring the images. As the displacement becomes larger, the amount of blur required to smooth the matching function becomes also larger. This averaging of pixels leads to a loss of detail in the image. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the size of the objects that can be tracked and the displacement that can be captured. In this thesis we address the basic problem of increasing the size of the basin of attraction in a matching function. We use an image descriptor called distribution fields (DFs). By blurring the images in DF space instead of in pixel space, we in- crease the size of the basin attraction with respect to traditional methods. We show competitive results using DFs both in object tracking and optical flow. Finally we demonstrate an application of capturing large motions for temporal video stitching.

[BibTex]

Sevilla-Lara, L. Long Range Motion Estimation and Applications Long Range Motion Estimation and Applications, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Febuary 2015 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

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Efficient Facade Segmentation using Auto-Context

Jampani, V., Gadde, R., Gehler, P. V.

In Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2015 IEEE Winter Conference on, pages: 1038-1045, IEEE, January 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In this paper we propose a system for the problem of facade segmentation. Building facades are highly structured images and consequently most methods that have been proposed for this problem, aim to make use of this strong prior information. We are describing a system that is almost domain independent and consists of standard segmentation methods. A sequence of boosted decision trees is stacked using auto-context features and learned using the stacked generalization technique. We find that this, albeit standard, technique performs better, or equals, all previous published empirical results on all available facade benchmark datasets. The proposed method is simple to implement, easy to extend, and very efficient at test time inference.

website pdf supplementary IEEE page link (url) DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Jampani, V., Gadde, R., Gehler, P. V. Efficient Facade Segmentation using Auto-Context In Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2015 IEEE Winter Conference on, pages: 1038-1045, IEEE, January 2015 (inproceedings)

website pdf supplementary IEEE page link (url) DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Thumb xl screenshot area 2015 07 27 004943
Norm-induced entropies for decision forests

Lassner, C., Lienhart, R.

IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), January 2015 (conference)

Abstract
The entropy measurement function is a central element of decision forest induction. The Shannon entropy and other generalized entropies such as the Renyi and Tsallis entropy are designed to fulfill the Khinchin-Shannon axioms. Whereas these axioms are appropriate for physical systems, they do not necessarily model well the artificial system of decision forest induction. In this paper, we show that when omitting two of the four axioms, every norm induces an entropy function. The remaining two axioms are sufficient to describe the requirements for an entropy function in the decision forest context. Furthermore, we introduce and analyze the p-norm-induced entropy, show relations to existing entropies and the relation to various heuristics that are commonly used for decision forest training. In experiments with classification, regression and the recently introduced Hough forests, we show how the discrete and differential form of the new entropy can be used for forest induction and how the functions can simply be fine-tuned. The experiments indicate that the impact of the entropy function is limited, however can be a simple and useful post-processing step for optimizing decision forests for high performance applications.

pdf code [BibTex]

Lassner, C., Lienhart, R. Norm-induced entropies for decision forests IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), January 2015 (conference)

pdf code [BibTex]

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Dataset Suite for Benchmarking Perception in Robotics

Ahmad, A., Lima, P.

In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2015, 2015 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Lima, P. Dataset Suite for Benchmarking Perception in Robotics In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2015, 2015 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

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FlowCap: 2D Human Pose from Optical Flow

Romero, J., Loper, M., Black, M. J.

In Pattern Recognition, Proc. 37th German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), LNCS 9358, pages: 412-423, Springer, 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We estimate 2D human pose from video using only optical flow. The key insight is that dense optical flow can provide information about 2D body pose. Like range data, flow is largely invariant to appearance but unlike depth it can be directly computed from monocular video. We demonstrate that body parts can be detected from dense flow using the same random forest approach used by the Microsoft Kinect. Unlike range data, however, when people stop moving, there is no optical flow and they effectively disappear. To address this, our FlowCap method uses a Kalman filter to propagate body part positions and ve- locities over time and a regression method to predict 2D body pose from part centers. No range sensor is required and FlowCap estimates 2D human pose from monocular video sources containing human motion. Such sources include hand-held phone cameras and archival television video. We demonstrate 2D body pose estimation in a range of scenarios and show that the method works with real-time optical flow. The results suggest that optical flow shares invariances with range data that, when complemented with tracking, make it valuable for pose estimation.

video pdf preprint Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Romero, J., Loper, M., Black, M. J. FlowCap: 2D Human Pose from Optical Flow In Pattern Recognition, Proc. 37th German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), LNCS 9358, pages: 412-423, Springer, 2015 (inproceedings)

video pdf preprint Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Towards Optimal Robot Navigation in Urban Homes

Ventura, R., Ahmad, A.

