Computer Engineering Commons^™

An Approach To Stereo-Point Cloud Registration Using Image Homographies, Damian M. Lyons, Stephen D. Fox

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Joint Source-Channel Coding For Error Resilient Transmission Of Static 3d Models, Mehmet Oğuz Bi̇ci̇, Andrey Norkin, Gözde Akar

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, performance analysis of joint source-channel coding techniques for error-resilient transmission of three dimensional (3D) models are presented. In particular, packet based transmission scenarios are analyzed. The packet loss resilient methods are classified into two groups according to progressive compression schemes employed: Compressed Progressive Meshes (CPM) based methods and wavelet based methods. In the first group, layers of CPM algorithm are protected unequally by Forward Error Correction (FEC) using Reed Solomon (RS) codes. In the second group, embedded bitstream obtained from wavelet based coding is protected unequally with FEC as well. Both groups of methods are scalable with …

Stereoscopic Vision In Vehicle Navigation., Behnoush Abdollahi 1986-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traffic sign (TS) detection and tracking is one of the main tasks of an autonomous vehicle which is addressed in the field of computer vision. An autonomous vehicle must have vision based recognition of the road to follow the rules like every other vehicle on the road. Besides, TS detection and tracking can be used to give feedbacks to the driver. This can significantly increase safety in making driving decisions. For a successful TS detection and tracking changes in weather and lighting conditions should be considered. Also, the camera is in motion, which results in image distortion and motion blur. …

Autonomous Golf Cart Vision Using Hsv Image Processing And Commercial Webcam, John D. Fulton

Electrical Engineering

Using openCV I was able to use a store bought webcam and my laptop to build code that could detect the lane lines and the curb on the road and use them to calculate a trajectory for an autonomous vehicle to follow. The code does have some flaws, as discovered in testing, and definitely room for improvement but it still functions as a useful basis for development. Developed primarily for the Autonomous Golf Car Project at Cal Poly the principles of how it functions could be applied to other projects that want to use computer vision.

A Relaxed Fusion Of Information From Real And Synthetic Images To Predict Complex Behavior, Damian M. Lyons, D. Paul Benjamin

Faculty Publications

An important component of cognitive robotics is the ability to mentally simulate physical processes and to compare the expected results with the information reported by a robot's sensors. In previous work, we have proposed an approach that integrates a 3D game-engine simulation into the robot control architecture. A key part of that architecture is the Match-Mediated Difference (MMD) operation, an approach to fusing sensory data and synthetic predictions at the image level. The MMD operation insists that simulated and predicted scenes are similar in terms of the appearance of the objects in the scene. This is an overly restrictive constraint …

Patterns Of Motion: Discovery And Generalized Representation, Imran Saleemi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we address the problem of discovery and representation of motion patterns in a variety of scenarios, commonly encountered in vision applications. The overarching goal is to devise a generic representation, that captures any kind of object motion observable in video sequences. Such motion is a significant source of information typically employed for diverse applications such as tracking, anomaly detection, and action and event recognition. We present statistical frameworks for representation of motion characteristics of objects, learned from tracks or optical flow, for static as well as moving cameras, and propose algorithms for their application to a variety …

Towards Calibration Of Optical Flow Of Crowd Videos Using Observed Trajectories, Iman K. Elbadramany

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The need exists for finding a quantitative method for validating crowd simulations. One approach is to use optical flow of videos of real crowds to obtain velocities that can be used for comparison to simulations. Optical flow, in turn, needs to be calibrated to be useful. It is essential to show that optical flow velocities obtained from crowd videos can be mapped into the spatially averaged velocities of the observed trajectories of crowd members, and to quantify the extent of the correlation of the results. This research investigates methods to uncover the best conditions for a good correlation between optical …

Integrating Perception And Problem Solving To Predict Complex Object Behaviors, Damian M. Lyons, Sirhan Chaudhry, Marius Agica, John Vincent Monaco

Faculty Publications

One of the objectives of Cognitive Robotics is to construct robot systems that can be directed to achieve realworld goals by high-level directions rather than complex, low-level robot programming. Such a system must have the ability to represent, problem-solve and learn about its environment as well as communicate with other agents. In previous work, we have proposed ADAPT, a Cognitive Architecture that views perception as top-down and goaloriented and part of the problem solving process.

