Parking lot monitoring system using an autonomous quadrotor UAV

The main goal of this thesis is to develop a drone-based parking lot monitoring system using low-cost hardware and open-source software. Similar to wall-mounted surveillance cameras, a drone-based system can monitor parking lots without affecting the flow of traffic while also offering the mobility of patrol vehicles. The Parrot AR Drone 2.0 is the quadrotor drone used in this work due to its modularity and cost efficiency. Video and navigation data (including GPS) are communicated to a host computer using a Wi-Fi connection. The host computer analyzes navigation data using a custom flight control loop to determine control commands to be sent to the drone. A new license plate recognition pipeline is used to identify license plates of vehicles from video received from the drone

Fully Automated Texture Tracking Based on Natural Features Extraction and Template Matching

ACE 134In this work we propose a novel approach to real-time texture tracking and registration, based on natural feature extraction from planar objects and template matching, Our method is oriented to planar objects with arbitrary textures but with rectangular topologies and well contrasted contours and does not require any external fiducial marker, either for the set-up or the tracking phases. Once the initial pose condition is obtained, previous planar object information is used to compute subsequent planar object’s pose, so that the time coherence of the input video stream is exploited. Our system is completely automated and produces real-time efficient tracking which can be applied to entertainment AR applications and other. The paper discusses also the novelty of the approach, in relation to other existing texture tracking algorithms.ADETTI/ISCT

MIJ2K: Enhanced video transmission based on conditional replenishment of JPEG2000 tiles with motion compensation

A video compressed as a sequence of JPEG2000 images can achieve the scalability, flexibility, and accessibility that is lacking in current predictive motion-compensated video coding standards. However, streaming JPEG2000-based sequences would consume considerably more bandwidth. With the aim of solving this problem, this paper describes a new patent pending method, called MIJ2K. MIJ2K reduces the inter-frame redundancy present in common JPEG2000 sequences (also called MJP2). We apply a real-time motion detection system to perform conditional tile replenishment. This will significantly reduce the bit rate necessary to transmit JPEG2000 video sequences, also improving their quality. The MIJ2K technique can be used both to improve JPEG2000-based real-time video streaming services or as a new codec for video storage. MIJ2K relies on a fast motion compensation technique, especially designed for real-time video streaming purposes. In particular, we propose transmitting only the tiles that change in each JPEG2000 frame. This paper describes and evaluates the method proposed for real-time tile change detection, as well as the overall MIJ2K architecture. We compare MIJ2K against other intra-frame codecs, like standard Motion JPEG2000, Motion JPEG, and the latest H.264-Intra, comparing performance in terms of compression ratio and video quality, measured by standard peak signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity and visual quality metric metrics.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008– 06742-C02–02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008–06732-C02–02/TEC, SINPROB, CAM MADRINET S-0505/TIC/0255 and DPS2008–07029-C02–02.Publicad

OCR-RTPS: An OCR-based real-time positioning system for the valet parking

Obtaining the position of ego-vehicle is a crucial prerequisite for automatic control and path planning in the field of autonomous driving. Most existing positioning systems rely on GPS, RTK, or wireless signals, which are arduous to provide effective localization under weak signal conditions. This paper proposes a real-time positioning system based on the detection of the parking numbers as they are unique positioning marks in the parking lot scene. It does not only can help with the positioning with open area, but also run independently under isolation environment. The result tested on both public datasets and self-collected dataset show that the system outperforms others in both performances and applies in practice. In addition, the code and dataset will release later.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figure

Bio : A Mulrimodal biometric authentication system for person identification and verification

Not availabl

PokerVision - Perception Layer for a Human-Robot Poker Table.

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores.. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Entropy in Image Analysis II

Image analysis is a fundamental task for any application where extracting information from images is required. The analysis requires highly sophisticated numerical and analytical methods, particularly for those applications in medicine, security, and other fields where the results of the processing consist of data of vital importance. This fact is evident from all the articles composing the Special Issue "Entropy in Image Analysis II", in which the authors used widely tested methods to verify their results. In the process of reading the present volume, the reader will appreciate the richness of their methods and applications, in particular for medical imaging and image security, and a remarkable cross-fertilization among the proposed research areas

Image pre-processing to improve data matrix barcode read rates

The main goal of this study is to research image processing methods in attempts to develop a robust approach to image pre-preprocessing of Data Matrix barcode images that will improve barcode read rates in an open source fashion. This is demonstrated by element state classification to re-create the ideal binary matrix corresponding to the intended barcode layout through pattern recognition theory. The research consisted of implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of many image processing algorithms types, as well as evaluating key features that clearly delineate different element states. The algorithms developed highlight the use of morphological erosion and region growing for object segmentation and edge analysis and Fisher\u27s Linear Discriminant as a means for element classification. The results demonstrate successful barcode binarization for ideal barcodes with improved read rates in most cases. The techniques developed here provide ground work for a test bed environment to continue improvements by analyzing non-ideal barcodes for additional robustness

DocMIR: An automatic document-based indexing system for meeting retrieval

This paper describes the DocMIR system which captures, analyzes and indexes automatically meetings, conferences, lectures, etc. by taking advantage of the documents projected (e.g. slideshows, budget tables, figures, etc.) during the events. For instance, the system can automatically apply the above-mentioned procedures to a lecture and automatically index the event according to the presented slides and their contents. For indexing, the system requires neither specific software installed on the presenter's computer nor any conscious intervention of the speaker throughout the presentation. The only material required by the system is the electronic presentation file of the speaker. Even if not provided, the system would temporally segment the presentation and offer a simple storyboard-like browsing interface. The system runs on several capture boxes connected to cameras and microphones that records events, synchronously. Once the recording is over, indexing is automatically performed by analyzing the content of the captured video containing projected documents and detects the scene changes, identifies the documents, computes their duration and extracts their textual content. Each of the captured images is identified from a repository containing all original electronic documents, captured audio-visual data and metadata created during post-production. The identification is based on documents' signatures, which hierarchically structure features from both layout structure and color distributions of the document images. Video segments are finally enriched with textual content of the identified original documents, which further facilitate the query and retrieval without using OCR. The signature-based indexing method proposed in this article is robust and works with low-resolution images and can be applied to several other applications including real-time document recognition, multimedia IR and augmented reality system