Abstract: The dichromatic reflection model (DRM) predicts that color distributions form a parallelogram in color space, whose shape is defined by the body reflectance and the illuminant color. In this paper we resume the assumptions which led to the DRM and shortly recall two of its main applications domains: color image segmentation and photometric invariant feature computation. After having introduced the model we discuss several limitations of the theory, especially those which are raised once working on real-world uncalibrated images. In addition, we summerize recent extensions of the model which allow to handle more complicated light interactions. Finally, we suggest some future research directions which would further extend its applicability.

Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of video surveillance by mobile cameras. We present a method that allows online change detection in night-time outdoor surveillance. Because of the camera movement, background frames are not available and must be “localized” in former sequences and registered with the current frames. To this end, we propose a Frame Localization And Registration (FLAR) approach that solves the problem efficiently. Frames of former sequences define a database which is queried by current frames in turn. To quickly retrieve nearest neighbors, database is indexed through a visual dictionary method based on the SURF descriptor. Furthermore, the frame localization is benefited by a temporal filter that exploits the temporal coherence of videos. Next, the recently proposed ECC alignment scheme is used to spatially register the synchronized frames. Finally, change detection methods apply to aligned frames in order to mark suspicious areas. Experiments with real night sequences recorded by in-vehicle cameras demonstrate the performance of the proposed method and verify its efficiency and effectiveness against other methods.

Abstract: This paper introduces a framework for evaluating the performance of information retrieval systems. Current evaluation metrics provide an average score that does not consider performance variability across the query set. In this manner, conclusions lack of any statistical significance, yielding poor inference to cases outside the query set and possibly unfair comparisons. We propose to apply statistical methods in order to obtain a more informative measure for problems in which different query classes can be identified. In this context, we assess the performance variability on two levels: overall variability across the whole query set and specific query class-related variability. To this end, we estimate confidence bands for precision-recall curves, and we apply ANOVA in order to assess the significance of the performance across different query classes.

Abstract: Image based human detection is of paramount interest due to its potential applications in fields such as advanced driving assistance, surveillance and media analysis. However, even detecting non-occluded standing humans remains a challenge of intensive research. The most promising human detectors rely on classifiers developed in the discriminative paradigm, i.e., trained with labelled samples. However, labeling is a manual intensive step, especially in cases like human detection where it is necessary to provide at least bounding boxes framing the humans for training. To overcome such problem, some authors have proposed the use of a virtual world where the labels of the different objects are obtained automatically. This means that the human models (classifiers) are learnt using the appearance of rendered images, i.e., using realistic computer graphics. Later, these models are used for human detection in images of the real world. The results of this technique are surprisingly good. However, these are not always as good as the classical approach of training and testing with data coming from the same camera, or similar ones. Accordingly, in this paper we address the challenge of using a virtual world for gathering (while playing a videogame) a large amount of automatically labelled samples (virtual humans and background) and then training a classifier that performs equal, in real-world images, than the one obtained by equally training from manually labelled real-world samples. For doing that, we cast the problem as one of domain adaptation. In doing so, we assume that a small amount of manually labelled samples from real-world images is required. To collect these labelled samples we propose a non-standard active learning technique. Therefore, ultimately our human model is learnt by the combination of virtual and real world labelled samples (Fig. 1), which has not been done before. We present quantitative results showing that this approach is valid.

Abstract: The management of solid waste in large urban environments has become a complex problem due to increasing amount of waste generated every day by citizens and companies. Current Computer Vision and Deep Learning techniques can help in the automatic detection and classification of waste types for further recycling tasks. In this work, we use the TrashNet dataset to train and compare different deep learning architectures for automatic classification of garbage types. In particular, several Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) architectures were compared: VGG, Inception and ResNet. The best classification results were obtained using a combined Inception-ResNet model that achieved 88.6% of accuracy. These are the best results obtained with the considered dataset.