In RoboCup 2014: Robot World Cup XVIII, pages: 318-331, Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 8992, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
The work presented in this paper is motivated by the goal of dependable autonomous navigation of mobile robots. This goal is a fundamental requirement for having autonomous robots in spaces such as domestic spaces and public establishments, left unattended by technical staff. In this paper we tackle this problem by taking an optimization approach: on one hand, we use a Fast Marching Approach for path planning, resulting in optimal paths in the absence of unmapped obstacles, and on the other hand we use a Dynamic Window Approach for guidance. To the best of our knowledge, the combination of these two methods is novel. We evaluate the approach on a real mobile robot, capable of moving at high speed. The evaluation makes use of an external ground truth system. We report controlled experiments that we performed, including the presence of people moving randomly nearby the robot. In our long term experiments we report a total distance of 18 km traveled during 11 hours of movement time.

DOI [BibTex]

Ventura, R., Ahmad, A. Towards Optimal Robot Navigation in Urban Homes In RoboCup 2014: Robot World Cup XVIII, pages: 318-331, Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 8992, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2015 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]

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Joint 3D Object and Layout Inference from a single RGB-D Image

(Best Paper Award)

Geiger, A., Wang, C.

In German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 9358, pages: 183-195, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer International Publishing, 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Inferring 3D objects and the layout of indoor scenes from a single RGB-D image captured with a Kinect camera is a challenging task. Towards this goal, we propose a high-order graphical model and jointly reason about the layout, objects and superpixels in the image. In contrast to existing holistic approaches, our model leverages detailed 3D geometry using inverse graphics and explicitly enforces occlusion and visibility constraints for respecting scene properties and projective geometry. We cast the task as MAP inference in a factor graph and solve it efficiently using message passing. We evaluate our method with respect to several baselines on the challenging NYUv2 indoor dataset using 21 object categories. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is able to infer scenes with a large degree of clutter and occlusions.

pdf suppmat video project DOI [BibTex]

Geiger, A., Wang, C. Joint 3D Object and Layout Inference from a single RGB-D Image In German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 9358, pages: 183-195, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer International Publishing, 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat video project DOI [BibTex]

Thumb xl screen shot 2015 05 07 at 11.56.54
3D Object Class Detection in the Wild

Pepik, B., Stark, M., Gehler, P., Ritschel, T., Schiele, B.

In Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), IEEE, 2015 (inproceedings)

Project Page [BibTex]

Pepik, B., Stark, M., Gehler, P., Ritschel, T., Schiele, B. 3D Object Class Detection in the Wild In Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), IEEE, 2015 (inproceedings)

Project Page [BibTex]

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Discrete Optimization for Optical Flow

Menze, M., Heipke, C., Geiger, A.

In German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 9358, pages: 16-28, Springer International Publishing, 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We propose to look at large-displacement optical flow from a discrete point of view. Motivated by the observation that sub-pixel accuracy is easily obtained given pixel-accurate optical flow, we conjecture that computing the integral part is the hardest piece of the problem. Consequently, we formulate optical flow estimation as a discrete inference problem in a conditional random field, followed by sub-pixel refinement. Naive discretization of the 2D flow space, however, is intractable due to the resulting size of the label set. In this paper, we therefore investigate three different strategies, each able to reduce computation and memory demands by several orders of magnitude. Their combination allows us to estimate large-displacement optical flow both accurately and efficiently and demonstrates the potential of discrete optimization for optical flow. We obtain state-of-the-art performance on MPI Sintel and KITTI.

pdf suppmat project DOI [BibTex]

Menze, M., Heipke, C., Geiger, A. Discrete Optimization for Optical Flow In German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 9358, pages: 16-28, Springer International Publishing, 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat project DOI [BibTex]

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Joint 3D Estimation of Vehicles and Scene Flow

Menze, M., Heipke, C., Geiger, A.

