Technical support for creating an artificial intelligence system for feature extraction and experimental design

Techniques for classifying objects into groups or clases go under many different names including, most commonly, cluster analysis. Mathematically, the general problem is to find a best mapping of objects into an index set consisting of class identifiers. When an a priori grouping of objects exists, the process of deriving the classification rules from samples of classified objects is known as discrimination. When such rules are applied to objects of unknown class, the process is denoted classification. The specific problem addressed involves the group classification of a set of objects that are each associated with a series of measurements (ratio, interval, ordinal, or nominal levels of measurement). Each measurement produces one variable in a multidimensional variable space. Cluster analysis techniques are reviewed and methods for incuding geographic location, distance measures, and spatial pattern (distribution) as parameters in clustering are examined. For the case of patterning, measures of spatial autocorrelation are discussed in terms of the kind of data (nominal, ordinal, or interval scaled) to which they may be applied

An Evaluation of Perceptual Classification led by Cognitive Models in Traffic Scenes

The objects extraction and recognition constitute the most important link in the image processing and understanding, and it cannot be achieved without a solid objects organization during the processing through the learning mechanisms. Most often, both the response time and the accuracy are undeniable criteria for applications in this field. Actually, a vision system need to take into consideration these criteria, either in the structural, the methodological or in the algorithmic aspect. Thus, we consider that the ontological study at the domain and task levels, in the vision systems, has become essential in order to provide a substantial assistance to the multitudes of applications in image processing. Concerning the domain knowledge, several patterns for structuring were proposed to improve the objects representation and organization, they often advocate the precision aspect on time and on effort devoted to the recognition. In practical terms, clustering methods only focus on the accuracy aspect within a category, without considering the recognition aspect [1]. Thus, we propose in this study a new procedure of object categorization, which uses, according to the expertise in the domain, a fit evaluation that is able to adjust the level of partitioning. As a result, this procedure will find a compromise between the accuracy on the categories and the reduction of the supplied effort in recognition.  

Research in interactive scene analysis

An interactive scene interpretation system (ISIS) was developed as a tool for constructing and experimenting with man-machine and automatic scene analysis methods tailored for particular image domains. A recently developed region analysis subsystem based on the paradigm of Brice and Fennema is described. Using this subsystem a series of experiments was conducted to determine good criteria for initially partitioning a scene into atomic regions and for merging these regions into a final partition of the scene along object boundaries. Semantic (problem-dependent) knowledge is essential for complete, correct partitions of complex real-world scenes. An interactive approach to semantic scene segmentation was developed and demonstrated on both landscape and indoor scenes. This approach provides a reasonable methodology for segmenting scenes that cannot be processed completely automatically, and is a promising basis for a future automatic system. A program is described that can automatically generate strategies for finding specific objects in a scene based on manually designated pictorial examples

Plethora : a framework for the intelligent control of robotic assembly systems

Plethora : a framework for the intelligent control of robotic assembly system

Experiments in cooperative-arm object manipulation with a two-armed free-flying robot

Developing computed-torque controllers for complex manipulator systems using current techniques and tools is difficult because they address the issues pertinent to simulation, as opposed to control. A new formulation of computed-torque (CT) control that leads to an automated computer-torque robot controller program is presented. This automated tool is used for simulations and experimental demonstrations of endpoint and object control from a free-flying robot. A new computed-torque formulation states the multibody control problem in an elegant, homogeneous, and practical form. A recursive dynamics algorithm is presented that numerically evaluates kinematics and dynamics terms for multibody systems given a topological description. Manipulators may be free-flying, and may have closed-chain constraints. With the exception of object squeeze-force control, the algorithm does not deal with actuator redundancy. The algorithm is used to implement an automated 2D computed-torque dynamics and control package that allows joint, endpoint, orientation, momentum, and object squeeze-force control. This package obviates the need for hand-derivation of kinematics and dynamics, and is used for both simulation and experimental control. Endpoint control experiments are performed on a laboratory robot that has two arms to manipulate payloads, and uses an air bearing to achieve very-low drag characteristics. Simulations and experimental data for endpoint and object controllers are presented for the experimental robot - a complex dynamic system. There is a certain rather wide set of conditions under which CT endpoint controllers can neglect robot base accelerations (but not motions) and achieve comparable performance including base accelerations in the model. The regime over which this simplification holds is explored by simulation and experiment

A Multicamera System for Gesture Tracking With Three Dimensional Hand Pose Estimation

The goal of any visual tracking system is to successfully detect then follow an object of interest through a sequence of images. The difficulty of tracking an object depends on the dynamics, the motion and the characteristics of the object as well as on the environ ment. For example, tracking an articulated, self-occluding object such as a signing hand has proven to be a very difficult problem. The focus of this work is on tracking and pose estimation with applications to hand gesture interpretation. An approach that attempts to integrate the simplicity of a region tracker with single hand 3D pose estimation methods is presented. Additionally, this work delves into the pose estimation problem. This is ac complished by both analyzing hand templates composed of their morphological skeleton, and addressing the skeleton\u27s inherent instability. Ligature points along the skeleton are flagged in order to determine their effect on skeletal instabilities. Tested on real data, the analysis finds the flagging of ligature points to proportionally increase the match strength of high similarity image-template pairs by about 6%. The effectiveness of this approach is further demonstrated in a real-time multicamera hand tracking system that tracks hand gestures through three-dimensional space as well as estimate the three-dimensional pose of the hand

