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20 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2018

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Deep Inertial Poser: Learning to Reconstruct Human Pose from Sparse Inertial Measurements in Real Time

Huang, Y., Kaufmann, M., Aksan, E., Black, M. J., Hilliges, O., Pons-Moll, G.

ACM Transactions on Graphics, (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia), 37, pages: 185:1-185:15, ACM, November 2018, Two first authors contributed equally (article)

Abstract
We demonstrate a novel deep neural network capable of reconstructing human full body pose in real-time from 6 Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) worn on the user's body. In doing so, we address several difficult challenges. First, the problem is severely under-constrained as multiple pose parameters produce the same IMU orientations. Second, capturing IMU data in conjunction with ground-truth poses is expensive and difficult to do in many target application scenarios (e.g., outdoors). Third, modeling temporal dependencies through non-linear optimization has proven effective in prior work but makes real-time prediction infeasible. To address this important limitation, we learn the temporal pose priors using deep learning. To learn from sufficient data, we synthesize IMU data from motion capture datasets. A bi-directional RNN architecture leverages past and future information that is available at training time. At test time, we deploy the network in a sliding window fashion, retaining real time capabilities. To evaluate our method, we recorded DIP-IMU, a dataset consisting of 10 subjects wearing 17 IMUs for validation in 64 sequences with 330,000 time instants; this constitutes the largest IMU dataset publicly available. We quantitatively evaluate our approach on multiple datasets and show results from a real-time implementation. DIP-IMU and the code are available for research purposes.

data code pdf preprint video DOI Project Page [BibTex]

2018

Huang, Y., Kaufmann, M., Aksan, E., Black, M. J., Hilliges, O., Pons-Moll, G. Deep Inertial Poser: Learning to Reconstruct Human Pose from Sparse Inertial Measurements in Real Time ACM Transactions on Graphics, (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia), 37, pages: 185:1-185:15, ACM, November 2018, Two first authors contributed equally (article)

data code pdf preprint video DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Deep Neural Network-based Cooperative Visual Tracking through Multiple Micro Aerial Vehicles

Price, E., Lawless, G., Ludwig, R., Martinovic, I., Buelthoff, H. H., Black, M. J., Ahmad, A.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Robotics and Automation Letters, 3(4):3193-3200, IEEE, October 2018, Also accepted and presented in the 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). (article)

Abstract
Multi-camera tracking of humans and animals in outdoor environments is a relevant and challenging problem. Our approach to it involves a team of cooperating micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) with on-board cameras only. DNNs often fail at objects with small scale or far away from the camera, which are typical characteristics of a scenario with aerial robots. Thus, the core problem addressed in this paper is how to achieve on-board, online, continuous and accurate vision-based detections using DNNs for visual person tracking through MAVs. Our solution leverages cooperation among multiple MAVs and active selection of most informative regions of image. We demonstrate the efficiency of our approach through simulations with up to 16 robots and real robot experiments involving two aerial robots tracking a person, while maintaining an active perception-driven formation. ROS-based source code is provided for the benefit of the community.

Published Version link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Price, E., Lawless, G., Ludwig, R., Martinovic, I., Buelthoff, H. H., Black, M. J., Ahmad, A. Deep Neural Network-based Cooperative Visual Tracking through Multiple Micro Aerial Vehicles IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Robotics and Automation Letters, 3(4):3193-3200, IEEE, October 2018, Also accepted and presented in the 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). (article)

Published Version link (url) DOI [BibTex]

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First Impressions of Personality Traits From Body Shapes

Hu, Y., Parde, C. J., Hill, M. Q., Mahmood, N., O’Toole, A. J.

