Abstract: The median graph has been presented as a useful tool to represent a set of graphs. Nevertheless its computation is very complex and the existing algorithms are restricted to use limited amount of data. In this paper we propose a new approach for the computation of the median graph based on graph embedding. Graphs are embedded into a vector space and the median is computed in the vector domain. We have designed a procedure based on the weighted mean of a pair of graphs to go from the vector domain back to the graph domain in order to obtain a final approximation of the median graph. Experiments on three different databases containing large graphs show that we succeed to compute good approximations of the median graph. We have also applied the median graph to perform some basic classification tasks achieving reasonable good results. These experiments on real data open the door to the application of the median graph to a number of more complex machine learning algorithms where a representative of a set of graphs is needed.

Abstract: There are printed complex documents where text lines of a single page may have different orientations or the text lines may be curved in shape. As a result, it is difficult to detect the skew of such documents and hence character segmentation and recognition of such documents are a complex task. In this paper, using background and foreground information we propose a novel scheme towards the recognition of Indian complex documents of Bangla and Devnagari script. In Bangla and Devnagari documents usually characters in a word touch and they form cavity regions. To take care of these cavity regions, background information of such documents is used. Convex hull and water reservoir principle have been applied for this purpose. Here, at first, the characters are segmented from the documents using the background information of the text. Next, individual characters are recognized using rotation invariant features obtained from the foreground part of the characters.
For character segmentation, at first, writing mode of a touching component (word) is detected using water reservoir principle based features. Next, depending on writing mode and the reservoir base-region of the touching component, a set of candidate envelope points is then selected from the contour points of the component. Based on these candidate points, the touching component is finally segmented into individual characters. For recognition of multi-sized/multi-oriented characters the features are computed from different angular information obtained from the external and internal contour pixels of the characters. These angular information are computed in such a way that they do not depend on the size and rotation of the characters. Circular and convex hull rings have been used to divide a character into smaller zones to get zone-wise features for higher recognition results. We combine circular and convex hull features to improve the results and these features are fed to support vector machines (SVM) for recognition. From our experiment we obtained recognition results of 99.18% (98.86%) accuracy when tested on 7515 (7874) Devnagari (Bangla) characters.

Abstract: In this paper we propose a novel approach for writer adaptation in a handwritten word-spotting task. The method exploits the fact that the semi-continuous hidden Markov model separates the word model parameters into (i) a codebook of shapes and (ii) a set of word-specific parameters.
Our main contribution is to employ this property to derive writer-specific word models by statistically adapting an initial universal codebook to each document. This process is unsupervised and does not even require the appearance of the keyword(s) in the searched document. Experimental results show an increase in performance when this adaptation technique is applied. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work dealing with adaptation for word-spotting. The preliminary version of this paper obtained an IBM Best Student Paper Award at the 19th International Conference on Pattern Recognition.

Abstract: In two previous experiments [Parraga et al, 2009 J. of Im. Sci. and Tech 53(3) 031106; Benavente et al,2009 Perception 38 ECVP Supplement, 36] the boundaries of basic colour categories were measured.
In the first experiment, samples were presented in isolation (ie on a dark background) and boundaries were measured using a yes/no paradigm. In the second, subjects adjusted the chromaticity of a sample presented on a random Mondrian background to find the boundary between pairs of adjacent colours.
Results from these experiments showed significant dierences but it was not possible to conclude whether this discrepancy was due to the absence/presence of a colourful background or to the dierences in the paradigms used. In this work, we settle this question by repeating the first experiment (ie samples presented on a dark background) using the second paradigm. A comparison of results shows that
although boundary locations are very similar, boundaries measured in context are significantly dierent(more diuse) than those measured in isolation (confirmed by a Student’s t-test analysis on the subject’s answers statistical distributions). In addition, we completed the mapping of colour name space by measuring the boundaries between chromatic colours and the achromatic centre. With these results we
completed our parametric fuzzy-sets model of colour naming space.

