Abstract: On–board pedestrian detection is in the frontier of the state–of–the–art since it implies processing outdoor scenarios from a mobile platform and searching for aspect–changing objects in cluttered urban environments. Most promising approaches include the development of classifiers based on feature selection and machine learning. However, they use a large number of features which compromises real–time. Thus, methods for running the classifiers in only a few image windows must be provided. In this paper we contribute in both aspects, proposing a camera
pose estimation method for adaptive sparse image sampling, as well as a classifier for pedestrian detection based on Haar wavelets and edge orientation histograms as features and AdaBoost as learning machine. Both proposals are compared with relevant approaches in the literature, showing comparable results but reducing processing time by four for the sampling tasks and by ten for the classification one.

Abstract: Pedestrian detection from images of the visible spectrum is a high relevant area of research given its potential impact in the design of pedestrian protection systems. There are many proposals in the literature but they lack a comparative viewpoint. According to this, in this paper we first propose a common framework where we fit the different approaches, and second we use this framework to provide a comparative point of view of the details of such different approaches, pointing out also the main challenges to be solved in the future. In summary, we expect
this survey to be useful for both novel and experienced researchers in the field. In the first case, as a clarifying snapshot of the state of the art; in the second, as a way to unveil trends and to take conclusions from the comparative study.

Abstract: This paper presents an efficient technique for real time estimation of on-board stereo vision system pose. The whole process is performed in the Euclidean space and consists of two stages. Initially, a compact representation of the original 3D data points is computed. Then, a RANSAC based least squares approach is used for fitting a plane to the 3D road points. Fast RANSAC fitting is obtained by selecting points according to a probability distribution function that takes into account the density of points at a given depth. Finally, stereo camera position
and orientation—pose—is computed relative to the road plane. The proposed technique is intended to be used on driver assistance systems for applications such as obstacle or pedestrian detection. A real time performance is reached. Experimental results on several environments and comparisons with a previous work are presented.

Abstract: This work presents a content-based image retrieval system of general purpose that deals with cluttered scenes containing a given query object. The system is flexible enough to handle with a single image of an object despite its rotation, translation and scale variations. The image content is divided in parts that are described with a combination of features based on geometrical and color properties. The idea behind the feature combination is to benefit from a fuzzy similarity computation that provides robustness and tolerance to the retrieval process. The features can be independently computed and the image parts can be easily indexed by using a table structure on every feature value. Finally a process inspired in the alignment strategies is used to check the coherence of the object parts found in a scene. Our work presents a system of easy implementation that uses an open set of features and can suit a wide variety of applications.