Fault tolerant software technology for distributed computing system

Issued as Monthly reports [nos. 1-23], Interim technical report, Technical guide books [nos. 1-2], and Final report, Project no. G-36-64

A Distributed System for Robot Manipulator Control

This is the final report representing three years of work under the current grant. This work was directed to the development of a distributed computer architecture to function as a force and motion server to a robot system. In the course of this work we developed a compliant contact sensor to provide for transitions between position and force control; we have developed an end-effector capable of securing a stable grasp on an object and a theory of grasping; we have built a controller which minimizes control delays, and are currently achieving delays of the order of five milliseconds, with sample rates of 200 hertz; we have developed parallel kinematics algorithms for the controller; we have developed a consistent approach to the definition of motion both in joint coordinates and in Cartesian coordinates; we have developed a symbolic simplification software package to generate the dynamics equations of a manipulator such that the calculations may be split between background and foreground

Détection de bateaux dans les images de radar à ouverture synthétique

Le but principal de cette thèse est de développer des algorithmes efficaces et de concevoir un système pour la détection de bateaux dans les images Radar à Ouverture Synthetique (ROS.) Dans notre cas, la détection de bateaux implique en premier lieu la détection de cibles de points dans les images ROS. Ensuite, la détection d'un bateau proprement dit dépend des propriétés physiques du bateau lui-même, tel que sa taille, sa forme, sa structure, son orientation relative a la direction de regard du radar et les conditions générales de l'état de la mer. Notre stratégie est de détecter toutes les cibles de bateaux possibles dans les images de ROS, et ensuite de chercher autour de chaque candidat des évidences telle que les sillons. Les objectifs de notre recherche sont (1) d'améliorer 1'estimation des paramètres dans Ie modèle de distribution-K et de déterminer les conditions dans lesquelles un modèle alternatif (Ie Gamma, par exemple) devrait être utilise plutôt; (2) d'explorer Ie modèle PNN (Probabilistic Neural Network) comme une alternative aux modèles paramétriques actuellement utilises; (3) de concevoir un modèle de regroupement flou (FC : Fuzzy Clustering) capable de détecter les petites et grandes cibles de bateaux dans les images a un seul canal ou les images a multi-canaux; (4) de combiner la détection de sillons avec la détection de cibles de bateaux; (5) de concevoir un modèle de détection qui peut être utilisé aussi pour la détection des cibles de bateaux en zones costières.Abstract: The main purpose of this thesis is to develop efficient algorithms and design a system for ship detection from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. Ship detection usually involves through detection of point targets on a radar clutter background.The detection of a ship depends on the physical properties of the ship itself, such as size, shape, and structure; its orientation relative to the radar look-direction; and the general condition of the sea state. Our strategy is to detect all possible ship targets in SAR images, and then search around each candidate for the wake as further evidence.The objectives of our research are (1) to improve estimation of the parameters in the K-distribution model and to determine the conditions in which an alternative model (Gamma, for example) should be used instead; (2) to explore a PNN (Probabilistic Neural Networks) model as an alternative to the commonly used parameteric models; (3) to design a FC (Fuzzy Clustering) model capable of detecting both small and large ship targets from single-channel images or multi-channel images; (4) to combine wake detection with ship target detection; (5) to design a detection model that can also be used to detect ship targets in coastal areas. We have developed algorithms for each of these objectives and integrated them into a system comprising six models.The system has been tested on a number of SAR images (SEASAT, ERS and RADARSAT-1, for example) and its performance has been assessed

Using contour information and segmentation for object registration, modeling and retrieval

This thesis considers different aspects of the utilization of contour information and syntactic and semantic image segmentation for object registration, modeling and retrieval in the context of content-based indexing and retrieval in large collections of images. Target applications include retrieval in collections of closed silhouettes, holistic w ord recognition in handwritten historical manuscripts and shape registration. Also, the thesis explores the feasibility of contour-based syntactic features for improving the correspondence of the output of bottom-up segmentation to semantic objects present in the scene and discusses the feasibility of different strategies for image analysis utilizing contour information, e.g. segmentation driven by visual features versus segmentation driven by shape models or semi-automatic in selected application scenarios. There are three contributions in this thesis. The first contribution considers structure analysis based on the shape and spatial configuration of image regions (socalled syntactic visual features) and their utilization for automatic image segmentation. The second contribution is the study of novel shape features, matching algorithms and similarity measures. Various applications of the proposed solutions are presented throughout the thesis providing the basis for the third contribution which is a discussion of the feasibility of different recognition strategies utilizing contour information. In each case, the performance and generality of the proposed approach has been analyzed based on extensive rigorous experimentation using as large as possible test collections