Psychological Science, 29(12):1969-–1983, October 2018 (article)

Abstract
People infer the personalities of others from their facial appearance. Whether they do so from body shapes is less studied. We explored personality inferences made from body shapes. Participants rated personality traits for male and female bodies generated with a three-dimensional body model. Multivariate spaces created from these ratings indicated that people evaluate bodies on valence and agency in ways that directly contrast positive and negative traits from the Big Five domains. Body-trait stereotypes based on the trait ratings revealed a myriad of diverse body shapes that typify individual traits. Personality-trait profiles were predicted reliably from a subset of the body-shape features used to specify the three-dimensional bodies. Body features related to extraversion and conscientiousness were predicted with the highest consensus, followed by openness traits. This study provides the first comprehensive look at the range, diversity, and reliability of personality inferences that people make from body shapes.

publisher site pdf DOI [BibTex]

Hu, Y., Parde, C. J., Hill, M. Q., Mahmood, N., O’Toole, A. J. First Impressions of Personality Traits From Body Shapes Psychological Science, 29(12):1969-–1983, October 2018 (article)

publisher site pdf DOI [BibTex]

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Visual Perception and Evaluation of Photo-Realistic Self-Avatars From 3D Body Scans in Males and Females

Thaler, A., Piryankova, I., Stefanucci, J. K., Pujades, S., de la Rosa, S., Streuber, S., Romero, J., Black, M. J., Mohler, B. J.

Frontiers in ICT, 5, pages: 1-14, September 2018 (article)

Abstract
The creation or streaming of photo-realistic self-avatars is important for virtual reality applications that aim for perception and action to replicate real world experience. The appearance and recognition of a digital self-avatar may be especially important for applications related to telepresence, embodied virtual reality, or immersive games. We investigated gender differences in the use of visual cues (shape, texture) of a self-avatar for estimating body weight and evaluating avatar appearance. A full-body scanner was used to capture each participant's body geometry and color information and a set of 3D virtual avatars with realistic weight variations was created based on a statistical body model. Additionally, a second set of avatars was created with an average underlying body shape matched to each participant’s height and weight. In four sets of psychophysical experiments, the influence of visual cues on the accuracy of body weight estimation and the sensitivity to weight changes was assessed by manipulating body shape (own, average) and texture (own photo-realistic, checkerboard). The avatars were presented on a large-screen display, and participants responded to whether the avatar's weight corresponded to their own weight. Participants also adjusted the avatar's weight to their desired weight and evaluated the avatar's appearance with regard to similarity to their own body, uncanniness, and their willingness to accept it as a digital representation of the self. The results of the psychophysical experiments revealed no gender difference in the accuracy of estimating body weight in avatars. However, males accepted a larger weight range of the avatars as corresponding to their own. In terms of the ideal body weight, females but not males desired a thinner body. With regard to the evaluation of avatar appearance, the questionnaire responses suggest that own photo-realistic texture was more important to males for higher similarity ratings, while own body shape seemed to be more important to females. These results argue for gender-specific considerations when creating self-avatars.

pdf DOI [BibTex]

Thaler, A., Piryankova, I., Stefanucci, J. K., Pujades, S., de la Rosa, S., Streuber, S., Romero, J., Black, M. J., Mohler, B. J. Visual Perception and Evaluation of Photo-Realistic Self-Avatars From 3D Body Scans in Males and Females Frontiers in ICT, 5, pages: 1-14, September 2018 (article)

pdf DOI [BibTex]

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Robust Physics-based Motion Retargeting with Realistic Body Shapes

Borno, M. A., Righetti, L., Black, M. J., Delp, S. L., Fiume, E., Romero, J.

Computer Graphics Forum, 37, pages: 6:1-12, July 2018 (article)

Abstract
Motion capture is often retargeted to new, and sometimes drastically different, characters. When the characters take on realistic human shapes, however, we become more sensitive to the motion looking right. This means adapting it to be consistent with the physical constraints imposed by different body shapes. We show how to take realistic 3D human shapes, approximate them using a simplified representation, and animate them so that they move realistically using physically-based retargeting. We develop a novel spacetime optimization approach that learns and robustly adapts physical controllers to new bodies and constraints. The approach automatically adapts the motion of the mocap subject to the body shape of a target subject. This motion respects the physical properties of the new body and every body shape results in a different and appropriate movement. This makes it easy to create a varied set of motions from a single mocap sequence by simply varying the characters. In an interactive environment, successful retargeting requires adapting the motion to unexpected external forces. We achieve robustness to such forces using a novel LQR-tree formulation. We show that the simulated motions look appropriate to each character’s anatomy and their actions are robust to perturbations.