Abstract: At the beginning of the 21th century, traffic accidents have become a major problem not only for developed countries but also for emerging ones. As in other scientific areas in which Artificial Intelligence is becoming a key actor, advanced driver assistance systems, and concretely pedestrian protection systems based on Computer Vision, are becoming a strong topic of research aimed at improving the safety of pedestrians. However, the challenge is of considerable complexity due to the varying appearance of humans (e.g., clothes, size, aspect ratio, shape, etc.), the dynamic nature of on-board systems and the unstructured moving environments that urban scenarios represent. In addition, the required performance is demanding both in terms of computational time and detection rates. In this thesis, instead of focusing on improving specific tasks as it is frequent in the literature, we present a global approach to the problem. Such a global overview starts by the proposal of a generic architecture to be used as a framework both to review the literature and to organize the studied techniques along the thesis. We then focus the research on tasks such as foreground segmentation, object classification and refinement following a general viewpoint and exploring aspects that are not usually analyzed. In order to perform the experiments, we also present a novel pedestrian dataset that consists of three subsets, each one addressed to the evaluation of a different specific task in the system. The results presented in this thesis not only end with a proposal of a pedestrian detection system but also go one step beyond by pointing out new insights, formalizing existing and proposed algorithms, introducing new techniques and evaluating their performance, which we hope will provide new foundations for future research in the area.

Abstract: This Thesis is mainly divided in two parts. The first one presents a study of motion
segmentation problems. Based on this study, a novel algorithm for mobile-object
segmentation from a static background scene is also presented. This approach is
demonstrated robust and accurate under most of the common problems in motion
segmentation. The second one tackles the problem of shadows in depth. Firstly, a
bottom-up approach based on a chromatic shadow detector is presented to deal with
umbra shadows. Secondly, a top-down approach based on a tracking system has been
developed in order to enhance the chromatic shadow detection.
In our first contribution, a case analysis of motion segmentation problems is presented by taking into account the problems associated with different cues, namely
colour, edge and intensity. Our second contribution is a hybrid architecture which
handles the main problems observed in such a case analysis, by fusing (i) the knowledge from these three cues and (ii) a temporal difference algorithm. On the one hand,
we enhance the colour and edge models to solve both global/local illumination changes
(shadows and highlights) and camouflage in intensity. In addition, local information is
exploited to cope with a very challenging problem such as the camouflage in chroma.
On the other hand, the intensity cue is also applied when colour and edge cues are not
available, such as when beyond the dynamic range. Additionally, temporal difference
is included to segment motion when these three cues are not available, such as that
background not visible during the training period. Lastly, the approach is enhanced
for allowing ghost detection. As a result, our approach obtains very accurate and robust motion segmentation in both indoor and outdoor scenarios, as quantitatively and
qualitatively demonstrated in the experimental results, by comparing our approach
with most best-known state-of-the-art approaches.
Motion Segmentation has to deal with shadows to avoid distortions when detecting
moving objects. Most segmentation approaches dealing with shadow detection are
typically restricted to penumbra shadows. Therefore, such techniques cannot cope
well with umbra shadows. Consequently, umbra shadows are usually detected as part
of moving objects.
Firstly, a bottom-up approach for detection and removal of chromatic moving
shadows in surveillance scenarios is proposed. Secondly, a top-down approach based
on kalman filters to detect and track shadows has been developed in order to enhance
the chromatic shadow detection. In the Bottom-up part, the shadow detection approach applies a novel technique based on gradient and colour models for separating
chromatic moving shadows from moving objects.
Well-known colour and gradient models are extended and improved into an invariant colour cone model and an invariant gradient model, respectively, to perform
automatic segmentation while detecting potential shadows. Hereafter, the regions corresponding to potential shadows are grouped by considering ”a bluish effect” and an
edge partitioning. Lastly, (i) temporal similarities between local gradient structures
and (ii) spatial similarities between chrominance angle and brightness distortions are
analysed for all potential shadow regions in order to finally identify umbra shadows.
In the top-down process, after detection of objects and shadows both are tracked
using Kalman filters, in order to enhance the chromatic shadow detection, when it
fails to detect a shadow. Firstly, this implies a data association between the blobs
(foreground and shadow) and Kalman filters. Secondly, an event analysis of the different data association cases is performed, and occlusion handling is managed by a
Probabilistic Appearance Model (PAM). Based on this association, temporal consistency is looked for the association between foregrounds and shadows and their
respective Kalman Filters. From this association several cases are studied, as a result
lost chromatic shadows are correctly detected. Finally, the tracking results are used
as feedback to improve the shadow and object detection.
Unlike other approaches, our method does not make any a-priori assumptions
about camera location, surface geometries, surface textures, shapes and types of
shadows, objects, and background. Experimental results show the performance and
accuracy of our approach in different shadowed materials and illumination conditions.