Our approach is linked to a SOAR-based problem-solving and learning framework. In this paper, we present an architecture for the perceptive and world modelling components …

Synchronizing Real And Predicted Synthetic Video Imagery For Localization Of A Robot To A 3d Environment, Damian M. Lyons, Sirhan Chaudhry, D. Paul Benjamin

Faculty Publications

A mobile robot moving in an environment in which there are other moving objects and active agents, some of which may represent threats and some of which may represent collaborators, needs to be able to reason about the potential future behaviors of those objects and agents. In previous work, we presented an approach to tracking targets with complex behavior, leveraging a 3D simulation engine to generate predicted imagery and comparing that against real imagery. We introduced an approach to compare real and simulated imagery using an affine image transformation that maps the real scene to the synthetic scene in a …

Interactive Perception For Cluttered Environments, Robert Willimon

All Theses

Robotics research tends to focus upon either non-contact sensing or machine manipulation, but not both. This paper explores the benefits of combining the two by addressing the problem of extracting and classifying unknown objects within a cluttered environment, such as found in recycling and service robot applications. In the proposed approach, a pile of objects lies on a flat background, and the goal of the robot is to sift through the pile and classify each object so that it can be studied further. One object should be removed at a time with minimal disturbance to the other objects. We propose …

Electronic Image Stabilization For Mobile Robotic Vision Systems, Michael John Smith

Theses and Dissertations

When a camera is affixed on a dynamic mobile robot, image stabilization is the first step towards more complex analysis on the video feed. This thesis presents a novel electronic image stabilization (EIS) algorithm for small inexpensive highly dynamic mobile robotic platforms with onboard camera systems. The algorithm combines optical flow motion parameter estimation with angular rate data provided by a strapdown inertial measurement unit (IMU). A discrete Kalman filter in feedforward configuration is used for optimal fusion of the two data sources. Performance evaluations are conducted by a simulated video truth model (capturing the effects of image translation, rotation, …

Locating And Tracking Objects By Efficient Comparison Of Real And Predicted Synthetic Video Imagery, Damian M. Lyons, D. Paul Benjamin

Faculty Publications

A mobile robot moving in an environment in which there are other moving objects and active agents, some of which may represent threats and some of which may represent collaborators, needs to be able to reason about the potential future behaviors of those objects and agents. In this paper we present an approach to tracking targets with complex behavior, leveraging a 3D simulation engine to generate predicted imagery and comparing that against real imagery. We introduce an approach to compare real and simulated imagery and present results using this approach to locate and track objects with complex behaviors. In this …

A Subspace Projection Methodology For Nonlinear Manifold Based Face Recognition, Praveen Sankaran

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A novel feature extraction method that utilizes nonlinear mapping from the original data space to the feature space is presented in this dissertation. Feature extraction methods aim to find compact representations of data that are easy to classify. Measurements with similar values are grouped to same category, while those with differing values are deemed to be of separate categories. For most practical systems, the meaningful features of a pattern class lie in a low dimensional nonlinear constraint region (manifold) within the high dimensional data space. A learning algorithm to model this nonlinear region and to project patterns to this feature …

Segmentation Of Overlapping Particles In Automatic Size Analysis Using Multi-Flash Imaging, Tze K Koh, Nicholas Miles, Steve Morgan, Barrie Hayes-Gill

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In this paper, we propose a novel hardware approach to image segmentation, specifically in the case of overlapping particles. Our research is based on multi-flash imaging (MFI), originally developed to detect depth discontinuities. Multiple images captured with different illumination conditions provide additional information about a scene compared to conventional segmentation techniques. Shadows are used to identify true object edges and underlying particles. We applied the new approach in automated particle size analysis and evaluated it against the watershed and canny edge detection techniques. Evaluation results confirm that MFI can be applied in image segmentation and reveals the superiority of the …