pdf video Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Borno, M. A., Righetti, L., Black, M. J., Delp, S. L., Fiume, E., Romero, J. Robust Physics-based Motion Retargeting with Realistic Body Shapes Computer Graphics Forum, 37, pages: 6:1-12, July 2018 (article)

pdf video Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Assessing body image in anorexia nervosa using biometric self-avatars in virtual reality: Attitudinal components rather than visual body size estimation are distorted

Mölbert, S. C., Thaler, A., Mohler, B. J., Streuber, S., Romero, J., Black, M. J., Zipfel, S., Karnath, H., Giel, K. E.

Psychological Medicine, 48(4):642-653, March 2018 (article)

Abstract
Background: Body image disturbance (BID) is a core symptom of anorexia nervosa (AN), but as yet distinctive features of BID are unknown. The present study aimed at disentangling perceptual and attitudinal components of BID in AN. Methods: We investigated n=24 women with AN and n=24 controls. Based on a 3D body scan, we created realistic virtual 3D bodies (avatars) for each participant that were varied through a range of ±20% of the participants' weights. Avatars were presented in a virtual reality mirror scenario. Using different psychophysical tasks, participants identified and adjusted their actual and their desired body weight. To test for general perceptual biases in estimating body weight, a second experiment investigated perception of weight and shape matched avatars with another identity. Results: Women with AN and controls underestimated their weight, with a trend that women with AN underestimated more. The average desired body of controls had normal weight while the average desired weight of women with AN corresponded to extreme AN (DSM-5). Correlation analyses revealed that desired body weight, but not accuracy of weight estimation, was associated with eating disorder symptoms. In the second experiment, both groups estimated accurately while the most attractive body was similar to Experiment 1. Conclusions: Our results contradict the widespread assumption that patients with AN overestimate their body weight due to visual distortions. Rather, they illustrate that BID might be driven by distorted attitudes with regard to the desired body. Clinical interventions should aim at helping patients with AN to change their desired weight.

doi pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Body size estimation of self and others in females varying in BMI

Thaler, A., Geuss, M. N., Mölbert, S. C., Giel, K. E., Streuber, S., Romero, J., Black, M. J., Mohler, B. J.

PLoS ONE, 13(2), Febuary 2018 (article)

Abstract
Previous literature suggests that a disturbed ability to accurately identify own body size may contribute to overweight. Here, we investigated the influence of personal body size, indexed by body mass index (BMI), on body size estimation in a non-clinical population of females varying in BMI. We attempted to disentangle general biases in body size estimates and attitudinal influences by manipulating whether participants believed the body stimuli (personalized avatars with realistic weight variations) represented their own body or that of another person. Our results show that the accuracy of own body size estimation is predicted by personal BMI, such that participants with lower BMI underestimated their body size and participants with higher BMI overestimated their body size. Further, participants with higher BMI were less likely to notice the same percentage of weight gain than participants with lower BMI. Importantly, these results were only apparent when participants were judging a virtual body that was their own identity (Experiment 1), but not when they estimated the size of a body with another identity and the same underlying body shape (Experiment 2a). The different influences of BMI on accuracy of body size estimation and sensitivity to weight change for self and other identity suggests that effects of BMI on visual body size estimation are self-specific and not generalizable to other bodies.

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Temporal Human Action Segmentation via Dynamic Clustering

Zhang, Y., Sun, H., Tang, S., Neumann, H.

arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.05790, 2018 (article)

Abstract
We present an effective dynamic clustering algorithm for the task of temporal human action segmentation, which has comprehensive applications such as robotics, motion analysis, and patient monitoring. Our proposed algorithm is unsupervised, fast, generic to process various types of features, and applica- ble in both the online and offline settings. We perform extensive experiments of processing data streams, and show that our algorithm achieves the state-of- the-art results for both online and offline settings.

link (url) [BibTex]

Zhang, Y., Sun, H., Tang, S., Neumann, H. Temporal Human Action Segmentation via Dynamic Clustering arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.05790, 2018 (article)

link (url) [BibTex]

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Motion Segmentation & Multiple Object Tracking by Correlation Co-Clustering

Keuper, M., Tang, S., Andres, B., Brox, T., Schiele, B.

