Abstract: A new approach for 2D to 3D garment retexturing is proposed based on Gaussian mixture models and thin plate splines (TPS). An automatically segmented garment of an individual is matched to a new source garment and rendered, resulting in augmented images in which the target garment has been retextured using the texture of the source garment. We divide the problem into garment boundary matching based on Gaussian mixture models and then interpolate inner points using surface topology extracted through geodesic paths, which leads to a more realistic result than standard approaches. We evaluated and compared our system quantitatively by root mean square error (RMS) and qualitatively using the mean opinion score (MOS), showing the benefits of the proposed methodology on our gathered dataset.

Abstract: Project-Based Learning (PBL) is an educational strategy to improve student’s learning capability that, in recent years, has had a progressive acceptance in undergraduate studies. This methodology is based on solving a problem or project in a student working group. In this way, PBL focuses on learning the necessary tools to correctly find a solution to given problems. Since the learning initiative is transferred to the student, the PBL method promotes students own abilities. This allows a better assessment of the true workload that carries out the student in the subject. It follows that the methodology conforms to the guidelines of the Bologna document, which quantifies the student workload in a subject by means of the European credit transfer system (ECTS). PBL is currently applied in undergraduate studies needing strong practical training such as medicine, nursing or law sciences. Although this is also the case in engineering studies, amazingly, few experiences have been reported. In this paper we propose to use PBL in the educational organization of the Computer Graphics subjects in the Computer Science degree. Our PBL project focuses in the development of a C++ graphical environment based on the OpenGL libraries for visualization and handling of different graphical objects. The starting point is a basic skeleton that already includes lighting functions, perspective projection with mouse interaction to change the point of view and three predefined objects. Students have to complete this skeleton by adding their own functions to solve the project. A total number of 10 projects have been proposed and successfully solved. The exercises range from human face rendering to articulated objects, such as robot arms or puppets. In the present paper we extensively report the statement and educational objectives for two of the projects: solar system visualization and a chess game. We report our earlier educational experience based on the standard classroom theoretical, problem and practice sessions and the reasons that motivated searching for other learning methods. We have mainly chosen PBL because it improves the student learning initiative. We have applied the PBL educational model since the beginning of the second semester. The student’s feedback increases in his interest for the subject. We present a comparative study of the teachers’ and students’ workload between PBL and the classic teaching approach, which suggests that the workload increase in PBL is not as high as it seems.

Abstract: El presente proyecto se desarrolló a lo largo del año 2005, probando un prototipo de un sistema de verificación facial con imágenes extraídas de las cámaras de video vigilancia del aeropuerto de Barajas. Se diseñaron varios experimentos, agrupados en dos clases. En el primer tipo, el sistema es entrenado con imágenes obtenidas en condiciones de laboratorio y luego probado con imágenes extraídas de las cámaras de video vigilancia del aeropuerto de Barajas. En el segundo caso, tanto las imágenes de entrenamiento como las de prueba corresponden a imágenes extraídas de Barajas. Se ha desarrollado un sistema completo, que incluye adquisición y digitalización de las imágenes, localización y recorte de las caras en escena, verificación de sujetos y obtención de resultados. Los resultados muestran, que, en general, un sistema de verificación facial basado en imágenes puede ser una ayuda a un operario que deba estar vigilando amplias zonas.

Abstract: We describe a method for hand-drawn symbol recognition based on deformable template matching able to handle uncertainty and imprecision inherent to hand-drawing. Symbols are represented as a set of straight lines and their deformations as geometric transformations of these lines. Matching, however, is done over the original binary image to avoid loss of information during line detection. It is defined as an energy minimization problem, using a Bayesian framework which allows to combine fidelity to ideal shape of the symbol and flexibility to modify the symbol in order to get the best fit to the binary input image. Prior to matching, we find the best global transformation of the symbol to start the recognition process, based on the distance between symbol lines and image lines. We have applied this method to the recognition of dimensions and symbols in architectural floor plans and we show its flexibility to recognize distorted symbols.

Abstract: Recent studies have shown that the environment where people eat can affect their nutritional behaviour. In this work, we provide automatic tools for a personalised analysis of a person's health habits by the examination of daily recorded egocentric photo-streams. Specifically, we propose a new automatic approach for the classification of food-related environments, that is able to classify up to 15 such scenes. In this way, people can monitor the context around their food intake in order to get an objective insight into their daily eating routine. We propose a model that classifies food-related scenes organized in a semantic hierarchy. Additionally, we present and make available a new egocentric dataset composed of more than 33000 images recorded by a wearable camera, over which our proposed model has been tested. Our approach obtains an accuracy and F-score of 56\% and 65\%, respectively, clearly outperforming the baseline methods.

Abstract: In this paper, we address the analysis and recognition of facial expressions in continuous videos. More precisely, we study classifiers performance that exploit head pose independent temporal facial action parameters. These are provided by an appearance-based 3D face tracker that simultaneously provides the 3D head pose and facial actions. The use of such tracker makes the recognition pose- and texture-independent. Two different schemes are studied. The first scheme adopts a dynamic time warping technique for recognizing expressions where training data are given by temporal signatures associated with different universal facial expressions. The second scheme models temporal signatures associated with facial actions with fixed length feature vectors (observations), and uses some machine learning algorithms in order to recognize the displayed expression. Experiments quantified the performance of different schemes. These were carried out on CMU video sequences and home-made video sequences. The results show that the use of dimension reduction techniques on the extracted time series can improve the classification performance. Moreover, these experiments show that the best recognition rate can be above 90%.