Abstract: Impact factor: 3.508 (the last available from JCR2009SCI). Position 4/103 in the category Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence. Quartile
Color is a powerful visual cue in many computer vision applications such as image segmentation and object recognition. However, most of the existing color models depend on the imaging conditions that negatively affect the performance of the task at hand. Often, a reflection model (e.g., Lambertian or dichromatic reflectance) is used to derive color invariant models. However, this approach may be too restricted to model real-world scenes in which different reflectance mechanisms can hold simultaneously.
Therefore, in this paper, we aim to derive color invariance by learning from color models to obtain diversified color invariant ensembles. First, a photometrical orthogonal and non-redundant color model set is computed composed of both color variants and invariants. Then, the proposed method combines these color models to arrive at a diversified color ensemble yielding a proper balance between invariance (repeatability) and discriminative power (distinctiveness). To achieve this, our fusion method uses a multi-view approach to minimize the estimation error. In this way, the proposed method is robust to data uncertainty and produces properly diversified color invariant ensembles. Further, the proposed method is extended to deal with temporal data by predicting the evolution of observations over time.
Experiments are conducted on three different image datasets to validate the proposed method. Both the theoretical and experimental results show that the method is robust against severe variations in imaging conditions. The method is not restricted to a certain reflection model or parameter tuning, and outperforms state-of-the-art detection techniques in the field of object, skin and road recognition. Considering sequential data, the proposed method (extended to deal with future observations) outperforms the other methods

Abstract: In this article we investigate the problem of human action recognition in static images. By action recognition we intend a class of problems which includes both action classification and action detection (i.e. simultaneous localization and classification). Bag-of-words image representations yield promising results for action classification, and deformable part models perform very well object detection. The representations for action recognition typically use only shape cues and ignore color information. Inspired by the recent success of color in image classification and object detection, we investigate the potential of color for action classification and detection in static images. We perform a comprehensive evaluation of color descriptors and fusion approaches for action recognition. Experiments were conducted on the three datasets most used for benchmarking action recognition in still images: Willow, PASCAL VOC 2010 and Stanford-40. Our experiments demonstrate that incorporating color information considerably improves recognition performance, and that a descriptor based on color names outperforms pure color descriptors. Our experiments demonstrate that late fusion of color and shape information outperforms other approaches on action recognition. Finally, we show that the different color–shape fusion approaches result in complementary information and combining them yields state-of-the-art performance for action classification.

Abstract: In our work, we are particularly interested in studying the shadows cast by static objects in outdoor environments, during daytime. To assess the accuracy of a shadow detection algorithm, we need ground truth information. The collection of such information is a very tedious task because it is a process that requires manual annotation. To overcome this severe limitation, we propose in this paper a methodology to automatically render ground truth using a virtual environment. To increase the degree of realism and usefulness of the simulated environment, we incorporate in the scenario the precise longitude, latitude and elevation of the actual location of the object, as well as the sun’s position for a given time and day. To evaluate our method, we consider a qualitative and a quantitative comparison. In the quantitative one, we analyze the shadow cast by a real object in a particular geographical location and its corresponding rendered model. To evaluate qualitatively the methodology, we use some ground truth images obtained both manually and automatically.

Abstract: Research in computer vision is advancing by the availability of good datasets that help to improve algorithms, validate results and obtain comparative analysis. The datasets can be real or synthetic. For some of the computer vision problems such as optical flow it is not possible to obtain ground-truth optical flow with high accuracy in natural outdoor real scenarios directly by any sensor, although it is possible to obtain ground-truth data of real scenarios in a laboratory setup with limited motion. In this difficult situation computer graphics offers a viable option for creating realistic virtual scenarios. In the current work we present a framework to design virtual scenes and generate sequences as well as ground-truth flow fields. Particularly, we generate a dataset containing sequences of driving scenarios. The sequences in the dataset vary in different speeds of the on-board vision system, different road textures, complex motion of vehicle and independent moving vehicles in the scene. This dataset enables analyzing and adaptation of existing optical flow methods, and leads to invention of new approaches particularly for driver assistance systems.

Abstract: Assessing the reliability of termination conditions for evolutionary algorithms (EAs) is of prime importance. An erroneous or weak stop criterion can negatively affect both the computational effort and the final result. We introduce a statistical framework for assessing whether a termination condition is able to stop an EA at its steady state, so that its results can not be improved anymore. We use a regression model in order to determine the requirements ensuring that a measure derived from EA evolving population is related to the distance to the optimum in decision variable space. Our framework is analyzed across 24 benchmark test functions and two standard termination criteria based on function fitness value in objective function space and EA population decision variable space distribution for the differential evolution (DE) paradigm. Results validate our framework as a powerful tool for determining the capability of a measure for terminating EA and the results also identify the decision variable space distribution as the best-suited for accurately terminating DE in real-world applications.

Abstract: In this paper we propose a contextual rescoring method for predicting the position of body parts in a human pose estimation framework. A set of poselets is incorporated in the model, and their detections are used to extract spatial and score-related features relative to other body part hypotheses. A method is proposed for the automatic discovery of a compact subset of poselets that covers the different poses in a set of validation images while maximizing precision. A rescoring mechanism is defined as a set-based boosting classifier that computes a new score for each body joint detection, given its relationship to detections of other body joints and mid-level parts in the image. This new score is incorporated in the pictorial structure model as an additional unary potential, following the recent work of Pishchulin et al. Experiments on two benchmarks show comparable results to Pishchulin et al. while reducing the size of the mid-level representation by an order of magnitude, reducing the execution time by 68 % accordingly.

Abstract: Otolith end organs of vertebrates sense linear accelerations of the head and gravitation. The hair cells on their epithelia are responsible for transduction. In mammals, the striola, parallel to the line where hair cells reverse their polarization, is a narrow region centered on a curve with curvature and torsion. It has been shown that the striolar region is functionally different from the rest, being involved in a phasic vestibular pathway. We propose a mathematical and computational model that explains the necessity of this amazing geometry for the striola to be able to carry out its function. Our hypothesis, related to the biophysics of the hair cells and to the physiology of their afferent neurons, is that striolar afferents collect information from several type I hair cells to detect the jerk in a large domain of acceleration directions. This predicts a mean number of two calyces for afferent neurons, as measured in rodents. The domain of acceleration directions sensed by our striolar model is compatible with the experimental results obtained on monkeys considering all afferents. Therefore, the main result of our study is that phasic and tonic vestibular afferents cover the same geometrical fields, but at different dynamical and frequency domains.