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2018 (article)

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Keuper, M., Tang, S., Andres, B., Brox, T., Schiele, B. Motion Segmentation & Multiple Object Tracking by Correlation Co-Clustering IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2018 (article)

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

2015

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Scalable Robust Principal Component Analysis using Grassmann Averages

Hauberg, S., Feragen, A., Enficiaud, R., Black, M.

IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), December 2015 (article)

Abstract
In large datasets, manual data verification is impossible, and we must expect the number of outliers to increase with data size. While principal component analysis (PCA) can reduce data size, and scalable solutions exist, it is well-known that outliers can arbitrarily corrupt the results. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art approaches for robust PCA are not scalable. We note that in a zero-mean dataset, each observation spans a one-dimensional subspace, giving a point on the Grassmann manifold. We show that the average subspace corresponds to the leading principal component for Gaussian data. We provide a simple algorithm for computing this Grassmann Average (GA), and show that the subspace estimate is less sensitive to outliers than PCA for general distributions. Because averages can be efficiently computed, we immediately gain scalability. We exploit robust averaging to formulate the Robust Grassmann Average (RGA) as a form of robust PCA. The resulting Trimmed Grassmann Average (TGA) is appropriate for computer vision because it is robust to pixel outliers. The algorithm has linear computational complexity and minimal memory requirements. We demonstrate TGA for background modeling, video restoration, and shadow removal. We show scalability by performing robust PCA on the entire Star Wars IV movie; a task beyond any current method. Source code is available online.

preprint pdf from publisher supplemental Project Page [BibTex]

2015

Hauberg, S., Feragen, A., Enficiaud, R., Black, M. Scalable Robust Principal Component Analysis using Grassmann Averages IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), December 2015 (article)

preprint pdf from publisher supplemental Project Page [BibTex]

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SMPL: A Skinned Multi-Person Linear Model

Loper, M., Mahmood, N., Romero, J., Pons-Moll, G., Black, M. J.

ACM Trans. Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia), 34(6):248:1-248:16, ACM, New York, NY, October 2015 (article)

Abstract
We present a learned model of human body shape and pose-dependent shape variation that is more accurate than previous models and is compatible with existing graphics pipelines. Our Skinned Multi-Person Linear model (SMPL) is a skinned vertex-based model that accurately represents a wide variety of body shapes in natural human poses. The parameters of the model are learned from data including the rest pose template, blend weights, pose-dependent blend shapes, identity-dependent blend shapes, and a regressor from vertices to joint locations. Unlike previous models, the pose-dependent blend shapes are a linear function of the elements of the pose rotation matrices. This simple formulation enables training the entire model from a relatively large number of aligned 3D meshes of different people in different poses. We quantitatively evaluate variants of SMPL using linear or dual-quaternion blend skinning and show that both are more accurate than a Blend-SCAPE model trained on the same data. We also extend SMPL to realistically model dynamic soft-tissue deformations. Because it is based on blend skinning, SMPL is compatible with existing rendering engines and we make it available for research purposes.

pdf video code/model errata DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Loper, M., Mahmood, N., Romero, J., Pons-Moll, G., Black, M. J. SMPL: A Skinned Multi-Person Linear Model ACM Trans. Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia), 34(6):248:1-248:16, ACM, New York, NY, October 2015 (article)

pdf video code/model errata DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Dyna: A Model of Dynamic Human Shape in Motion

Pons-Moll, G., Romero, J., Mahmood, N., Black, M. J.

