Publications | Perceiving Systems - Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

42 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2008

Learning Optical Flow

Sun, D., Roth, S., Lewis, J., Black, M. J.

In European Conf. on Computer Vision, ECCV, 5304, pages: 83-97, LNCS, (Editors: Forsyth, D. and Torr, P. and Zisserman, A.), Springer-Verlag, October 2008 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Assumptions of brightness constancy and spatial smoothness underlie most optical flow estimation methods. In contrast to standard heuristic formulations, we learn a statistical model of both brightness constancy error and the spatial properties of optical flow using image sequences with associated ground truth flow fields. The result is a complete probabilistic model of optical flow. Specifically, the ground truth enables us to model how the assumption of brightness constancy is violated in naturalistic sequences, resulting in a probabilistic model of "brightness inconstancy". We also generalize previous high-order constancy assumptions, such as gradient constancy, by modeling the constancy of responses to various linear filters in a high-order random field framework. These filters are free variables that can be learned from training data. Additionally we study the spatial structure of the optical flow and how motion boundaries are related to image intensity boundaries. Spatial smoothness is modeled using a Steerable Random Field, where spatial derivatives of the optical flow are steered by the image brightness structure. These models provide a statistical motivation for previous methods and enable the learning of all parameters from training data. All proposed models are quantitatively compared on the Middlebury flow dataset.

pdf Springerlink version [BibTex]

2008

Sun, D., Roth, S., Lewis, J., Black, M. J. Learning Optical Flow In European Conf. on Computer Vision, ECCV, 5304, pages: 83-97, LNCS, (Editors: Forsyth, D. and Torr, P. and Zisserman, A.), Springer-Verlag, October 2008 (inproceedings)

pdf Springerlink version [BibTex]

GNU Octave Manual Version 3

John W. Eaton, David Bateman, Soren Hauberg

Network Theory Ltd., October 2008 (book)

Publishers site GNU Octave [BibTex]

John W. Eaton, David Bateman, Soren Hauberg GNU Octave Manual Version 3 Network Theory Ltd., October 2008 (book)

Publishers site GNU Octave [BibTex]

Probabilistic Roadmap Method and Real Time Gait Changing Technique Implementation for Travel Time Optimization on a Designed Six-legged Robot

Ahmad, A., Dhang, N.

In pages: 1-5, October 2008 (inproceedings)

Abstract

This paper presents design and development of a six legged robot with a total of 12 degrees of freedom, two in each limb and then an implementation of 'obstacle and undulated terrain-based' probabilistic roadmap method for motion planning of this hexaped which is able to negotiate large undulations as obstacles. The novelty in this implementation is that, it doesnt require the complete view of the robot's configuration space at any given time during the traversal. It generates a map of the area that is in visibility range and finds the best suitable point in that field of view to make it as the next node of the algorithm. A particular category of undulations which are small enough are automatically 'run-over' as a part of the terrain and not considered as obstacles. The traversal between the nodes is optimized by taking the shortest path and the most optimum gait at that instance which the hexaped can assume. This is again a novel approach to have a real time gait changing technique to optimize the travel time. The hexaped limb can swing in the robot's X-Y plane and the lower link of the limb can move in robot's Z plane by an implementation of a four-bar mechanism. A GUI based server 'Yellow Ladybird' eventually which is the name of the hexaped, is made for real time monitoring and communicating to it the final destination co-ordinates.

link (url) [BibTex]

Ahmad, A., Dhang, N. Probabilistic Roadmap Method and Real Time Gait Changing Technique Implementation for Travel Time Optimization on a Designed Six-legged Robot In pages: 1-5, October 2008 (inproceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

The naked truth: Estimating body shape under clothing,

Balan, A., Black, M. J.

In European Conf. on Computer Vision, ECCV, 5304, pages: 15-29, LNCS, (Editors: D. Forsyth and P. Torr and A. Zisserman), Springer-Verlag, Marseilles, France, October 2008 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We propose a method to estimate the detailed 3D shape of a person from images of that person wearing clothing. The approach exploits a model of human body shapes that is learned from a database of over 2000 range scans. We show that the parameters of this shape model can be recovered independently of body pose. We further propose a generalization of the visual hull to account for the fact that observed silhouettes of clothed people do not provide a tight bound on the true 3D shape. With clothed subjects, different poses provide different constraints on the possible underlying 3D body shape. We consequently combine constraints across pose to more accurately estimate 3D body shape in the presence of occluding clothing. Finally we use the recovered 3D shape to estimate the gender of subjects and then employ gender-specific body models to refine our shape estimates. Results on a novel database of thousands of images of clothed and "naked" subjects, as well as sequences from the HumanEva dataset, suggest the method may be accurate enough for biometric shape analysis in video.

