42038608
A low-cost system using sparse vision for navigation in the urban environment
Abstract Established mobility aids, such as the long cane, enable visually impaired users to travel safely in urban environments. This paper describes continuing work to enhance this mobility by providing a series of high-level navigational goals. In particular, we describe algorithms to detect doorways and to facilitate centre-path travel. To maintain high performance at low cost, both algorithms use sparsely-sampled images from a single camera. Doorway detection is achieved by the detection of characteristic patterns of near-vertical and near-horizontal lines. The direction of travel along a path is determined by locating the dominant vanishing point of the lines in the image. Experimental results are presented for both algorithms.
12480757
Robotic sensing for the partially sighted
Partial sightedness is a sensory disability which can to some extent be alleviated by artificial aids. Many of the sensory methods used in robotics can be applied in attempts to recapture some of the sensory information a partially sighted person has lost. This paper describes a device which uses sonar and stereo vision sensors for this task. The device is portable, and is worn by the user, giving them freedom of movement over kerbs, stairs and rough ground. Sensor motion during walking is measured using visual egomotion recovery and odometry, and has been modelled to allow compensation in the sensor readings. A ground position estimate is continually updated by scene ground-plane fitting, or from the walk-motion model, and is used to classify scene features as obstacles or parts of the ground. Methods for the robust reconstruction of image points and lines into scene features are developed. The recognition of world objects of exceptional significance to a mobile person - kerbs and stairs - is given particular attention. A user interface, which has undergone limited real world testing, is also described. Experimental results are presented for the various parts of the system.
16301640
A stereo vision-based aid for the visually impaired
This paper describes a portable vision-based obstacle detection system, intended for use by blind people. The system combines an obstacle detection system designed for AGVs with recalibration of ground position and a Kalman Filter based model of the person's walking movement. The system uses stereo vision. Obstacle detection is achieved through comparison of the disparity seen with that expected from the position of the ground. Recalibration of ground position is made by plane fitting in the ground region. Motion estimation using two visual methods and the use of an inclinometer is described. The results show satisfactory success in all parts of the system.
15086505
A fast content-based indexing and retrieval technique by the shape information in large image database
Abstract In this paper, we present an efficient content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system which employs the shape information of images to facilitate the retrieval process. For efficient feature extraction, we extract the shape feature of images automatically using edge detection and wavelet transform which is widely used in digital signal processing and image compression. To facilitate speedy retrieval, we also propose the Spherical Pyramid-Technique (SPY-TEC), a new indexing method for similarity search in high-dimensional data space. The SPY-TEC is based on a special space partitioning strategy, which is to divide the d-dimensional data space first into 2d spherical pyramids, and then cut the single spherical pyramid into several spherical slices. This partition provides a transformation of d-dimensional space into 1-dimensional space. Thus, we are able to use a B+-tree to manage the transformed 1-dimensional data. We show that our image indexing method supports faster retrieval than other multi-dimensional indexing methods such as the R*-tree through various experiments. Finally, we show the retrieval effectiveness of our CBIR system using the measure proposed by the QBIC (C. Faloutsos et al., 1994) system.
46621308
k-Best Cuts for Circular-Arc Graphs
Given a set of n weighted circular-arcs on a unit circle, and an integer k, the k Best Cuts for Circular-Arcs problem, abbreviated as k-BCCA problem, is to find a placement of k points, called cuts, on the circle such that the total weight of the arcs that contain at least one cut is maximized.
23137458
Testing Finite State Machines: Fault Detection
Abstract We present simple randomized algorithms for the fault detection problem : Given a specification in the form of a deterministic finite state machine A and an implementation machine B , determine whether B is equal to A . If A has n states and p inputs, then in randomized polynomial time we can construct with high probability a checking sequence of length O ( pn 4 log n ), i.e., a sequence that detects all faulty machines with at most n states. Better bounds can be obtained in certain cases. The techniques generalize to partially specified finite state machines.
52867515
Test Sequence Selection
We study the test sequence selection problem. Given a large number of tests for a protocol system, we want to select a subset of tests so that the number of tests is reduced yet the test coverage is not sacrificed. We discuss the complexity of the test selection problem and propose a class of algorithms for different protocol system information requirements, test coverage criteria, and cost. We report experimental results on ISDN connection control protocol system Q.931.
13394130
Two-Guard Walkability of Simple Polygons
A pair of points s and g on the boundary of a simple polygon P admits a walk if two guards can simultaneously walk along the two boundary chains of P from s to g such that they are always visible to each other. The walk is a counter-walk if one guard moves from s to g while the other moves from g to s in the same direction along the boundary and they are always visible to each other. The (counter-)walk is straight if no backtracking is necessary during the (counter-)walk. In this paper, we show that, given a polygon with n vertices, to test if there exists (s,g) that admits a (straight) (counter-)walk can be solved in time O(n log n) and in linear space. Also we compute all (s,g)'s that admit a (straight) walk in O(n log n) time and all vertex pairs that admit a (straight) counter-walk in O(n log n + m), where m is O(n2).