Abstract: Over the past years, inverse perspective mapping has been successfully applied to several problems in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems. In brief, the method consists of mapping images to a new coordinate system where perspective effects are removed. The removal of perspective associated effects facilitates road and obstacle detection and also assists in free space estimation. There is, however, a significant limitation in the inverse perspective mapping: the presence of obstacles on the road disrupts the effectiveness of the mapping. The current paper proposes a robust solution based on the use of multimodal sensor fusion. Data from a laser range finder is fused with images from the cameras, so that the mapping is not computed in the regions where obstacles are present. As shown in the results, this considerably improves the effectiveness of the algorithm and reduces computation time when compared with the classical inverse perspective mapping. Furthermore, the proposed approach is also able to cope with several cameras with different lenses or image resolutions, as well as dynamic viewpoints.

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 addresses visual object perception applied to mobile robotics. Being able to perceive household objects in unstructured environments is a key capability in order to make robots suitable to perform complex tasks in home environments. However, finding a solution for this task is daunting: it requires the ability to handle the variability in image formation in a moving camera with tight time constraints. The paper brings to attention some of the issues with applying three state of the art object recognition and detection methods in a mobile robotics scenario, and proposes methods to deal with windowing/segmentation. Thus, this work aims at evaluating the state-of-the-art in object perception in an attempt to develop a lightweight solution for mobile robotics use/research in typical indoor settings.

Abstract: This paper presents the development of an Augmented Reality mobile application which aims at sensibilizing young children to abstract concepts of music. Such concepts are, for instance, the musical notation or the idea of rhythm. Recent studies in Augmented Reality for education suggest that such technologies have multiple benefits for students, including younger ones. As mobile document image acquisition and processing gains maturity on mobile platforms, we explore how it is possible to build a markerless and real-time application to augment the physical documents with didactic animations and interactive virtual content. Given a standard image processing pipeline, we compare the performance of different local descriptors at two key stages of the process. Results suggest alternatives to the SIFT local descriptors, regarding result quality and computational efficiency, both for document model identification and perspective transform estimation. All experiments are performed on an original and public dataset we introduce here.

Abstract: Intelligent vehicle lighting systems aim at automatically regulating the headlights' beam to illuminate as much of the road ahead as possible while avoiding dazzling other drivers. A key component of such a system is computer vision software that is able to distinguish blobs due to vehicles' headlights and rear lights from those due to road lamps and reflective elements such as poles and traffic signs. In a previous work, we have devised a set of specialized supervised classifiers to make such decisions based on blob features related to its intensity and shape. Despite the overall good performance, there remain challenging that have yet to be solved: notably, faint and tiny blobs corresponding to quite distant vehicles. In fact, for such distant blobs, classification decisions can be taken after observing them during a few frames. Hence, incorporating tracking could improve the overall lighting system performance by enforcing the temporal consistency of the classifier decision. Accordingly, this paper focuses on the problem of constructing blob tracks, which is actually one of multiple-target tracking (MTT), but under two special conditions: We have to deal with frequent occlusions, as well as blob splits and merges. We approach it in a novel way by formulating the problem as a maximum a posteriori inference on a Markov random field. The qualitative (in video form) and quantitative evaluation of our new MTT method shows good tracking results. In addition, we will also see that the classification performance of the problematic blobs improves due to the proposed MTT algorithm.