pdf pdf with higher quality images Springerlink version YouTube video on applications data slides [BibTex]

Balan, A., Black, M. J. The naked truth: Estimating body shape under clothing, In European Conf. on Computer Vision, ECCV, 5304, pages: 15-29, LNCS, (Editors: D. Forsyth and P. Torr and A. Zisserman), Springer-Verlag, Marseilles, France, October 2008 (inproceedings)

pdf pdf with higher quality images Springerlink version YouTube video on applications data slides [BibTex]

Infinite Kernel Learning

Gehler, P., Nowozin, S.

(178), Max Planck Institute, octomber 2008 (techreport)

project page pdf [BibTex]

Gehler, P., Nowozin, S. Infinite Kernel Learning (178), Max Planck Institute, octomber 2008 (techreport)

project page pdf [BibTex]

A non-parametric Bayesian alternative to spike sorting

Wood, F., Black, M. J.

J. Neuroscience Methods, 173(1):1–12, August 2008 (article)

Abstract

The analysis of extra-cellular neural recordings typically begins with careful spike sorting and all analysis of the data then rests on the correctness of the resulting spike trains. In many situations this is unproblematic as experimental and spike sorting procedures often focus on well isolated units. There is evidence in the literature, however, that errors in spike sorting can occur even with carefully collected and selected data. Additionally, chronically implanted electrodes and arrays with fixed electrodes cannot be easily adjusted to provide well isolated units. In these situations, multiple units may be recorded and the assignment of waveforms to units may be ambiguous. At the same time, analysis of such data may be both scientifically important and clinically relevant. In this paper we address this issue using a novel probabilistic model that accounts for several important sources of uncertainty and error in spike sorting. In lieu of sorting neural data to produce a single best spike train, we estimate a probabilistic model of spike trains given the observed data. We show how such a distribution over spike sortings can support standard neuroscientific questions while providing a representation of uncertainty in the analysis. As a representative illustration of the approach, we analyzed primary motor cortical tuning with respect to hand movement in data recorded with a chronic multi-electrode array in non-human primates.We found that the probabilistic analysis generally agrees with human sorters but suggests the presence of tuned units not detected by humans.

pdf preprint pdf from publisher PubMed [BibTex]

Wood, F., Black, M. J. A non-parametric Bayesian alternative to spike sorting J. Neuroscience Methods, 173(1):1–12, August 2008 (article)

pdf preprint pdf from publisher PubMed [BibTex]

Dynamic time warping for binocular hand tracking and reconstruction

Romero, J., Kragic, D., Kyrki, V., Argyros, A.

In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,ICRA, pages: 2289 -2294, May 2008 (inproceedings)

Pdf [BibTex]

Romero, J., Kragic, D., Kyrki, V., Argyros, A. Dynamic time warping for binocular hand tracking and reconstruction In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,ICRA, pages: 2289 -2294, May 2008 (inproceedings)

Pdf [BibTex]

Neural control of computer cursor velocity by decoding motor cortical spiking activity in humans with tetraplegia

(J. Neural Engineering Highlights of 2008 Collection)

Kim, S., Simeral, J., Hochberg, L., Donoghue, J. P., Black, M. J.

J. Neural Engineering, 5, pages: 455–476, 2008 (article)

Abstract

Computer-mediated connections between human motor cortical neurons and assistive devices promise to improve or restore lost function in people with paralysis. Recently, a pilot clinical study of an intracortical neural interface system demonstrated that a tetraplegic human was able to obtain continuous two-dimensional control of a computer cursor using neural activity recorded from his motor cortex. This control, however, was not sufficiently accurate for reliable use in many common computer control tasks. Here, we studied several central design choices for such a system including the kinematic representation for cursor movement, the decoding method that translates neuronal ensemble spiking activity into a control signal and the cursor control task used during training for optimizing the parameters of the decoding method. In two tetraplegic participants, we found that controlling a cursor’s velocity resulted in more accurate closed-loop control than controlling its position directly and that cursor velocity control was achieved more rapidly than position control. Control quality was further improved over conventional linear filters by using a probabilistic method, the Kalman filter, to decode human motor cortical activity. Performance assessment based on standard metrics used for the evaluation of a wide range of pointing devices demonstrated significantly improved cursor control with velocity rather than position decoding.

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