Abstract: In this paper we present a computer vision system for daytime vehicle detection and localization, an essential step in the development of several types of advanced driver assistance systems. It has a reduced processing time and high accuracy thanks to the combination of vehicle detection with lane-markings estimation and temporal tracking of both vehicles and lane markings. Concerning vehicle detection, our main contribution is a frame scanning process that inspects images according to the geometry of image formation, and with an Adaboost-based detector that is robust to the variability in the different vehicle types (car, van, truck) and lighting conditions. In addition, we propose a new method to estimate the most likely three-dimensional locations of vehicles on the road ahead. With regards to the lane-markings estimation component, we have two main contributions. First, we employ a different image feature to the other commonly used edges: we use ridges, which are better suited to this problem. Second, we adapt RANSAC, a generic robust estimation method, to fit a parametric model of a pair of lane markings to the image features. We qualitatively assess our vehicle detection system in sequences captured on several road types and under very different lighting conditions. The processed videos are available on a web page associated with this paper. A quantitative evaluation of the system has shown quite accurate results (a low number of false positives and negatives) at a reasonable computation time.

Abstract: Project-Based Learning (PBL) is an educational strategy to improve student’s learning capability that, in recent years, has had a progressive acceptance in undergraduate studies. This methodology is based on solving a problem or project in a student working group. In this way, PBL focuses on learning the necessary tools to correctly find a solution to given problems. Since the learning initiative is transferred to the student, the PBL method promotes students own abilities. This allows a better assessment of the true workload that carries out the student in the subject. It follows that the methodology conforms to the guidelines of the Bologna document, which quantifies the student workload in a subject by means of the European credit transfer system (ECTS). PBL is currently applied in undergraduate studies needing strong practical training such as medicine, nursing or law sciences. Although this is also the case in engineering studies, amazingly, few experiences have been reported. In this paper we propose to use PBL in the educational organization of the Computer Graphics subjects in the Computer Science degree. Our PBL project focuses in the development of a C++ graphical environment based on the OpenGL libraries for visualization and handling of different graphical objects. The starting point is a basic skeleton that already includes lighting functions, perspective projection with mouse interaction to change the point of view and three predefined objects. Students have to complete this skeleton by adding their own functions to solve the project. A total number of 10 projects have been proposed and successfully solved. The exercises range from human face rendering to articulated objects, such as robot arms or puppets. In the present paper we extensively report the statement and educational objectives for two of the projects: solar system visualization and a chess game. We report our earlier educational experience based on the standard classroom theoretical, problem and practice sessions and the reasons that motivated searching for other learning methods. We have mainly chosen PBL because it improves the student learning initiative. We have applied the PBL educational model since the beginning of the second semester. The student’s feedback increases in his interest for the subject. We present a comparative study of the teachers’ and students’ workload between PBL and the classic teaching approach, which suggests that the workload increase in PBL is not as high as it seems.

Abstract: The accuracy of object classifiers can significantly drop when the training data (source domain) and the application scenario (target domain) have inherent differences. Therefore, adapting the classifiers to the scenario in which they must operate is of paramount importance. We present novel domain adaptation (DA) methods for object detection. As proof of concept, we focus on adapting the state-of-the-art deformable part-based model (DPM) for pedestrian detection. We introduce an adaptive structural SVM (A-SSVM) that adapts a pre-learned classifier between different domains. By taking into account the inherent structure in feature space (e.g., the parts in a DPM), we propose a structure-aware A-SSVM (SA-SSVM). Neither A-SSVM nor SA-SSVM needs to revisit the source-domain training data to perform the adaptation. Rather, a low number of target-domain training examples (e.g., pedestrians) are used. To address the scenario where there are no target-domain annotated samples, we propose a self-adaptive DPM based on a self-paced learning (SPL) strategy and a Gaussian Process Regression (GPR). Two types of adaptation tasks are assessed: from both synthetic pedestrians and general persons (PASCAL VOC) to pedestrians imaged from an on-board camera. Results show that our proposals avoid accuracy drops as high as 15 points when comparing adapted and non-adapted detectors.

Abstract: Subspace-based methods have become popular due to their ability to appropriately represent complex data in such a way that both dimensionality is reduced and discriminativeness is enhanced. Several recent works have concentrated on the discriminative common vector (DCV) method and other closely related algorithms also based on the concept of null space. In this paper, we present a generalized incremental formulation of the DCV methods, which allows the update of a given model by considering the addition of new examples even from unseen classes. Having efficient incremental formulations of well-behaved batch algorithms allows us to conveniently adapt previously trained classifiers without the need of recomputing them from scratch. The proposed generalized incremental method has been empirically validated in different case studies from different application domains (faces, objects, and handwritten digits) considering several different scenarios in which new data are continuously added at different rates starting from an initial model.

Abstract: Depth information is essential for on-board perception in autonomous driving and driver assistance. Monocular depth estimation (MDE) is very appealing since it allows for appearance and depth being on direct pixelwise correspondence without further calibration. Best MDE models are based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) trained in a supervised manner, i.e., assuming pixelwise ground truth (GT). Usually, this GT is acquired at training time through a calibrated multi-modal suite of sensors. However, also using only a monocular system at training time is cheaper and more scalable. This is possible by relying on structure-from-motion (SfM) principles to generate self-supervision. Nevertheless, problems of camouflaged objects, visibility changes, static-camera intervals, textureless areas, and scale ambiguity, diminish the usefulness of such self-supervision. In this paper, we perform monocular depth estimation by virtual-world supervision (MonoDEVS) and real-world SfM self-supervision. We compensate the SfM self-supervision limitations by leveraging virtual-world images with accurate semantic and depth supervision and addressing the virtual-to-real domain gap. Our MonoDEVSNet outperforms previous MDE CNNs trained on monocular and even stereo sequences.