19,793 research outputs found
A2-RL: Aesthetics Aware Reinforcement Learning for Image Cropping
Image cropping aims at improving the aesthetic quality of images by adjusting
their composition. Most weakly supervised cropping methods (without bounding
box supervision) rely on the sliding window mechanism. The sliding window
mechanism requires fixed aspect ratios and limits the cropping region with
arbitrary size. Moreover, the sliding window method usually produces tens of
thousands of windows on the input image which is very time-consuming. Motivated
by these challenges, we firstly formulate the aesthetic image cropping as a
sequential decision-making process and propose a weakly supervised Aesthetics
Aware Reinforcement Learning (A2-RL) framework to address this problem.
Particularly, the proposed method develops an aesthetics aware reward function
which especially benefits image cropping. Similar to human's decision making,
we use a comprehensive state representation including both the current
observation and the historical experience. We train the agent using the
actor-critic architecture in an end-to-end manner. The agent is evaluated on
several popular unseen cropping datasets. Experiment results show that our
method achieves the state-of-the-art performance with much fewer candidate
windows and much less time compared with previous weakly supervised methods.Comment: Accepted by CVPR 201
Computer Analysis of Architecture Using Automatic Image Understanding
In the past few years, computer vision and pattern recognition systems have
been becoming increasingly more powerful, expanding the range of automatic
tasks enabled by machine vision. Here we show that computer analysis of
building images can perform quantitative analysis of architecture, and quantify
similarities between city architectural styles in a quantitative fashion.
Images of buildings from 18 cities and three countries were acquired using
Google StreetView, and were used to train a machine vision system to
automatically identify the location of the imaged building based on the image
visual content. Experimental results show that the automatic computer analysis
can automatically identify the geographical location of the StreetView image.
More importantly, the algorithm was able to group the cities and countries and
provide a phylogeny of the similarities between architectural styles as
captured by StreetView images. These results demonstrate that computer vision
and pattern recognition algorithms can perform the complex cognitive task of
analyzing images of buildings, and can be used to measure and quantify visual
similarities and differences between different styles of architectures. This
experiment provides a new paradigm for studying architecture, based on a
quantitative approach that can enhance the traditional manual observation and
analysis. The source code used for the analysis is open and publicly available
FEM and Von Mises analysis on prosthetic crowns structural elements: evaluation of different applied materials
The aim of this paper is to underline the mechanical properties of dental single crown prosthodontics materials in order to differentiate the possibility of using each material for typical clinical condition and masticatory load. Objective of the investigation is to highlight the stress distribution over different common dental crowns by using computer-aided design software and a three-dimensional virtual model. By using engineering systems of analyses like FEM and Von Mises investigations it has been highlighted the strength over simulated lower first premolar crowns made by chrome cobalt alloy, golden alloy, dental resin, and zirconia. The prosthodontics crown models have been created and put on simulated chewing stresses. The three-dimensional models were subjected to axial and oblique forces and both guaranteed expected results over simulated masticatory cycle. Dental resin presented the low value of fracture while high values have been recorded for the metal alloy and zirconia. Clinicians should choose the better prosthetic solution for the teeth they want to restore and replace. Both prosthetic dental crowns offer long-term success if applied following the manufacture guide limitations and suggestions
The patterning of finance/security : a designerly walkthrough of challenger banking apps
Culture is being ‘appified’. Diverse, pre-existing everyday activities are being redesigned so they happen with and through apps. While apps are often encountered as equivalent icons in apps stores or digital devices, the processes of appification – that is, the actions required to turn something into an app – vary significantly. In this article, we offer a comparative analysis of a number of ‘challenger’ banking apps in the United Kingdom. As a retail service, banking is highly regulated and banks must take steps to identify and verify their customers before entering a retail relationship. Once established, this ‘secured’ financial identity underpins a lot of everyday economic activity. Adopting the method of the walkthrough analysis, we study the specific ways these processes of identifying and verifying the identity of the customer (now the user) occur through user onboarding. We argue that banking apps provide a unique way of binding the user to an identity, one that combines the affordances of smart phones with the techniques, knowledge and patterns of user experience design. With the appification of banking, we see new processes of security folded into the everyday experience of apps. Our analysis shows how these binding identities are achieved through what we refer to as the patterning of finance/security. This patterning is significant, moreover, given its availability for wider circulation beyond the context of retail banking apps
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