In Proc. of the ISPRS Workshop on Image Sequence Analysis (ISA), 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Three-dimensional reconstruction of dynamic scenes is an important prerequisite for applications like mobile robotics or autonomous driving. While much progress has been made in recent years, imaging conditions in natural outdoor environments are still very challenging for current reconstruction and recognition methods. In this paper, we propose a novel unified approach which reasons jointly about 3D scene flow as well as the pose, shape and motion of vehicles in the scene. Towards this goal, we incorporate a deformable CAD model into a slanted-plane conditional random field for scene flow estimation and enforce shape consistency between the rendered 3D models and the parameters of all superpixels in the image. The association of superpixels to objects is established by an index variable which implicitly enables model selection. We evaluate our approach on the challenging KITTI scene flow dataset in terms of object and scene flow estimation. Our results provide a prove of concept and demonstrate the usefulness of our method.

PDF [BibTex]

Menze, M., Heipke, C., Geiger, A. Joint 3D Estimation of Vehicles and Scene Flow In Proc. of the ISPRS Workshop on Image Sequence Analysis (ISA), 2015 (inproceedings)

PDF [BibTex]

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A Setup for multi-UAV hardware-in-the-loop simulations

Odelga, M., Stegagno, P., Bülthoff, H., Ahmad, A.

In pages: 204-210, IEEE, 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In this paper, we present a hardware in the loop simulation setup for multi-UAV systems. With our setup, we are able to command the robots simulated in Gazebo, a popular open source ROS-enabled physical simulator, using the computational units that are embedded on our quadrotor UAVs. Hence, we can test in simulation not only the correct execution of algorithms, but also the computational feasibility directly on the robot hardware. In addition, since our setup is inherently multi-robot, we can also test the communication flow among the robots. We provide two use cases to show the characteristics of our setup.

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Odelga, M., Stegagno, P., Bülthoff, H., Ahmad, A. A Setup for multi-UAV hardware-in-the-loop simulations In pages: 204-210, IEEE, 2015 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

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Smooth Loops from Unconstrained Video

Sevilla-Lara, L., Wulff, J., Sunkavalli, K., Shechtman, E.

In Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EGSR), 34(4):99-107, 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Converting unconstrained video sequences into videos that loop seamlessly is an extremely challenging problem. In this work, we take the first steps towards automating this process by focusing on an important subclass of videos containing a single dominant foreground object. Our technique makes two novel contributions over previous work: first, we propose a correspondence-based similarity metric to automatically identify a good transition point in the video where the appearance and dynamics of the foreground are most consistent. Second, we develop a technique that aligns both the foreground and background about this transition point using a combination of global camera path planning and patch-based video morphing. We demonstrate that this allows us to create natural, compelling, loopy videos from a wide range of videos collected from the internet.

pdf link (url) DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Sevilla-Lara, L., Wulff, J., Sunkavalli, K., Shechtman, E. Smooth Loops from Unconstrained Video In Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EGSR), 34(4):99-107, 2015 (inproceedings)

pdf link (url) DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Onboard robust person detection and tracking for domestic service robots

Sanz, D., Ahmad, A., Lima, P.

In Robot 2015: Second Iberian Robotics Conference, pages: 547-559, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ; 418, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2015 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Domestic assistance for the elderly and impaired people is one of the biggest upcoming challenges of our society. Consequently, in-home care through domestic service robots is identified as one of the most important application area of robotics research. Assistive tasks may range from visitor reception at the door to catering for owner's small daily necessities within a house. Since most of these tasks require the robot to interact directly with humans, a predominant robot functionality is to detect and track humans in real time: either the owner of the robot or visitors at home or both. In this article we present a robust method for such a functionality that combines depth-based segmentation and visual detection. The robustness of our method lies in its capability to not only identify partially occluded humans (e.g., with only torso visible) but also to do so in varying lighting conditions. We thoroughly validate our method through extensive experiments on real robot datasets and comparisons with the ground truth. The datasets were collected on a home-like environment set up within the context of RoboCup@Home and RoCKIn@Home competitions.

DOI [BibTex]

Sanz, D., Ahmad, A., Lima, P. Onboard robust person detection and tracking for domestic service robots In Robot 2015: Second Iberian Robotics Conference, pages: 547-559, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ; 418, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2015 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]

2013

Thumb xl iccv2013 siyu
Learning People Detectors for Tracking in Crowded Scenes

Tang, S., Andriluka, M., Milan, A., Schindler, K., Roth, S., Schiele, B.

