Abstract: This paper proposes a new framework for extracting dense disparity maps from a multispectral stereo rig. The system is constructed with an infrared and a color camera. It is intended to explore novel multispectral stereo matching approaches that will allow further extraction of semantic information. The proposed framework consists of three stages. Firstly, an initial sparse disparity map is generated by using a cost function based on feature matching in a multiresolution scheme. Then, by looking at the color image, a set of planar hypotheses is defined to describe the surfaces on the scene. Finally, the previous stages are combined by reformulating the disparity computation as a global minimization problem. The paper has two main contributions. The first contribution combines mutual information with a shape descriptor based on gradient in a multiresolution scheme. The second contribution, which is based on the Manhattan-world assumption, extracts a dense disparity representation using the graph cut algorithm. Experimental results in outdoor scenarios are provided showing the validity of the proposed framework.

Abstract: This paper presents and evaluates a framework to improve the performance of visual object classification methods, which are based on the usage of image feature descriptors as inputs. The goal of the proposed framework is to learn the best descriptor for each image in a given database. This goal is reached by means of a reinforcement learning process using the minimum information. The visual classification system used to demonstrate the proposed framework is based on a bag of features scheme, and the reinforcement learning technique is implemented through the Q-learning approach. The behavior of the reinforcement learning with different state definitions is evaluated. Additionally, a method that combines all these states is formulated in order to select the optimal state. Finally, the chosen actions are obtained from the best set of image descriptors in the literature: PHOW, SIFT, C-SIFT, SURF and Spin. Experimental results using two public databases (ETH and COIL) are provided showing both the validity of the proposed approach and comparisons with state of the art. In all the cases the best results are obtained with the proposed approach.

Abstract: This paper presents a vision-based approach for mobile robot localization. The model of the environment is topological. The new approach characterizes a place using a signature. This signature consists of a constellation of descriptors computed over different types of local affine covariant regions extracted from an omnidirectional image acquired rotating a standard camera with a pan-tilt unit. This type of representation permits a reliable and distinctive environment modelling. Our objectives were to validate the proposed method in indoor environments and, also, to find out if the combination of complementary local feature region detectors improves the localization versus using a single region detector. Our experimental results show that if false matches are effectively rejected, the combination of different covariant affine region detectors increases notably the performance of the approach by combining the different strengths of the individual detectors. In order to reduce the localization time, two strategies are evaluated: re-ranking the map nodes using a global similarity measure and using standard perspective view field of 45°.
In order to systematically test topological localization methods, another contribution proposed in this work is a novel method to see the degradation in localization performance as the robot moves away from the point where the original signature was acquired. This allows to know the robustness of the proposed signature. In order for this to be effective, it must be done in several, variated, environments that test all the possible situations in which the robot may have to perform localization.

Abstract: This paper presents a novel method extracting biometric measures using depth sensors. Given a multi-part labeled training data, a new subject is aligned to the best model of the dataset, and soft biometrics such as lengths or circumference sizes of limbs and body are computed. The process is performed by training relevant pose clusters, defining a representative model, and fitting a 3D shape context descriptor within an iterative matching procedure. We show robust measures by applying orthogonal plates to body hull. We test our approach in a novel full-body RGB-Depth data set, showing accurate estimation of soft biometrics and better segmentation accuracy in comparison with random forest approach without requiring large training data.

Abstract: This paper presents a new technique to the instantaneous 3D motion estimation. The main contributions are as follows. First, we show that the 3D camera or scene velocity can be retrieved from image derivatives only assuming that the scene contains a dominant plane. Second, we propose a new robust algorithm that simultaneously provides the Least Trimmed Square solution and the percentage of inliers-the non-contaminated data. Experiments on both synthetic and real image sequences demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed method. Those experiments show that the new robust approach can outperform classical robust schemes.