Abstract: Variable rate is a requirement for flexible and adaptable image and video compression. However, deep image compression methods (DIC) are optimized for a single fixed rate-distortion (R-D) tradeoff. While this can be addressed by training multiple models for different tradeoffs, the memory requirements increase proportionally to the number of models. Scaling the bottleneck representation of a shared autoencoder can provide variable rate compression with a single shared autoencoder. However, the R-D performance using this simple mechanism degrades in low bitrates, and also shrinks the effective range of bitrates. To address these limitations, we formulate the problem of variable R-D optimization for DIC, and propose modulated autoencoders (MAEs), where the representations of a shared autoencoder are adapted to the specific R-D tradeoff via a modulation network. Jointly training this modulated autoencoder and the modulation network provides an effective way to navigate the R-D operational curve. Our experiments show that the proposed method can achieve almost the same R-D performance of independent models with significantly fewer parameters.

Abstract: Anticipating the intentions of vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians and cyclists is critical for performing safe and comfortable driving maneuvers. This is the case for human driving and, thus, should be taken into account by systems providing any level of driving assistance, from advanced driver assistant systems (ADAS) to fully autonomous vehicles (AVs). In this paper, we show how the latest advances on monocular vision-based human pose estimation, i.e. those relying on deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), enable to recognize the intentions of such VRUs. In the case of cyclists, we assume that they follow traffic rules to indicate future maneuvers with arm signals. In the case of pedestrians, no indications can be assumed. Instead, we hypothesize that the walking pattern of a pedestrian allows to determine if he/she has the intention of crossing the road in the path of the ego-vehicle, so that the ego-vehicle must maneuver accordingly (e.g. slowing down or stopping). In this paper, we show how the same methodology can be used for recognizing pedestrians and cyclists' intentions. For pedestrians, we perform experiments on the JAAD dataset. For cyclists, we did not found an analogous dataset, thus, we created our own one by acquiring and annotating videos which we share with the research community. Overall, the proposed pipeline provides new state-of-the-art results on the intention recognition of VRUs.

Abstract: Multi-spectral RGB-NIR sensors have become ubiquitous in recent years. These sensors allow the visible and near-infrared spectral bands of a given scene to be captured at the same time. With such cameras, the acquired imagery has a compromised RGB color representation due to near-infrared bands (700–1100 nm) cross-talking with the visible bands (400–700 nm).
This paper proposes two deep learning-based architectures to recover the full RGB color images, thus removing the NIR information from the visible bands. The proposed approaches directly restore the high-resolution RGB image by means of convolutional neural networks. They are evaluated with several outdoor images; both architectures reach a similar performance when evaluated in different
scenarios and using different similarity metrics. Both of them improve the state of the art approaches.

Abstract: Existing data on building destruction in conflict zones rely on eyewitness reports or manual detection, which makes it generally scarce, incomplete, and potentially biased. This lack of reliable data imposes severe limitations for media reporting, humanitarian relief efforts, human-rights monitoring, reconstruction initiatives, and academic studies of violent conflict. This article introduces an automated method of measuring destruction in high-resolution satellite images using deep-learning techniques combined with label augmentation and spatial and temporal smoothing, which exploit the underlying spatial and temporal structure of destruction. As a proof of concept, we apply this method to the Syrian civil war and reconstruct the evolution of damage in major cities across the country. Our approach allows generating destruction data with unprecedented scope, resolution, and frequency—and makes use of the ever-higher frequency at which satellite imagery becomes available.

Abstract: Clothing is still manually manufactured for the most part nowadays, resulting in discrepancies between nominal and real dimensions, and potentially ill-fitting garments. Hence, it is common in the apparel industry to manually perform measures at preshipment time. We present an automatic method to obtain such measures from a single image of a garment that speeds up this task. It is generic and extensible in the sense that it does not depend explicitly on the garment shape or type. Instead, it learns through a probabilistic graphical model to identify the different contour parts. Subsequently, a set of Lasso regressors, one per desired measure, can predict the actual values of the measures. We present results on a dataset of 130 images of jackets and 98 of pants, of varying sizes and styles, obtaining 1.17 and 1.22 cm of mean absolute error, respectively.