In 2013 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, pages: 1049-1056, IEEE, December 2013 (inproceedings)

PDF DOI [BibTex]

2013

Tang, S., Andriluka, M., Milan, A., Schindler, K., Roth, S., Schiele, B. Learning People Detectors for Tracking in Crowded Scenes In 2013 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, pages: 1049-1056, IEEE, December 2013 (inproceedings)

PDF DOI [BibTex]

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Strong Appearance and Expressive Spatial Models for Human Pose Estimation

Pishchulin, L., Andriluka, M., Gehler, P., Schiele, B.

In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 3487 - 3494 , IEEE, December 2013 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Typical approaches to articulated pose estimation combine spatial modelling of the human body with appearance modelling of body parts. This paper aims to push the state-of-the-art in articulated pose estimation in two ways. First we explore various types of appearance representations aiming to substantially improve the body part hypotheses. And second, we draw on and combine several recently proposed powerful ideas such as more flexible spatial models as well as image-conditioned spatial models. In a series of experiments we draw several important conclusions: (1) we show that the proposed appearance representations are complementary; (2) we demonstrate that even a basic tree-structure spatial human body model achieves state-of-the-art performance when augmented with the proper appearance representation; and (3) we show that the combination of the best performing appearance model with a flexible image-conditioned spatial model achieves the best result, significantly improving over the state of the art, on the "Leeds Sports Poses'' and "Parse'' benchmarks.

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Pishchulin, L., Andriluka, M., Gehler, P., Schiele, B. Strong Appearance and Expressive Spatial Models for Human Pose Estimation In International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 3487 - 3494 , IEEE, December 2013 (inproceedings)

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Thumb xl screenshot area 2015 07 27 004304
Methods and Applications for Distance Based ANN Training

Lassner, C., Lienhart, R.

In IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), December 2013 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Feature learning has the aim to take away the hassle of hand-designing features for machine learning tasks. Since the feature design process is tedious and requires a lot of experience, an automated solution is of great interest. However, an important problem in this field is that usually no objective values are available to fit a feature learning function to. Artificial Neural Networks are a sufficiently flexible tool for function approximation to be able to avoid this problem. We show how the error function of an ANN can be modified such that it works solely with objective distances instead of objective values. We derive the adjusted rules for backpropagation through networks with arbitrary depths and include practical considera- tions that must be taken into account to apply difference based learning successfully. On all three benchmark datasets we use, linear SVMs trained on automatically learned ANN features outperform RBF kernel SVMs trained on the raw data. This can be achieved in a feature space with up to only a tenth of dimensions of the number of original data dimensions. We conclude our work with two experiments on distance based ANN training in two further fields: data visualization and outlier detection.

pdf [BibTex]

Lassner, C., Lienhart, R. Methods and Applications for Distance Based ANN Training In IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), December 2013 (inproceedings)

pdf [BibTex]

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Understanding High-Level Semantics by Modeling Traffic Patterns

Zhang, H., Geiger, A., Urtasun, R.

In International Conference on Computer Vision, pages: 3056-3063, Sydney, Australia, December 2013 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In this paper, we are interested in understanding the semantics of outdoor scenes in the context of autonomous driving. Towards this goal, we propose a generative model of 3D urban scenes which is able to reason not only about the geometry and objects present in the scene, but also about the high-level semantics in the form of traffic patterns. We found that a small number of patterns is sufficient to model the vast majority of traffic scenes and show how these patterns can be learned. As evidenced by our experiments, this high-level reasoning significantly improves the overall scene estimation as well as the vehicle-to-lane association when compared to state-of-the-art approaches. All data and code will be made available upon publication.

pdf [BibTex]

Zhang, H., Geiger, A., Urtasun, R. Understanding High-Level Semantics by Modeling Traffic Patterns In International Conference on Computer Vision, pages: 3056-3063, Sydney, Australia, December 2013 (inproceedings)

pdf [BibTex]

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A Non-parametric Bayesian Network Prior of Human Pose

Lehrmann, A. M., Gehler, P., Nowozin, S.

