Abstract: Non-rigid object detection is a challenging an open research problem in computer vision. It is a critical part in many applications such as image search, surveillance, human-computer interaction or image auto-annotation. Most successful approaches to non-rigid object detection make use of part-based models. In particular, Conditional Random Fields (CRF) have been successfully embedded into a discriminative parts-based model framework due to its effectiveness for learning and inference (usually based on a tree structure). However, CRF-based approaches do not incorporate global constraints and only model pairwise interactions. This is especially important when modeling object classes that may have complex parts interactions (e.g. facial features or body articulations), because neglecting them yields an oversimplified model with suboptimal performance. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a novel hierarchical CRF (HCRF). The main contribution is to build a hierarchy of part combinations by extending the label set to a hierarchy of product label spaces. In order to keep the inference computation tractable, we propose an effective method to reduce the new label set. We test our method on two applications: facial feature detection on the Multi-PIE database and human pose estimation on the Buffy dataset.

Abstract: Automatically changing the expression and physical features of a face from an input image is a topic that has been traditionally tackled in a 2D domain. In this paper, we bring this problem to 3D and propose a framework that given an
input RGB video of a human face under a neutral expression, initially computes his/her 3D shape and then performs a transfer to a new and potentially non-observed expression. For this purpose, we parameterize the rest shape –obtained from standard factorization approaches over the input video– using a triangular
mesh which is further clustered into larger macro-segments. The expression transfer problem is then posed as a direct mapping between this shape and a source shape, such as the blend shapes of an off-the-shelf 3D dataset of human facial expressions. The mapping is resolved to be geometrically consistent between 3D models by requiring points in specific regions to map on semantic
equivalent regions. We validate the approach on several synthetic and real examples of input faces that largely differ from the source shapes, yielding very realistic expression transfers even in cases with topology changes, such as a synthetic video sequence of a single-eyed cyclops.

Abstract: n this work, we introduce a novel energy-based framework that addresses the challenging problem of 3D reconstruction of facial hair from a single RGB image. To this end, we identify hair pixels over the image via texture analysis and then determine individual hair fibers that are modeled by means of a parametric hair model based on 3D helixes. We propose to minimize an energy composed of several terms, in order to adapt the hair parameters that better fit the image detections. The final hairs respond to the resulting fibers after a post-processing step where we encourage further realism. The resulting approach generates realistic facial hair fibers from solely an RGB image without assuming any training data nor user interaction. We provide an experimental evaluation on real-world pictures where several facial hair styles and image conditions are observed, showing consistent results and establishing a comparison with respect to competing approaches.

Abstract: We present a novel technique for estimating initial 3D poses in the context of localization and Visual SLAM problems. The presented approach can deal with noise, outliers and a large amount of input data and still performs in real time in a standard CPU. Our method produces solutions with an accuracy comparable to those produced by RANSAC but can be much faster when the percentage of outliers is high or for large amounts of input data. On the current work we propose to formulate the pose estimation as an optimization problem on Lie groups, considering their manifold structure as well as their associated Lie algebras. This allows us to perform a fast and simple optimization at the same time that conserve all the constraints imposed by the Lie group SE(3). Additionally, we present several key design concepts related with the cost function and its Jacobian; aspects that are critical for the good performance of the algorithm.

Abstract: This paper proposes a new version of Particle Filter, called Articulated Particle Filter – ArPF -, which has been specifically designed for an efficient sampling of hierarchical spaces, generated by articulated objects. Our approach decomposes the articulated motion into layers for efficiency purposes, making use of a careful modeling of the diffusion noise along with its propagation through the articulations. This produces an increase of accuracy and prevent for divergences. The algorithm is tested on hand tracking due to its complex hierarchical articulated nature. With this purpose, a new dataset generation tool for quantitative evaluation is also presented in this paper.