Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Semi-Automatic Hand Pose Estimation Using A Single Depth Camera, Giffy Jerald Chris

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

This paper addresses the problem of 3D hand pose annotations using a single depth camera. Although hand pose estimation methods rely critically on accurate 3D training data, creating such reliable training data is challenging and labor intensive. We propose a semi-automatic method for efficiently and accurately labeling the 3D hand key-points in a hand depth video. The process starts by selecting a subset of frames that are representative of all the frames in the dataset and the annotator only provides an estimate of the 2D hand key-points in these selected frames. We use this information to infer the 3D location …

Novel View Synthesis - A Neural Network Approach, Hoang Le

Dissertations and Theses

Novel view synthesis is an important research problem in computer vision and computational photography. It enables a wide range of applications including re-cinematography, video enhancement, virtual reality, etc. These algorithms leverage a pre-acquired set of images taken from a set of viewpoints to synthesize another image at a novel viewpoint as if it was captured by a real camera. To synthesize a high-quality novel view, these algorithms often assume a static scene, or the images were captured synchronously. However, the scenes in practice are often dynamic, and taking a dense set of images of these scenes at the same moment …

Computer Vision Methods For Sign Language And Cognitive Evaluation Through Physical Tasks, Alex J. Dillhoff

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

Analyzing human motion is vital for a multitude of tasks including human-computer interaction, sign language recognition, and the assessment of cognitive disorders. Providing automatic assessments for cognitive disorders increases the accessibility and affordability of life-changing tests and treatments. For sign language recognition, automated translation systems bridge the gap between native and non-native signers. Additionally, dictionary look-up systems are helpful for native signers learning a new language. Common to both of these tasks is the reliance of fine motor function in the hands. Hand Pose Estimation methods are used to drive applications that rely on hand shape. These tasks present unique …

Hand-Over-Face Segmentation, Sakher Ghanem

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

Accurate hand segmentation is vital in many applications in which the hands play a central role, such as sign language recognition, action recognition, and gesture recognition. A relatively unexplored obstacle to correct hand segmentation is when the hand overlaps the face. The shortage of a dataset for this research area has been one motivation for this work. However, this dissertation investigates and proposes improvements for the hand-over-face segmentation task. Toward an in-depth study of the hand segmentation problem, the work presented in this dissertation will yield several contributions. First, it introduces a survey on sign language recognition systems using mobile …

Improving Convolutional Neural Network Robustness To Adversarial Images Through Image Filtering, Natalie E. Bogda

Masters Theses

The field of computer vision and deep learning is known for its ability to recognize images with extremely high accuracy. Convolutional neural networks exist that can correctly classify 96\% of 1.2 million images of complex scenes. However, with just a few carefully positioned imperceptible changes to the pixels of an input image, an otherwise accurate network will misclassify this almost identical image with high confidence. These perturbed images are known as \textit{adversarial examples} and expose that convolutional neural networks do not necessarily "see" the world in the way that humans do. This work focuses on increasing the robustness of classifiers …

Deep Neural Networks For 3d Processing And High-Dimensional Filtering, Hang Su

Doctoral Dissertations

Deep neural networks (DNN) have seen tremendous success in the past few years, advancing state of the art in many AI areas by significant margins. Part of the success can be attributed to the wide adoption of convolutional filters. These filters can effectively capture the invariance in data, leading to faster training and more compact representations, and at the same can leverage efficient parallel implementations on modern hardware. Since convolution operates on regularly structured grids, it is a particularly good fit for texts and images where there are inherent rigid 1D or 2D structures. However, extending DNNs to 3D or …

Improving Visual Recognition With Unlabeled Data, Aruni Roy Chowdhury

Doctoral Dissertations

The success of deep neural networks has resulted in computer vision systems that obtain high accuracy on a wide variety of tasks such as image classification, object detection, semantic segmentation, etc. However, most state-of-the-art vision systems are dependent upon large amounts of labeled training data, which is not a scalable solution in the long run. This work focuses on improving existing models for visual object recognition and detection without being dependent on such large-scale human-annotated data. We first show how large numbers of hard examples (cases where an existing model makes a mistake) can be obtained automatically from unlabeled video …

Using Color Thresholding And Contouring To Understand Coral Reef Biodiversity, Scott Vuong Tran

Master's Projects

This paper presents research outcomes of understanding coral reef biodiversity through the usage of various computer vision applications and techniques. It aims to help further analyze and understand the coral reef biodiversity through the usage of color thresholding and contouring onto images of the ARMS plates to extract groups of microorganisms based on color. The results are comparable to the manual markup tool developed to do the same tasks and shows that the manual process can be sped up using computer vision. The paper presents an automated way to extract groups of microorganisms based on color without the use of …

Leveraging Model Flexibility And Deep Structure: Non-Parametric And Deep Models For Computer Vision Processes With Applications To Deep Model Compression, Anthony D. Rhodes

Dissertations and Theses

My dissertation presents several new algorithms incorporating non-parametric and deep learning approaches for computer vision and related tasks, including object localization, object tracking and model compression. With respect to object localization, I introduce a method to perform active localization by modeling spatial and other relationships between objects in a coherent "visual situation" using a set of probability distributions. I further refine this approach with the Multipole Density Estimation with Importance Clustering (MIC-Situate) algorithm. Next, I formulate active, "situation" object search as a Bayesian optimization problem using Gaussian Processes. Using my Gaussian Process Context Situation Learning (GP-CL) algorithm, I demonstrate improved …

