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27 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2013

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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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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]

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

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.

(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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

2006

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Implicit Wiener Series, Part II: Regularised estimation

Gehler, P., Franz, M.

(148), Max Planck Institute, 2006 (techreport)

pdf [BibTex]

2006

Gehler, P., Franz, M. Implicit Wiener Series, Part II: Regularised estimation (148), Max Planck Institute, 2006 (techreport)

pdf [BibTex]

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HumanEva: Synchronized video and motion capture dataset for evaluation of articulated human motion

Sigal, L., Black, M. J.

(CS-06-08), Brown University, Department of Computer Science, 2006 (techreport)

pdf abstract [BibTex]

Sigal, L., Black, M. J. HumanEva: Synchronized video and motion capture dataset for evaluation of articulated human motion (CS-06-08), Brown University, Department of Computer Science, 2006 (techreport)

pdf abstract [BibTex]

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Bayesian population decoding of motor cortical activity using a Kalman filter

Wu, W., Gao, Y., Bienenstock, E., Donoghue, J. P., Black, M. J.

Neural Computation, 18(1):80-118, 2006 (article)

Abstract
Effective neural motor prostheses require a method for decoding neural activity representing desired movement. In particular, the accurate reconstruction of a continuous motion signal is necessary for the control of devices such as computer cursors, robots, or a patient's own paralyzed limbs. For such applications, we developed a real-time system that uses Bayesian inference techniques to estimate hand motion from the firing rates of multiple neurons. In this study, we used recordings that were previously made in the arm area of primary motor cortex in awake behaving monkeys using a chronically implanted multielectrode microarray. Bayesian inference involves computing the posterior probability of the hand motion conditioned on a sequence of observed firing rates; this is formulated in terms of the product of a likelihood and a prior. The likelihood term models the probability of firing rates given a particular hand motion. We found that a linear gaussian model could be used to approximate this likelihood and could be readily learned from a small amount of training data. The prior term defines a probabilistic model of hand kinematics and was also taken to be a linear gaussian model. Decoding was performed using a Kalman filter, which gives an efficient recursive method for Bayesian inference when the likelihood and prior are linear and gaussian. In off-line experiments, the Kalman filter reconstructions of hand trajectory were more accurate than previously reported results. The resulting decoding algorithm provides a principled probabilistic model of motor-cortical coding, decodes hand motion in real time, provides an estimate of uncertainty, and is straightforward to implement. Additionally the formulation unifies and extends previous models of neural coding while providing insights into the motor-cortical code.

pdf preprint pdf from publisher abstract [BibTex]

Wu, W., Gao, Y., Bienenstock, E., Donoghue, J. P., Black, M. J. Bayesian population decoding of motor cortical activity using a Kalman filter Neural Computation, 18(1):80-118, 2006 (article)

pdf preprint pdf from publisher abstract [BibTex]

2003

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Learning the statistics of people in images and video

Sidenbladh, H., Black, M. J.

International Journal of Computer Vision, 54(1-3):183-209, August 2003 (article)

Abstract
This paper address the problems of modeling the appearance of humans and distinguishing human appearance from the appearance of general scenes. We seek a model of appearance and motion that is generic in that it accounts for the ways in which people's appearance varies and, at the same time, is specific enough to be useful for tracking people in natural scenes. Given a 3D model of the person projected into an image we model the likelihood of observing various image cues conditioned on the predicted locations and orientations of the limbs. These cues are taken to be steered filter responses corresponding to edges, ridges, and motion-compensated temporal differences. Motivated by work on the statistics of natural scenes, the statistics of these filter responses for human limbs are learned from training images containing hand-labeled limb regions. Similarly, the statistics of the filter responses in general scenes are learned to define a “background” distribution. The likelihood of observing a scene given a predicted pose of a person is computed, for each limb, using the likelihood ratio between the learned foreground (person) and background distributions. Adopting a Bayesian formulation allows cues to be combined in a principled way. Furthermore, the use of learned distributions obviates the need for hand-tuned image noise models and thresholds. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the statistics of how people appear in scenes and provides a connection between work on natural image statistics and the Bayesian tracking of people.

pdf pdf from publisher code DOI [BibTex]

2003

Sidenbladh, H., Black, M. J. Learning the statistics of people in images and video International Journal of Computer Vision, 54(1-3):183-209, August 2003 (article)

pdf pdf from publisher code DOI [BibTex]

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A framework for robust subspace learning

De la Torre, F., Black, M. J.

International Journal of Computer Vision, 54(1-3):117-142, August 2003 (article)

Abstract
Many computer vision, signal processing and statistical problems can be posed as problems of learning low dimensional linear or multi-linear models. These models have been widely used for the representation of shape, appearance, motion, etc., in computer vision applications. Methods for learning linear models can be seen as a special case of subspace fitting. One draw-back of previous learning methods is that they are based on least squares estimation techniques and hence fail to account for “outliers” which are common in realistic training sets. We review previous approaches for making linear learning methods robust to outliers and present a new method that uses an intra-sample outlier process to account for pixel outliers. We develop the theory of Robust Subspace Learning (RSL) for linear models within a continuous optimization framework based on robust M-estimation. The framework applies to a variety of linear learning problems in computer vision including eigen-analysis and structure from motion. Several synthetic and natural examples are used to develop and illustrate the theory and applications of robust subspace learning in computer vision.

pdf code pdf from publisher Project Page [BibTex]

De la Torre, F., Black, M. J. A framework for robust subspace learning International Journal of Computer Vision, 54(1-3):117-142, August 2003 (article)

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Guest editorial: Computational vision at Brown

Black, M. J., Kimia, B.

International Journal of Computer Vision, 54(1-3):5-11, August 2003 (article)

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Black, M. J., Kimia, B. Guest editorial: Computational vision at Brown International Journal of Computer Vision, 54(1-3):5-11, August 2003 (article)

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Robust parameterized component analysis: Theory and applications to 2D facial appearance models

De la Torre, F., Black, M. J.

Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 91(1-2):53-71, July 2003 (article)

Abstract
Principal component analysis (PCA) has been successfully applied to construct linear models of shape, graylevel, and motion in images. In particular, PCA has been widely used to model the variation in the appearance of people's faces. We extend previous work on facial modeling for tracking faces in video sequences as they undergo significant changes due to facial expressions. Here we consider person-specific facial appearance models (PSFAM), which use modular PCA to model complex intra-person appearance changes. Such models require aligned visual training data; in previous work, this has involved a time consuming and error-prone hand alignment and cropping process. Instead, the main contribution of this paper is to introduce parameterized component analysis to learn a subspace that is invariant to affine (or higher order) geometric transformations. The automatic learning of a PSFAM given a training image sequence is posed as a continuous optimization problem and is solved with a mixture of stochastic and deterministic techniques achieving sub-pixel accuracy. We illustrate the use of the 2D PSFAM model with preliminary experiments relevant to applications including video-conferencing and avatar animation.

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De la Torre, F., Black, M. J. Robust parameterized component analysis: Theory and applications to 2D facial appearance models Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 91(1-2):53-71, July 2003 (article)

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1997

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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.

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