ACM Transactions on Graphics, (Proc. SIGGRAPH), 34(4):120:1-120:14, ACM, August 2015 (article)

Abstract
To look human, digital full-body avatars need to have soft tissue deformations like those of real people. We learn a model of soft-tissue deformations from examples using a high-resolution 4D capture system and a method that accurately registers a template mesh to sequences of 3D scans. Using over 40,000 scans of ten subjects, we learn how soft tissue motion causes mesh triangles to deform relative to a base 3D body model. Our Dyna model uses a low-dimensional linear subspace to approximate soft-tissue deformation and relates the subspace coefficients to the changing pose of the body. Dyna uses a second-order auto-regressive model that predicts soft-tissue deformations based on previous deformations, the velocity and acceleration of the body, and the angular velocities and accelerations of the limbs. Dyna also models how deformations vary with a person’s body mass index (BMI), producing different deformations for people with different shapes. Dyna realistically represents the dynamics of soft tissue for previously unseen subjects and motions. We provide tools for animators to modify the deformations and apply them to new stylized characters.

pdf preprint video data DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Pons-Moll, G., Romero, J., Mahmood, N., Black, M. J. Dyna: A Model of Dynamic Human Shape in Motion ACM Transactions on Graphics, (Proc. SIGGRAPH), 34(4):120:1-120:14, ACM, August 2015 (article)

pdf preprint video data DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Linking Objects to Actions: Encoding of Target Object and Grasping Strategy in Primate Ventral Premotor Cortex

Vargas-Irwin, C. E., Franquemont, L., Black, M. J., Donoghue, J. P.

Journal of Neuroscience, 35(30):10888-10897, July 2015 (article)

Abstract
Neural activity in ventral premotor cortex (PMv) has been associated with the process of matching perceived objects with the motor commands needed to grasp them. It remains unclear how PMv networks can flexibly link percepts of objects affording multiple grasp options into a final desired hand action. Here, we use a relational encoding approach to track the functional state of PMv neuronal ensembles in macaque monkeys through the process of passive viewing, grip planning, and grasping movement execution. We used objects affording multiple possible grip strategies. The task included separate instructed delay periods for object presentation and grip instruction. This approach allowed us to distinguish responses elicited by the visual presentation of the objects from those associated with selecting a given motor plan for grasping. We show that PMv continuously incorporates information related to object shape and grip strategy as it becomes available, revealing a transition from a set of ensemble states initially most closely related to objects, to a new set of ensemble patterns reflecting unique object-grip combinations. These results suggest that PMv dynamically combines percepts, gradually navigating toward activity patterns associated with specific volitional actions, rather than directly mapping perceptual object properties onto categorical grip representations. Our results support the idea that PMv is part of a network that dynamically computes motor plans from perceptual information. Significance Statement: The present work demonstrates that the activity of groups of neurons in primate ventral premotor cortex reflects information related to visually presented objects, as well as the motor strategy used to grasp them, linking individual objects to multiple possible grips. PMv could provide useful control signals for neuroprosthetic assistive devices designed to interact with objects in a flexible way.

publisher link DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Vargas-Irwin, C. E., Franquemont, L., Black, M. J., Donoghue, J. P. Linking Objects to Actions: Encoding of Target Object and Grasping Strategy in Primate Ventral Premotor Cortex Journal of Neuroscience, 35(30):10888-10897, July 2015 (article)

publisher link DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Multi-view and 3D Deformable Part Models

Pepik, B., Stark, M., Gehler, P., Schiele, B.

Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 37(11):14, IEEE, March 2015 (article)

Abstract
As objects are inherently 3-dimensional, they have been modeled in 3D in the early days of computer vision. Due to the ambiguities arising from mapping 2D features to 3D models, 3D object representations have been neglected and 2D feature-based models are the predominant paradigm in object detection nowadays. While such models have achieved outstanding bounding box detection performance, they come with limited expressiveness, as they are clearly limited in their capability of reasoning about 3D shape or viewpoints. In this work, we bring the worlds of 3D and 2D object representations closer, by building an object detector which leverages the expressive power of 3D object representations while at the same time can be robustly matched to image evidence. To that end, we gradually extend the successful deformable part model [1] to include viewpoint information and part-level 3D geometry information, resulting in several different models with different level of expressiveness. We end up with a 3D object model, consisting of multiple object parts represented in 3D and a continuous appearance model. We experimentally verify that our models, while providing richer object hypotheses than the 2D object models, provide consistently better joint object localization and viewpoint estimation than the state-of-the-art multi-view and 3D object detectors on various benchmarks (KITTI [2], 3D object classes [3], Pascal3D+ [4], Pascal VOC 2007 [5], EPFL multi-view cars [6]).

DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Pepik, B., Stark, M., Gehler, P., Schiele, B. Multi-view and 3D Deformable Part Models Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 37(11):14, IEEE, March 2015 (article)

DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Spike train SIMilarity Space (SSIMS): A framework for single neuron and ensemble data analysis

Vargas-Irwin, C. E., Brandman, D. M., Zimmermann, J. B., Donoghue, J. P., Black, M. J.

Neural Computation, 27(1):1-31, MIT Press, January 2015 (article)

Abstract
We present a method to evaluate the relative similarity of neural spiking patterns by combining spike train distance metrics with dimensionality reduction. Spike train distance metrics provide an estimate of similarity between activity patterns at multiple temporal resolutions. Vectors of pair-wise distances are used to represent the intrinsic relationships between multiple activity patterns at the level of single units or neuronal ensembles. Dimensionality reduction is then used to project the data into concise representations suitable for clustering analysis as well as exploratory visualization. Algorithm performance and robustness are evaluated using multielectrode ensemble activity data recorded in behaving primates. We demonstrate how Spike train SIMilarity Space (SSIMS) analysis captures the relationship between goal directions for an 8-directional reaching task and successfully segregates grasp types in a 3D grasping task in the absence of kinematic information. The algorithm enables exploration of virtually any type of neural spiking (time series) data, providing similarity-based clustering of neural activity states with minimal assumptions about potential information encoding models.

pdf: publisher site pdf: author's proof DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Vargas-Irwin, C. E., Brandman, D. M., Zimmermann, J. B., Donoghue, J. P., Black, M. J. Spike train SIMilarity Space (SSIMS): A framework for single neuron and ensemble data analysis Neural Computation, 27(1):1-31, MIT Press, January 2015 (article)

pdf: publisher site pdf: author's proof DOI Project Page [BibTex]

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Metric Regression Forests for Correspondence Estimation

Pons-Moll, G., Taylor, J., Shotton, J., Hertzmann, A., Fitzgibbon, A.

International Journal of Computer Vision, pages: 1-13, 2015 (article)

springer PDF Project Page [BibTex]

Pons-Moll, G., Taylor, J., Shotton, J., Hertzmann, A., Fitzgibbon, A. Metric Regression Forests for Correspondence Estimation International Journal of Computer Vision, pages: 1-13, 2015 (article)

springer PDF Project Page [BibTex]

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Formation control driven by cooperative object tracking

Lima, P., Ahmad, A., Dias, A., Conceição, A., Moreira, A., Silva, E., Almeida, L., Oliveira, L., Nascimento, T.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 63(1):68-79, 2015 (article)

Abstract
In this paper we introduce a formation control loop that maximizes the performance of the cooperative perception of a tracked target by a team of mobile robots, while maintaining the team in formation, with a dynamically adjustable geometry which is a function of the quality of the target perception by the team. In the formation control loop, the controller module is a distributed non-linear model predictive controller and the estimator module fuses local estimates of the target state, obtained by a particle filter at each robot. The two modules and their integration are described in detail, including a real-time database associated to a wireless communication protocol that facilitates the exchange of state data while reducing collisions among team members. Simulation and real robot results for indoor and outdoor teams of different robots are presented. The results highlight how our method successfully enables a team of homogeneous robots to minimize the total uncertainty of the tracked target cooperative estimate while complying with performance criteria such as keeping a pre-set distance between the teammates and the target, avoiding collisions with teammates and/or surrounding obstacles.

