Abstract: In this paper we propose a segmentation-free query by string word spotting method. Both the documents and query strings are encoded using a recently proposed word representa- tion that projects images and strings into a common atribute space based on a pyramidal histogram of characters(PHOC). These attribute models are learned using linear SVMs over the Fisher Vector representation of the images along with the PHOC labels of the corresponding strings. In order to search through the whole page, document regions are indexed per character bi- gram using a similar attribute representation. On top of that, we propose an integral image representation of the document using a simplified version of the attribute model for efficient computation. Finally we introduce a re-ranking step in order to boost retrieval performance. We show state-of-the-art results for segmentation-free query by string word spotting in single-writer and multi-writer standard datasets

Abstract: Mirroring occurs when one person tends to mimic the non-verbal communication of their counterparts. Even though mirroring is a complex phenomenon, in this study, we focus on the detection of head-nodding as a simple non-verbal communication cue due to its significance as a gesture displayed during social interactions. This paper introduces a computer vision-based method to detect mirroring through the analysis of head gestures using wearable cameras (smart glasses). In addition, we study how such a method can be used to explore perceived competence. The proposed method has been evaluated and the experiments demonstrate how static and wearable cameras seem to be equally effective to gather the information required for the analysis.

Abstract: Nowadays, document forgery is becoming a real issue. A large amount of documents that contain critical information as payment slips, invoices or contracts, are constantly subject to fraudster manipulation because of the lack of security regarding this kind of document. Previously, a system to detect fraudulent documents based on its intrinsic features has been presented. It was especially designed to retrieve copy-move forgery and imperfection due to fraudster manipulation. However, when a set of characters is not present in the original document, copy-move forgery is not feasible. Hence, the fraudster will use a text toolbox to add or modify information in the document by imitating the font or he will cut and paste characters from another document where the font properties are similar. This often results in font type errors. Thus, a clue to detect document forgery consists of finding characters, words or sentences in a document with font properties different from their surroundings. To this end, we present in this paper an automatic forgery detection method based on document font features. Using the Conditional Random Field a measurement of probability that a character belongs to a specific font is made by comparing the character font features to a knowledge database. Then, the character is classified as a genuine or a fake one by comparing its probability to belong to a certain font type with those of the neighboring characters.

Abstract: In this paper, we propose the use of an Attributed Graph Grammar as unique framework to model and recognize the structure of floor plans. This grammar represents a building as a hierarchical composition of structurally and semantically related elements, where common representations are learned stochastically from annotated data. Given an input image, the parsing consists on constructing that graph representation that better agrees with the probabilistic model defined by the grammar. The proposed method provides several advantages with respect to the traditional floor plan analysis techniques. It uses an unsupervised statistical approach for detecting walls that adapts to different graphical notations and relaxes strong structural assumptions such are straightness and orthogonality. Moreover, the independence between the knowledge model and the parsing implementation allows the method to learn automatically different building configurations and thus, to cope the existing variability. These advantages are clearly demonstrated by comparing it with the most recent floor plan interpretation techniques on 4 datasets of real floor plans with different notations.

Abstract: Processing of handwritten documents is a task that is of wide interest for many
purposes, such as those related to preserve cultural heritage. Handwritten text recognition techniques have been successfully applied during the last decade to obtain transcriptions of handwritten documents, and keyword spotting techniques have been applied for searching specific terms in image collections of handwritten documents. However, results on transcription and indexing are far from perfect. In this framework, the use of new data sources arises as a new paradigm that will allow for a better transcription and indexing of handwritten documents. Three main different data sources could be considered: context of the document (style, writer, historical time, topics,. . . ), multimodal data (representations of the document in a different modality, such as the speech signal of the dictation of the text), and user feedback (corrections, amendments,. . . ). The CoMUN-HaT project aims at the integration of these different data sources into the transcription and indexing task for handwritten documents: the use of context derived from the analysis of the documents, how multimodality can aid the recognition process to obtain more accurate transcriptions (including transcription in a modern version of the language), and integration into a userin-the-loop assisted text transcription framework. This will be reflected in the construction of a transcription and indexing platform that can be used by both professional and nonprofessional users, contributing to crowd-sourcing activities to preserve cultural heritage and to obtain an accessible version of the involved corpus.

Abstract: Projector-camera systems are designed to improve the projection quality by comparing original images with their captured projections, which is usually complicated due to high photometric and geometric variations. Many research works address this problem using their own test data which makes it extremely difficult to compare different proposals. This paper has two main contributions. Firstly, we introduce a new database of acquired image projections (DAcImPro) that, covering photometric and geometric conditions and providing data for ground-truth computation, can serve to evaluate different algorithms in projector-camera systems. Secondly, a new object recognition scenario from acquired projections is presented, which could be of a great interest in such domains, as home video projections and public presentations. We show that the task is more challenging than the classical recognition problem and thus requires additional pre-processing, such as color compensation or projection area selection.

Abstract: Robust and dense computation of depth information from stereo-camera systems is a computationally demanding requirement for real-time autonomous driving. Semi-Global Matching (SGM) [1] approximates heavy-computation global algorithms results but with lower computational complexity, therefore it is a good candidate for a real-time implementation. SGM minimizes energy along several 1D paths across the image. The aim of this work is to provide a real-time system producing reliable results on energy-efficient hardware. Our design runs on a NVIDIA Titan X GPU at 104.62 FPS and on a NVIDIA Drive PX at 6.7 FPS, promising for real-time platforms