Human Identification Using Gait, Murat Eki̇nci̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Gait refers to the style of walking of an individual. This paper presents a view-invariant approach for human identification at a distance, using gait recognition. Recognition of a person from their gait is a biometric of increasing interest. Based on principal component analysis (PCA), this paper describes a simple, but efficient approach to gait recognition. Binarized silhouettes of a motion object are represented by 1-D signals, which are the basic image features called distance vectors. The distance vectors are differences between the bounding box and silhouette, and are extracted using 4 projections of the silhouette. Based on normalized correlation of …

Image Segmentation With Ratio Cut, Song Wang, Jeffrey Mark Siskind

Faculty Publications

This paper proposes a new cost function, cut ratio, for segmenting images using graph-based methods. The cut ratio is defined as the ratio of the corresponding sums of two different weights of edges along the cut boundary and models the mean affinity between the segments separated by the boundary per unit boundary length. This new cost function allows the image perimeter to be segmented, guarantees that the segments produced by bipartitioning are connected, and does not introduce a size, shape, smoothness, or boundary-length bias. The latter allows it to produce segmentations where boundaries are aligned with image edges. Furthermore, the …

Object Classfification In Computer Vision With Discriminant Analysis, Amir Hamzahan

Makara Journal of Technology

A robotic sensor system is always supported by a computer system called ‘computer vision’. The important concept of computer vision is object classfifi cation. In this study two algorithms for object classifi cation in this system will be compared. Firstly, A simple method that do not need complex computation and that considered as an informal method is called binary tree decision structure. This method is based on modest caracteristic decriptors of an object such as vertical line, horizontal line or ellipse line. Unfortunately this method has weakness in recognize an image that contaminated by a noise. Secondly, a more formal …

Knowledge-Based Navigation For Autonomous Road Vehicles, Murat Eki̇nci̇, Franches W.J.Gibbs, Barry T. Thomas

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper presents a computer vision system for an autonomous road vehicle (ARV) that is capable of negotiating complex road networks including road junctions in real time. The ultimate aim of the system is to enable the vehicle to drive automatically along a given complex road network whose geometric description is known. This computer vision system includes three main techniques which are necessary for an ARV: a) road following, b) road junction detection, c) manoeuvring at the road junction. The road following algorithm presents a method of executing a number of algorithms using different methods concurrently, fusing their outputs together …

Robust Course-Boundary Extraction Algorithms For Autonomous Vehicles, Chris Roman, Charles Reinholtz

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Practical autonomous robotic vehicles require dependable methods for accurately identifying course or roadway boundaries. The authors have developed a method to reliably extract the boundary line using simple dynamic thresholding, noise filtering, and blob removal. This article describes their efforts to apply this procedure in developing an autonomous vehicle.

Adaptive Shape From Shading, Ati̇lla Gülteki̇n, Muhi̇tti̇n Gökmen

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Extracting surface orientation and surface depth from one or more images is one of the classic problems in computer vision. Shape-from-shading (SFS) deals with the recovery of 3-D shape from a single shaded image. The shape is recovered by minimizing an energy functional involving constraints such as smoothness. In this constrained problem, although the smoothness constraint helps to stabilize the minimization process, it pushes the reconstruction toward a smooth surface. In this paper, we present a new adaptive shape-from-shading method which reduces this oversmoothing by controlling the smoothness spatially over the image space. In order to improve the quality of …

Preprocessing Of Microcirculatory Images., Mohamed S. Mansour

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project consists of the development of a computerized image processing system to preprocess microvascular images of the mouse Latisimus Dorsi Muscle (LDM). This research has been conducted in association with the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of Louisville. The input to the system is a set of 35 or more overlapping microscopic fields or sub_images containing segments of the LDM microcirculation, the output is an adjacent single montage encompassing the entire LDM microvasculature. The developed system presents practical solutions to the problems of image registration, overlap resolution, and image segmentation, in addition, the results …