Facial Expression Recognition Utilizing Local Direction-Based Robust Features and Deep Belief Network

Emotional health plays very vital role to improve people's quality of lives, especially for the elderly. Negative emotional states can lead to social or mental health problems. To cope with emotional health problems caused by negative emotions in daily life, we propose efficient facial expression recognition system to contribute in emotional healthcare system. Thus, facial expressions play a key role in our daily communications, and recent years have witnessed a great amount of research works for reliable facial expressions recognition (FER) systems. Therefore, facial expression evaluation or analysis from video information is very challenging and its accuracy depends on the extraction of robust features. In this paper, a unique feature extraction method is presented to extract distinguished features from the human face. For person independent expression recognition, depth video data is used as input to the system where in each frame, pixel intensities are distributed based on the distances to the camera. A novel robust feature extraction process is applied in this work which is named as local directional position pattern (LDPP). In LDPP, after extracting local directional strengths for each pixel such as applied in typical local directional pattern (LDP), top directional strength positions are considered in binary along with their strength sign bits. Considering top directional strength positions with strength signs in LDPP can differentiate edge pixels with bright as well as dark regions on their opposite sides by generating different patterns whereas typical LDP only considers directions representing the top strengths irrespective of their signs as well as position orders (i.e., directions with top strengths represent 1 and rest of them 0), which can generate the same patterns in this regard sometimes. Hence, LDP fails to distinguish edge pixels with opposite bright and dark regions in some cases which can be overcome by LDPP. Moreover, the LDPP capabilities are extended through principal component analysis (PCA) and generalized discriminant analysis (GDA) for better face characteristic illustration in expression. The proposed features are finally applied with deep belief network (DBN) for expression training and recognition

Vocal Imitation in Sensorimotor Learning Models: a Comparative Review

International audienceSensorimotor learning represents a challenging problem for natural and artificial systems. Several computational models have been proposed to explain the neural and cognitive mechanisms at play in the brain. In general, these models can be decomposed in three common components: a sensory system, a motor control device and a learning framework. The latter includes the architecture, the learning rule or optimisation method, and the exploration strategy used to guide learning. In this review, we focus on imitative vocal learning, that is exemplified in song learning in birds and speech acquisition in humans. We aim to synthesise, analyse and compare the various models of vocal learning that have been proposed, highlighting their common points and differences. We first introduce the biological context, including the behavioural and physiological hallmarks of vocal learning and sketch the neural circuits involved. Then, we detail the different components of a vocal learning model and how they are implemented in the reviewed models

Situationsverstehen für die Risikobeurteilung bei der Mensch-Roboter-Kooperation

In dem vorgestellten System wird die Umgebung eines Industrieroboters mittels Algorithmen des maschinellen Lernens erfasst und Objekte sowie menschliche Handlungen bestimmt. Anhand semantischer Analyse kann auf vorliegende Situationen geschlossen werden, wodurch sich dynamisch Risikobewertungen und Handlungsvorgaben für den Roboter ableiten lassen. Diese stellen die Grundlage für ein reaktives Roboterverhalten dar, das eine zielgerichtete und sichere Mensch-Roboter-Kooperation ermöglicht

Trust in Robots

Robots are increasingly becoming prevalent in our daily lives within our living or working spaces. We hope that robots will take up tedious, mundane or dirty chores and make our lives more comfortable, easy and enjoyable by providing companionship and care. However, robots may pose a threat to human privacy, safety and autonomy; therefore, it is necessary to have constant control over the developing technology to ensure the benevolent intentions and safety of autonomous systems. Building trust in (autonomous) robotic systems is thus necessary. The title of this book highlights this challenge: “Trust in robots—Trusting robots”. Herein, various notions and research areas associated with robots are unified. The theme “Trust in robots” addresses the development of technology that is trustworthy for users; “Trusting robots” focuses on building a trusting relationship with robots, furthering previous research. These themes and topics are at the core of the PhD program “Trust Robots” at TU Wien, Austria