Object Detection With Deep Learning To Accelerate Pose Estimation For Automated Aerial Refueling, Andrew T. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) cannot currently refuel during flight because the latency between the pilot and the aircraft is too great to safely perform aerial refueling maneuvers. However, an AAR system removes this limitation by allowing the tanker to directly control the RP A. The tanker quickly finding the relative position and orientation (pose) of the approaching aircraft is the first step to create an AAR system. Previous work at AFIT demonstrates that stereo camera systems provide robust pose estimation capability. This thesis first extends that work by examining the effects of the cameras' resolution on the quality of pose …

Maximizing Accuracy Through Stereo Vision Camera Positioning For Automated Aerial Refueling, Kirill A. Sarantsev

Theses and Dissertations

Aerial refueling is a key component of the U.S. Air Force strategic arsenal. When two aircraft interact in an aerial refueling operation, the accuracy of relative navigation estimates are critical for the safety, accuracy and success of the mission. Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR) looks to improve the refueling process by creating a more effective system and allowing for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(s) (UAV) support. This paper considers a cooperative aerial refueling scenario where stereo cameras are used on the tanker to direct a \boom" (a large, long structure through which the fuel will ow) into a port on the receiver aircraft. …

Use Of Lidar In Automated Aerial Refueling To Improve Stereo Vision Systems, Michael R. Crowl

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force (USAF) executes five Core Missions, four of which depend on increased aircraft range. To better achieve global strike and reconnaissance, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) require aerial refueling for extended missions. However, current aerial refueling capabilities are limited to manned aircraft due to technical difficulties to refuel UAVs mid-flight. The latency between a UAV operator and the UAV is too large to adequately respond for such an operation. To overcome this limitation, the USAF wants to create a capability to guide the refueling boom into the refueling receptacle. This research explores the use of light detection …

Novel View Synthesis In Time And Space, Simon Niklaus

Dissertations and Theses

Novel view synthesis is a classic problem in computer vision. It refers to the generation of previously unseen views of a scene from a set of sparse input images taken from different viewpoints. One example of novel view synthesis is the interpolation of views in between the two images of a stereo camera. Another classic problem in computer vision is video frame interpolation, which is important for video processing. It refers to the generation of video frames in between existing ones and is commonly used to increase the frame rate of a video or to match the frame rate to …

Computer Vision Gesture Recognition For Rock Paper Scissors, Nicholas Hunter

Senior Independent Study Theses

This project implements a human versus computer game of rock-paper-scissors using machine learning and computer vision. Player’s hand gestures are detected using single images with the YOLOv3 object detection system. This provides a generalized detection method which can recognize player moves without the need for a special background or lighting setup. Additionally, past moves are examined in context to predict the most probable next move of the system’s opponent. In this way, the system achieves higher win rates against human opponents than by using a purely random strategy.

A Systematic Literature Survey Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based Structural Health Monitoring, Sreehari Sreenath

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being employed in a multitude of civil applications owing to their ease of use, low maintenance, affordability, high-mobility, and ability to hover. UAVs are being utilized for real-time monitoring of road traffic, providing wireless coverage, remote sensing, search and rescue operations, delivery of goods, security and surveillance, precision agriculture, and civil infrastructure inspection. They are the next big revolution in technology and civil infrastructure, and it is expected to dominate more than $45 billion market value. The thesis surveys the UAV assisted Structural Health Monitoring or SHM literature over the last decade and categorize UAVs …

Automated Recognition Of Facial Affect Using Deep Neural Networks, Behzad Hasani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Automated Facial Expression Recognition (FER) has been a topic of study in the field of computer vision and machine learning for decades. In spite of efforts made to improve the accuracy of FER systems, existing methods still are not generalizable and accurate enough for use in real-world applications. Many of the traditional methods use hand-crafted (a.k.a. engineered) features for representation of facial images. However, these methods often require rigorous hyper-parameter tuning to achieve favorable results.

Recently, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have shown to outperform traditional methods in visual object recognition. DNNs require huge data as well as powerful computing units …

An Automated Method For Detecting Water Levels Using Computer Vision And Artificial Intelligence, Priyanjani Chowdary Chandra

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Flooding is one of the most dangerous weather events today. Between 2015-2019, on average, it has caused more than 130 deaths every year in the USA alone. World Health Organization has reported that, between 1998-2017, floods have affected more than 2 billion people worldwide. The devastating nature of flood necessitates the continuous monitoring of water level in the rivers and streams in flood-prone areas to detect the incoming flood. In this thesis, we have designed and implemented a computer vision and AI-based system that continuously detect the water level in the creek. Our solution employs an effective template matching algorithm …

Design Of A Novel Wearable Ultrasound Vest For Autonomous Monitoring Of The Heart Using Machine Learning, Garrett G. Goodman

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

As the population of older individuals increases worldwide, the number of people with cardiovascular issues and diseases is also increasing. The rate at which individuals in the United States of America and worldwide that succumb to Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is rising as well. Approximately 2,303 Americans die to some form of CVD per day according to the American Heart Association. Furthermore, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that 647,000 Americans die yearly due to some form of CVD, which equates to one person every 37 seconds. Finally, the World Health Organization reports that the number one cause of …