In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 1281-1288, December 2013 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Having a sensible prior of human pose is a vital ingredient for many computer vision applications, including tracking and pose estimation. While the application of global non-parametric approaches and parametric models has led to some success, finding the right balance in terms of flexibility and tractability, as well as estimating model parameters from data has turned out to be challenging. In this work, we introduce a sparse Bayesian network model of human pose that is non-parametric with respect to the estimation of both its graph structure and its local distributions. We describe an efficient sampling scheme for our model and show its tractability for the computation of exact log-likelihoods. We empirically validate our approach on the Human 3.6M dataset and demonstrate superior performance to global models and parametric networks. We further illustrate our model's ability to represent and compose poses not present in the training set (compositionality) and describe a speed-accuracy trade-off that allows realtime scoring of poses.

Project page pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Lehrmann, A. M., Gehler, P., Nowozin, S. A Non-parametric Bayesian Network Prior of Human Pose In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 1281-1288, December 2013 (inproceedings)

Project page pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Towards understanding action recognition

Jhuang, H., Gall, J., Zuffi, S., Schmid, C., Black, M. J.

In IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 3192-3199, IEEE, Sydney, Australia, December 2013 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Although action recognition in videos is widely studied, current methods often fail on real-world datasets. Many recent approaches improve accuracy and robustness to cope with challenging video sequences, but it is often unclear what affects the results most. This paper attempts to provide insights based on a systematic performance evaluation using thoroughly-annotated data of human actions. We annotate human Joints for the HMDB dataset (J-HMDB). This annotation can be used to derive ground truth optical flow and segmentation. We evaluate current methods using this dataset and systematically replace the output of various algorithms with ground truth. This enables us to discover what is important – for example, should we work on improving flow algorithms, estimating human bounding boxes, or enabling pose estimation? In summary, we find that highlevel pose features greatly outperform low/mid level features; in particular, pose over time is critical, but current pose estimation algorithms are not yet reliable enough to provide this information. We also find that the accuracy of a top-performing action recognition framework can be greatly increased by refining the underlying low/mid level features; this suggests it is important to improve optical flow and human detection algorithms. Our analysis and JHMDB dataset should facilitate a deeper understanding of action recognition algorithms.

Website Errata Poster Paper Slides DOI Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Jhuang, H., Gall, J., Zuffi, S., Schmid, C., Black, M. J. Towards understanding action recognition In IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 3192-3199, IEEE, Sydney, Australia, December 2013 (inproceedings)

Website Errata Poster Paper Slides DOI Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Mixing Decoded Cursor Velocity and Position from an Offline Kalman Filter Improves Cursor Control in People with Tetraplegia

Homer, M., Harrison, M., Black, M. J., Perge, J., Cash, S., Friehs, G., Hochberg, L.

In 6th International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, pages: 715-718, San Diego, November 2013 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Kalman filtering is a common method to decode neural signals from the motor cortex. In clinical research investigating the use of intracortical brain computer interfaces (iBCIs), the technique enabled people with tetraplegia to control assistive devices such as a computer or robotic arm directly from their neural activity. For reaching movements, the Kalman filter typically estimates the instantaneous endpoint velocity of the control device. Here, we analyzed attempted arm/hand movements by people with tetraplegia to control a cursor on a computer screen to reach several circular targets. A standard velocity Kalman filter is enhanced to additionally decode for the cursor’s position. We then mix decoded velocity and position to generate cursor movement commands. We analyzed data, offline, from two participants across six sessions. Root mean squared error between the actual and estimated cursor trajectory improved by 12.2 ±10.5% (pairwise t-test, p<0.05) as compared to a standard velocity Kalman filter. The findings suggest that simultaneously decoding for intended velocity and position and using them both to generate movement commands can improve the performance of iBCIs.

pdf Project Page [BibTex]

Homer, M., Harrison, M., Black, M. J., Perge, J., Cash, S., Friehs, G., Hochberg, L. Mixing Decoded Cursor Velocity and Position from an Offline Kalman Filter Improves Cursor Control in People with Tetraplegia In 6th International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, pages: 715-718, San Diego, November 2013 (inproceedings)

pdf Project Page [BibTex]

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Multi-Robot Cooperative Object Tracking Based on Particle Filters

Ahmad, A., Lima, P.

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

Abstract
This article presents a cooperative approach for tracking a moving object 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.

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Lima, P. Multi-Robot Cooperative Object Tracking Based on Particle Filters In Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 61(10):1084-1093, October 2013 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

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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]

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

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.

