Anti-social behavior detection in audio-visual surveillance systems

In this paper we propose a general purpose framework for detection of unusual events. The proposed system is based on the unsupervised method for unusual scene detection in web{cam images that was introduced in [1]. We extend their algorithm to accommodate data from different modalities and introduce the concept of time-space blocks. In addition, we evaluate early and late fusion techniques for our audio-visual data features. The experimental results on 192 hours of data show that data fusion of audio and video outperforms using a single modality

Detection of overlapped acoustic events using fusion of audio and video modalities

Acoustic event detection (AED) may help to describe acoustic scenes, and also contribute to improve the robustness of speech technologies. Even if the number of considered events is not large, that detection becomes a difficult task in scenarios where the AEs are produced rather spontaneously and often overlap in time with speech. In this work, fusion of audio and video information at either feature or decision level is performed, and the results are compared for different levels of signal overlaps. The best improvement with respect to an audio-only baseline system was obtained using the featurelevel fusion technique. Furthermore, a significant recognition rate improvement is observed where the AEs are overlapped with loud speech, mainly due to the fact that the video modality remains unaffected by the interfering sound.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Acoustic event detection based on feature-level fusion of audio and video modalities

Research articleAcoustic event detection (AED) aims at determining the identity of sounds and their temporal position in audio signals. When applied to spontaneously generated acoustic events, AED based only on audio information shows a large amount of errors, which are mostly due to temporal overlaps. Actually, temporal overlaps accounted for more than 70% of errors in the realworld interactive seminar recordings used in CLEAR 2007 evaluations. In this paper, we improve the recognition rate of acoustic events using information from both audio and video modalities. First, the acoustic data are processed to obtain both a set of spectrotemporal features and the 3D localization coordinates of the sound source. Second, a number of features are extracted from video recordings by means of object detection, motion analysis, and multicamera person tracking to represent the visual counterpart of several acoustic events. A feature-level fusion strategy is used, and a parallel structure of binary HMM-based detectors is employed in our work. The experimental results show that information from both the microphone array and video cameras is useful to improve the detection rate of isolated as well as spontaneously generated acoustic events.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

De l'indexation d'évènements dans des films (application à la détection de violence)

Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à la détection de concepts sémantiques dans des films "Hollywoodiens" à l'aide de concepts audio et vidéos, dans le cadre applicatif de la détection de violence. Nos travaux se portent sur deux axes : la détection de concepts audio violents, tels que les coups de feu et les explosions, puis la détection de violence, dans un premier temps uniquement fondée sur l'audio, et dans un deuxième temps fondée sur l'audio et la vidéo. Dans le cadre de la détection de concepts audio, nous mettons tout d'abord un problème de généralisation en lumière, et nous montrons que ce problème est probablement dû à une divergence statistique entre les attributs audio extraits des films. Nous proposons pour résoudre ce problème d'utiliser le concept des mots audio, de façon à réduire cette variabilité en groupant les échantillons par similarité, associé à des réseaux Bayésiens contextuels. Les résultats obtenus sont très encourageants, et une comparaison avec un état de l'art obtenu sur les même données montre que les résultats sont équivalents. Le système obtenu peut être soit très robuste vis-à-vis du seuil appliqué en utilisant la fusion précoce des attributs, soit proposer une grande variété de points de fonctionnement. Nous proposons enfin une adaptation de l'analyse factorielle développée dans le cadre de la reconnaissance du locuteur, et montrons que son intégration dans notre système améliore les résultats obtenus. Dans le cadre de la détection de violence, nous présentons la campagne d'évaluation MediaEval Affect Task 2012, dont l'objectif est de regrouper les équipes travaillant sur le sujet de la détection de violence. Nous proposons ensuite trois systèmes pour détecter la violence, deux fondés uniquement sur l'audio, le premier utilisant une description TF-IDF, et le second étant une intégration du système de détection de concepts audio dans le cadre de la détection violence, et un système multimodal utilisant l'apprentissage de structures de graphe dans des réseaux bayésiens. Les performances obtenues dans le cadre des différents systèmes, et une comparaison avec les systèmes développés dans le cadre de MediaEval, montrent que nous sommes au niveau de l'état de l'art, et révèlent la complexité de tels systèmes.In this thesis, we focus on the detection of semantic concepts in "Hollywood" movies using audio and video concepts for the detection of violence. We present experiments in two main areas : the detection of violent audio concepts such as gunshots and explosions, and the detection of violence, initially based only on audio, then based on both audio and video. In the context of audio concepts detection, we first show a generalisation arising between movies. We show that this problem is probably due to a statistical divergence between the audio features extracted from the movies. In order to solve it, we propose to use the concept of audio words, so as to reduce the variability by grouping samples by similarity, combined with contextual Bayesian networks. The results are very encouraging, and a comparison with the state of the art obtained on the same data shows that the results we obtain are equivalent. The resulting system can be either robust against the threshold applied by using early fusion of features, or provides a wide variety of operating points. We finally propose an adaptation of the factor analysis scheme developed in the context of speaker recognition, and show that its integration into our system improves the results. In the context of the detection of violence, we present the Mediaeval Affect Task 2012 evaluation campaign, which aims at bringing together teams working on the topic of violence detection. We then propose three systems for detecting the violence. The first two are based only on audio, the first using a TF-IDF description, and the second being the integration of the previous system for the detection violence. The last system we present is a multimodal system based on Bayesian networks that allows us to explore structure learning algorithms for graphs. The performance obtained in the different systems, and a comparison to the systems developed within Mediaeval, show that we are comparable to the state of the art, and show the complexity of such systems.RENNES1-Bibl. électronique (352382106) / SudocSudocFranceF

Audiovisual event detection towards scene understanding

Acoustic events produced in meeting environments may contain useful information for perceptually aware interfaces and multimodal behavior analysis. In this paper, a system to detect and recognize these events from a multimodal perspective is presented combining information from multiple cameras and microphones. First, spectral and temporal features are extracted from a single audio channel and spatial localization is achieved by exploiting cross-correlation among microphone arrays. Second, several video cues obtained from multiperson tracking, motion analysis, face recognition, and object detection provide the visual counterpart of the acoustic events to be detected. A multimodal data fusion at score level is carried out using two approaches: weighted mean average and fuzzy integral. Finally, a multimodal database containing a rich variety of acoustic events has been recorded including manual annotations of the data. A set of metrics allow assessing the performance of the presented algorithms. This dataset is made publicly available for research purposes.Peer Reviewe

Audiovisual event detection towards scene understanding

Acoustic events produced in meeting environments may contain useful information for perceptually aware interfaces and multimodal behavior analysis. In this paper, a system to detect and recognize these events from a multimodal perspective is presented combining information from multiple cameras and microphones. First, spectral and temporal features are extracted from a single audio channel and spatial localization is achieved by exploiting cross-correlation among microphone arrays. Second, several video cues obtained from multiperson tracking, motion analysis, face recognition, and object detection provide the visual counterpart of the acoustic events to be detected. A multimodal data fusion at score level is carried out using two approaches: weighted mean average and fuzzy integral. Finally, a multimodal database containing a rich variety of acoustic events has been recorded including manual annotations of the data. A set of metrics allow assessing the performance of the presented algorithms. This dataset is made publicly available for research purposes.Peer Reviewe