23573472
Corner detection based on modified Hough transform
In this paper, the problem of detecting corners is simplified into detecting simple lines (straight lines that pass through the coordinate origin) in a local coordinate system. As simple lines can be expressed using only one parameter, Hough transform can detect them quickly. Other edge detectors have some problems when marking edge points around corners. Instead of using a general global edge detector, we detect edge points locally based on both gradient magnitude threshold and gray level analysis. The process is dynamic and can provide correct edge points for Hough transform. Gradient direction is used to reduce the effect of noise and speed up the algorithm. Experiments proved that our new algorithm works well over most images, and is fast enough for real-time applications.
7829422
Fast Relative Depth Computation for an Active Stereo Vision System
Real-time computation of exact depth is not feasible in an active vision setup. Instead, reliable relative depth information which can be rapidly computed is preferred. In this paper, a stereo cue for computing relative depth obtained from an active stereo vision system is proposed. The proposed stereo cue can be computed purely from the coordinates of points in the stereo pair. The computational cost required is very low. No camera calibration or prior knowledge of the parameters of the stereo vision system is required. We show that the relationship between the relative depth cue and the actual depth in the three-dimensional (3D) space is monotonic. Such a relation is maintained even when the focal length and the vergence angle are changed, so long as the focal lengths of the two cameras are similar. Therefore, real-time implementation in an active vision setup can be realized. Stability analysis shows that the proposed method will be stable in practical situations, unless the stereo camera diverges. Experimental results are presented to highlight the properties and advantages of the proposed method.
31566264
Cooperation-Based Behavior Design
Robot soccer explores such a research topic that multiple agents work together in a Real-time, Cooperative and Adversarial (RCA) environment to achieve specific objectives. It requires that each agent can not only deal with situations individually, but also present cooperation with its teammates. In this paper, we describe a robot architecture, which addresses "scaling cooperation" among robots, and meanwhile allows each robot to make decisions independently in real-time case. The architecture is based on "ideal cooperation" principle and implemented for Small Robot League in RoboCup. Experimental results prove its effectiveness and reveal several primary characteristics of behaviors in robot soccer.
35155949
Constrained nonlinear models of fingerprint orientations with prediction
In this paper, we developed an algorithm to model the fingerprint orientation field. The algorithm comprises two steps, orientation prediction and model computation. Orientation prediction is based on piece-wise first-order phase portrait model. It is used to estimate the orientation in areas where there is no ridge information in the input image or the coherence of the orientation field is low. In the model computation, a constrained nonlinear phase portrait algorithm is proposed, which aims to get an accurate mathematical model of the fingerprint orientation field. Compared to the prior works, this algorithm is able to predict orientation even in noisy regions and it integrates the global and local orientation description into a unified mathematical form. Experiments conducted on the first 500 images of the NIST-4 database showed that the proposed algorithm is able to model all the fingerprint orientation patterns except those with very poor quality images where the orientation information cannot be clearly extracted.
14477369
Markov random field modeled range image segmentation
In this paper, range image segmentation is studied in the framework of the maximum a posteriori estimation and Markov random field modeling. A novel range image segmentation model is proposed. The model serves as an evaluator for a small number of segmentation candidates obtained through a fast edge detection algorithm. A local method is employed to search for the optimal segmentation from the candidates. Experimental results show that such combination of heuristics and model-based evaluation leads to a fast and accurate segmentation.
270876
Feature Extraction with Genetic Algorithms Based Nonlinear Principal Component Analysis for Face Recognition
Principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) are two commonly used feature extraction techniques. In this paper, a nonlinear evolutionary weighted principal component analysis (EWPCA) based on genetic algorithms is proposed. Similar to LDA, the EWPCA maximizes the ratio of between-class variations to that of within-class variations, and achieves better classification performance than that of traditional PCA. Genetic algorithms are chosen as the searching method to select optimal weights for the EWPCA. In face recognition, evolutionary facial feature obtained by performing EWPCA is used as the representation of original face images. Experimental results on ORL and combo face databases prove that EWPCA outperforms both PCA, kernel PCA and LDA
16950996
Joint source-channel coding for wireless object-based video communications utilizing data hiding
In recent years, joint source-channel coding for multimedia communications has gained increased popularity. However, very limited work has been conducted to address the problem of joint source-channel coding for object-based video. In this paper, we propose a data hiding scheme that improves the error resilience of object-based video by adaptively embedding the shape and motion information into the texture data. Within a rate-distortion theoretical framework, the source coding, channel coding, data embedding, and decoder error concealment are jointly optimized based on knowledge of the transmission channel conditions. Our goal is to achieve the best video quality as expressed by the minimum total expected distortion. The optimization problem is solved using Lagrangian relaxation and dynamic programming. The performance of the proposed scheme is tested using simulations of a Rayleigh-fading wireless channel, and the algorithm is implemented based on the MPEG-4 verification model. Experimental results indicate that the proposed hybrid source-channel coding scheme significantly outperforms methods without data hiding or unequal error protection
62685176
Seamless video editing
This paper presents a new framework for seamless video editing in the gradient domain. The spatio-temporal gradient fields of target videos are modified or mixed to generate a new gradient field, which is usually not integrable. We propose a 3D video integration algorithm, which finds a potential function, whose gradient field is closest to the resulting gradient field in the sense of least squares. The video is reconstructed by solving a 3D Poisson equation. We use a fast and accurate 3D discrete Poisson solver using diagonal multigrids. A set of gradient operators is defined for user interaction. The resulting video has temporal coherency and no artifacts. We evaluate our algorithm using a variety of examples.
1927942
Tracking and segmenting people with occlusions by a sample consensus based method
One of the most difficult issues in visual tracking is to track people in groups, especially under occlusions. In this paper, we present a novel sample consensus based method, which utilizes both color and spatial information of human bodies, to model the appearance of people. We use this appearance model to segment and track people through occlusions. We show experimental results in several video sequences to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
9019747
A Novel Alternative Hypothesis Characterization Using Kernel Classifiers for LLR-Based Speaker Verification
In a log-likelihood ratio (LLR)-based speaker verification system, the alternative hypothesis is usually ill-defined and hard to characterize a priori, since it should cover the space of all possible impostors. In this paper, we propose a new LLR measure in an attempt to characterize the alternative hypothesis in a more effective and robust way than conventional methods. This LLR measure can be further formulated as a non-linear discriminant classifier and solved by kernel-based techniques, such as the Kernel Fisher Discriminant (KFD) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The results of experiments on two speaker verification tasks show that the proposed methods outperform classical LLR-based approaches.
15731582
Effective Appearance Model and Similarity Measure for Particle Filtering and Visual Tracking
In this paper, we adaptively model the appearance of objects based on Mixture of Gaussians in a joint spatial-color space (the approach is called SMOG). We propose a new SMOG-based similarity measure. SMOG captures richer information than the general color histogram because it incorporates spatial layout in addition to color. This appearance model and the similarity measure are used in a framework of Bayesian probability for tracking natural objects. In the second part of the paper, we propose an Integral Gaussian Mixture (IGM) technique, as a fast way to extract the parameters of SMOG for target candidate. With IGM, the parameters of SMOG can be computed efficiently by using only simple arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, division) and thus the computation is reduced to linear complexity. Experiments show that our method can successfully track objects despite changes in foreground appearance, clutter, occlusion, etc.; and that it outperforms several color-histogram based methods.