Abstract: Sketch recognition is a discipline which has gained an increasing interest in the last
20 years. This is due to the appearance of new devices such as PDA, Tablet PC’s
or digital pen & paper protocols. From the wide range of sketched documents we
focus on those that represent structured documents such as: architectural floor-plans,
engineering drawing, UML diagrams, etc. To recognize and understand these kinds
of documents, first we have to recognize the different compounding symbols and then
we have to identify the relations between these elements. From the way that a sketch
is captured, there are two categories: on-line and off-line. On-line input modes refer
to draw directly on a PDA or a Tablet PC’s while off-line input modes refer to scan
a previously drawn sketch.
This thesis is an overlapping of three different areas on Computer Science: Pattern
Recognition, Document Analysis and Human-Computer Interaction. The aim of this
thesis is to interpret sketched documents independently on whether they are captured
on-line or off-line. For this reason, the proposed approach should contain the following
features. First, as we are working with sketches the elements present in our input
contain distortions. Second, as we would work in on-line or off-line input modes, the
order in the input of the primitives is indifferent. Finally, the proposed method should
be applied in real scenarios, its response time must be slow.
To interpret a sketched document we propose a syntactic approach. A syntactic
approach is composed of two correlated components: a grammar and a parser. The
grammar allows describing the different elements on the document as well as their
relations. The parser, given a document checks whether it belongs to the language
generated by the grammar or not. Thus, the grammar should be able to cope with
the distortions appearing on the instances of the elements. Moreover, it would be
necessary to define a symbol independently of the order of their primitives. Concerning to the parser when analyzing 2D sentences, it does not assume an order in the
primitives. Then, at each new primitive in the input, the parser searches among the
previous analyzed symbols candidates to produce a valid reduction.
Taking into account these features, we have proposed a grammar based on Adjacency Grammars. This kind of grammars defines their productions as a multiset
of symbols rather than a list. This allows describing a symbol without an order in
their components. To cope with distortion we have proposed a distortion model.
This distortion model is an attributed estimated over the constraints of the grammar and passed through the productions. This measure gives an idea on how far is the
symbol from its ideal model. In addition to the distortion on the constraints other
distortions appear when working with sketches. These distortions are: overtracing,
overlapping, gaps or spurious strokes. Some grammatical productions have been defined to cope with these errors. Concerning the recognition, we have proposed an
incremental parser with an indexation mechanism. Incremental parsers analyze the
input symbol by symbol given a response to the user when a primitive is analyzed.
This makes incremental parser suitable to work in on-line as well as off-line input
modes. The parser has been adapted with an indexation mechanism based on a spatial division. This indexation mechanism allows setting the primitives in the space
and reducing the search to a neighbourhood.
A third contribution is a grammatical inference algorithm. This method given a
set of symbols captures the production describing it. In the field of formal languages,
different approaches has been proposed but in the graphical domain not so much work
is done in this field. The proposed method is able to capture the production from
a set of symbol although they are drawn in different order. A matching step based
on the Haussdorff distance and the Hungarian method has been proposed to match
the primitives of the different symbols. In addition the proposed approach is able to
capture the variability in the parameters of the constraints.
From the experimental results, we may conclude that we have proposed a robust
approach to describe and recognize sketches. Moreover, the addition of new symbols
to the alphabet is not restricted to an expert. Finally, the proposed approach has
been used in two real scenarios obtaining a good performance.

Abstract: Road traffic crashes have become a major cause of death and injury throughout the world.
Hence, in order to improve road safety, the automobile manufacture is moving towards the
development of vehicles with autonomous functionalities such as keeping in the right lane, safe distance keeping between vehicles or regulating the speed of the vehicle according to the traffic conditions. A key component of these systems is vision–based road detection that aims to detect the free road surface ahead the moving vehicle. Detecting the road using a monocular vision system is very challenging since the road is an outdoor scenario imaged from a mobile platform. Hence, the detection algorithm must be able to deal with continuously changing imaging conditions such as the presence ofdifferent objects (vehicles, pedestrians), different environments (urban, highways, off–road), different road types (shape, color), and different imaging conditions (varying illumination, different viewpoints and changing weather conditions). Therefore, in this thesis, we focus on vision–based road detection using a single color camera. More precisely, we first focus on analyzing and grouping pixels according to their low–level properties. In this way, two different approaches are presented to exploit
color and photometric invariance. Then, we focus the research of the thesis on exploiting context information. This information provides relevant knowledge about the road not using pixel features from road regions but semantic information from the analysis of the scene.
In this way, we present two different approaches to infer the geometry of the road ahead
the moving vehicle. Finally, we focus on combining these context and appearance (color)
approaches to improve the overall performance of road detection algorithms. The qualitative and quantitative results presented in this thesis on real–world driving sequences show that the proposed method is robust to varying imaging conditions, road types and scenarios going beyond the state–of–the–art.