DOI [BibTex]

Lima, P., Ahmad, A., Dias, A., Conceição, A., Moreira, A., Silva, E., Almeida, L., Oliveira, L., Nascimento, T. Formation control driven by cooperative object tracking Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 63(1):68-79, 2015 (article)

DOI [BibTex]

1996

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Estimating optical flow in segmented images using variable-order parametric models with local deformations

Black, M. J., Jepson, A.

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 18(10):972-986, October 1996 (article)

Abstract
This paper presents a new model for estimating optical flow based on the motion of planar regions plus local deformations. The approach exploits brightness information to organize and constrain the interpretation of the motion by using segmented regions of piecewise smooth brightness to hypothesize planar regions in the scene. Parametric flow models are estimated in these regions in a two step process which first computes a coarse fit and estimates the appropriate parameterization of the motion of the region (two, six, or eight parameters). The initial fit is refined using a generalization of the standard area-based regression approaches. Since the assumption of planarity is likely to be violated, we allow local deformations from the planar assumption in the same spirit as physically-based approaches which model shape using coarse parametric models plus local deformations. This parametric+deformation model exploits the strong constraints of parametric approaches while retaining the adaptive nature of regularization approaches. Experimental results on a variety of images indicate that the parametric+deformation model produces accurate flow estimates while the incorporation of brightness segmentation provides precise localization of motion boundaries.

pdf pdf from publisher [BibTex]

1996

Black, M. J., Jepson, A. Estimating optical flow in segmented images using variable-order parametric models with local deformations IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 18(10):972-986, October 1996 (article)

pdf pdf from publisher [BibTex]

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On the unification of line processes, outlier rejection, and robust statistics with applications in early vision

Black, M., Rangarajan, A.

International Journal of Computer Vision , 19(1):57-92, July 1996 (article)

Abstract
The modeling of spatial discontinuities for problems such as surface recovery, segmentation, image reconstruction, and optical flow has been intensely studied in computer vision. While “line-process” models of discontinuities have received a great deal of attention, there has been recent interest in the use of robust statistical techniques to account for discontinuities. This paper unifies the two approaches. To achieve this we generalize the notion of a “line process” to that of an analog “outlier process” and show how a problem formulated in terms of outlier processes can be viewed in terms of robust statistics. We also characterize a class of robust statistical problems for which an equivalent outlier-process formulation exists and give a straightforward method for converting a robust estimation problem into an outlier-process formulation. We show how prior assumptions about the spatial structure of outliers can be expressed as constraints on the recovered analog outlier processes and how traditional continuation methods can be extended to the explicit outlier-process formulation. These results indicate that the outlier-process approach provides a general framework which subsumes the traditional line-process approaches as well as a wide class of robust estimation problems. Examples in surface reconstruction, image segmentation, and optical flow are presented to illustrate the use of outlier processes and to show how the relationship between outlier processes and robust statistics can be exploited. An appendix provides a catalog of common robust error norms and their equivalent outlier-process formulations.

pdf pdf from publisher DOI [BibTex]

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The robust estimation of multiple motions: Parametric and piecewise-smooth flow fields

Black, M. J., Anandan, P.

Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 63(1):75-104, January 1996 (article)

Abstract
Most approaches for estimating optical flow assume that, within a finite image region, only a single motion is present. This single motion assumption is violated in common situations involving transparency, depth discontinuities, independently moving objects, shadows, and specular reflections. To robustly estimate optical flow, the single motion assumption must be relaxed. This paper presents a framework based on robust estimation that addresses violations of the brightness constancy and spatial smoothness assumptions caused by multiple motions. We show how the robust estimation framework can be applied to standard formulations of the optical flow problem thus reducing their sensitivity to violations of their underlying assumptions. The approach has been applied to three standard techniques for recovering optical flow: area-based regression, correlation, and regularization with motion discontinuities. This paper focuses on the recovery of multiple parametric motion models within a region, as well as the recovery of piecewise-smooth flow fields, and provides examples with natural and synthetic image sequences.

pdf pdf from publisher [BibTex]

Black, M. J., Anandan, P. The robust estimation of multiple motions: Parametric and piecewise-smooth flow fields Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 63(1):75-104, January 1996 (article)

pdf pdf from publisher [BibTex]