(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]

no image
D2.1.1 RoCKIn@Home - A Competition for Domestic Service Robots Competition Design, Rule Book, and Scenario Construction

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.

(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]

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Distribution Fields with Adaptive Kernels for Large Displacement Image Alignment

Mears, B., Sevilla-Lara, L., Learned-Miller, E.

In British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) , BMVA Press, September 2013 (inproceedings)

Abstract
While region-based image alignment algorithms that use gradient descent can achieve sub-pixel accuracy when they converge, their convergence depends on the smoothness of the image intensity values. Image smoothness is often enforced through the use of multiscale approaches in which images are smoothed and downsampled. Yet, these approaches typically use fixed smoothing parameters which may be appropriate for some images but not for others. Even for a particular image, the optimal smoothing parameters may depend on the magnitude of the transformation. When the transformation is large, the image should be smoothed more than when the transformation is small. Further, with gradient-based approaches, the optimal smoothing parameters may change with each iteration as the algorithm proceeds towards convergence. We address convergence issues related to the choice of smoothing parameters by deriving a Gauss-Newton gradient descent algorithm based on distribution fields (DFs) and proposing a method to dynamically select smoothing parameters at each iteration. DF and DF-like representations have previously been used in the context of tracking. In this work we incorporate DFs into a full affine model for region-based alignment and simultaneously search over parameterized sets of geometric and photometric transforms. We use a probabilistic interpretation of DFs to select smoothing parameters at each step in the optimization and show that this results in improved convergence rates.

pdf code [BibTex]

Mears, B., Sevilla-Lara, L., Learned-Miller, E. Distribution Fields with Adaptive Kernels for Large Displacement Image Alignment In British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) , BMVA Press, September 2013 (inproceedings)

pdf code [BibTex]

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Metric Regression Forests for Human Pose Estimation

(Best Science Paper Award)

Pons-Moll, G., Taylor, J., Shotton, J., Hertzmann, A., Fitzgibbon, A.

In British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) , BMVA Press, September 2013 (inproceedings)

pdf [BibTex]

Pons-Moll, G., Taylor, J., Shotton, J., Hertzmann, A., Fitzgibbon, A. Metric Regression Forests for Human Pose Estimation In British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) , BMVA Press, September 2013 (inproceedings)

pdf [BibTex]

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Statistics on Manifolds with Applications to Modeling Shape Deformations

Freifeld, O.

Brown University, August 2013 (phdthesis)

Abstract
Statistical models of non-rigid deformable shape have wide application in many fi elds, including computer vision, computer graphics, and biometry. We show that shape deformations are well represented through nonlinear manifolds that are also matrix Lie groups. These pattern-theoretic representations lead to several advantages over other alternatives, including a principled measure of shape dissimilarity and a natural way to compose deformations. Moreover, they enable building models using statistics on manifolds. Consequently, such models are superior to those based on Euclidean representations. We demonstrate this by modeling 2D and 3D human body shape. Shape deformations are only one example of manifold-valued data. More generally, in many computer-vision and machine-learning problems, nonlinear manifold representations arise naturally and provide a powerful alternative to Euclidean representations. Statistics is traditionally concerned with data in a Euclidean space, relying on the linear structure and the distances associated with such a space; this renders it inappropriate for nonlinear spaces. Statistics can, however, be generalized to nonlinear manifolds. Moreover, by respecting the underlying geometry, the statistical models result in not only more e ffective analysis but also consistent synthesis. We go beyond previous work on statistics on manifolds by showing how, even on these curved spaces, problems related to modeling a class from scarce data can be dealt with by leveraging information from related classes residing in di fferent regions of the space. We show the usefulness of our approach with 3D shape deformations. To summarize our main contributions: 1) We de fine a new 2D articulated model -- more expressive than traditional ones -- of deformable human shape that factors body-shape, pose, and camera variations. Its high realism is obtained from training data generated from a detailed 3D model. 2) We defi ne a new manifold-based representation of 3D shape deformations that yields statistical deformable-template models that are better than the current state-of-the- art. 3) We generalize a transfer learning idea from Euclidean spaces to Riemannian manifolds. This work demonstrates the value of modeling manifold-valued data and their statistics explicitly on the manifold. Specifi cally, the methods here provide new tools for shape analysis.

pdf Project Page [BibTex]