Development of a text reading system on video images

Since the early days of computer science researchers sought to devise a machine which could automatically read text to help people with visual impairments. The problem of extracting and recognising text on document images has been largely resolved, but reading text from images of natural scenes remains a challenge. Scene text can present uneven lighting, complex backgrounds or perspective and lens distortion; it usually appears as short sentences or isolated words and shows a very diverse set of typefaces. However, video sequences of natural scenes provide a temporal redundancy that can be exploited to compensate for some of these deficiencies. Here we present a complete end-to-end, real-time scene text reading system on video images based on perspective aware text tracking. The main contribution of this work is a system that automatically detects, recognises and tracks text in videos of natural scenes in real-time. The focus of our method is on large text found in outdoor environments, such as shop signs, street names and billboards. We introduce novel efficient techniques for text detection, text aggregation and text perspective estimation. Furthermore, we propose using a set of Unscented Kalman Filters (UKF) to maintain each text region¿s identity and to continuously track the homography transformation of the text into a fronto-parallel view, thereby being resilient to erratic camera motion and wide baseline changes in orientation. The orientation of each text line is estimated using a method that relies on the geometry of the characters themselves to estimate a rectifying homography. This is done irrespective of the view of the text over a large range of orientations. We also demonstrate a wearable head-mounted device for text reading that encases a camera for image acquisition and a pair of headphones for synthesized speech output. Our system is designed for continuous and unsupervised operation over long periods of time. It is completely automatic and features quick failure recovery and interactive text reading. It is also highly parallelised in order to maximize the usage of available processing power and to achieve real-time operation. We show comparative results that improve the current state-of-the-art when correcting perspective deformation of scene text. The end-to-end system performance is demonstrated on sequences recorded in outdoor scenarios. Finally, we also release a dataset of text tracking videos along with the annotated ground-truth of text regions

Implementation business-to-consumer electronic commerce website using asp.net web programming framework

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate an integration of real world, real time e-commerce with the knowledge and experience gained in participating in the Masters of Business Administration -- Information Management program at California State University, San Bernardino. It is this knowledge and experience that is used to create a Business-To-Consumer (B2C) electronic commerce application (ECA) using available Internet and information management technology. This project presents all aspects of the simulation beginning with the background research of the canine services and supplies industry and ending with an e-commerce simulation and post implementation audit

Development of a business plan for the opening of dietic coffee shop “Fit-Sweet”

This final qualification work’s purpose is "Development of a business plan for the opening of "Fit-Sweet cafe-confectionery". The company whose products are intended to be fundamentally different from the competitors, will be operating in Lisbon. Within the implementation of the project, it is planned to satisfy the needs of Lisbon residents in diet desserts made of organic products. Regulatory legal acts of Portugal and also scientific and educational literature were used to write the final qualifying work. For developing a business plan of the company, and doing the correct investment in the future development of the cafe, the micro and macro environments were studied, the internal and competitive analysis were conducted. Based on the analysis, a strategic and marketing plan was drawn up. While conducting the business plan project for a dietary food enterprise the theoretical foundations of business planning were analysed; benefits of that kind business and options for its support identified; the activities aimed at the development of a cafe-confectionery / coffee shop were developed. The cafe will act as an individual entrepreneur, creating 8 jobs, payback period is 3 years. The main criteria for the selection of personnel are high qualifications in their field, accuracy, sociability. The primary sources of finance are own funds and borrowed capital. The main success factor is unique products: dietary, organic desserts high in protein which are currently practically absent on the market.O objetivo deste trabalho de qualificação final é "Desenvolvimento de um plano de negócios para a abertura de" Confeitaria de café Fit-Sweet ". A empresa cujos produtos se destinam a ser fundamentalmente diferentes dos concorrentes estará operando em Lisboa. Este projeto está planejado para satisfazer as necessidades dos residentes de Lisboa em sobremesas dietéticas feitas com produtos orgânicos, e foram utilizados atos legais regulamentares de Portugal e também literatura científica e educacional para escrever o trabalho final de qualificação. Para desenvolver um plano de negócios da empresa e fazer o investimento correto no desenvolvimento futuro do café, foram estudados os ambientes micro e macro, foram realizadas análises internas e competitivas. Com base na análise, foi elaborado um plano estratégico e de marketing. Durante a condução do projeto do plano de negócios de uma empresa de alimentos dietéticos, os fundamentos teóricos do planejamento de negócios foram analisados; benefícios desse tipo de negócio e opções para seu suporte identificados; foram desenvolvidas as atividades destinadas ao desenvolvimento de uma cafeteria / confeitaria / cafeteria. O café atuará como empresário individual, criando 8 empregos, period de retorno è 3 anos. Os principais critérios para a seleção de pessoal são altas qualificações em seu campo, precisão, sociabilidade. As principais fontes de financiamento são fundos próprios e capital emprestado. O principal fator de sucesso são os produtos exclusivos: sobremesas dietéticas e orgânicas, ricas em proteínas, atualmente praticamente ausentes no mercado

Marketing cities for tourism: developing marketing strategies for Istanbul with lessons from Amsterdam and London.

The tourism sector is relatively competitive, with many destinations competing with each other to attract potential tourists. Destinations,such as urban areas,need to besold with a greater emphasis on marketing activities. In fact, as a bundle of products consumedby a range of tourists with different needs and motives for visiting, urban tourism destinations differ from traditional holiday resorts and require more specific attention from tourism organisations responsible for marketing their cities. This research focuses on the set tourism organisations and their marketing activities ranging from market research to advertising. Attention is also paid to the tourism sector as an initiative to alleviate the urban areas' problems.The concept of an urban tourism destination as a marketable product is assessed with particular reference to the case study cities of London, Amsterdamand Istanbul. Extensive literature review, in-depth interviews with key personnel and field studies were held in the case study cities as the main research methods of the investigation. Information on marketing plans of the cities; structural characteristics of tourism organisations both in the public and private sectors; marketing alliances between these organisations; marketing tools used by city destinations;the competitiveness of urban areas in the both international and domestic tourism markets are sought from the findings of the research methods. In addition, product life cycle analysis,carrying capacity analysis and SWOT analysis are applied to the cities with support of existing data in order to assess the urban tourism products in detail. It is anticipated that such a comparative study will shed some light on the marketing activities of tourism organisations and will help to develop optimal marketing strategies for the urban tourism product of Istanbul

Mobile Robots Navigation

Mobile robots navigation includes different interrelated activities: (i) perception, as obtaining and interpreting sensory information; (ii) exploration, as the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; (iii) mapping, involving the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; (iv) localization, as the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; (v) path planning, as the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and (vi) path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. The book addresses those activities by integrating results from the research work of several authors all over the world. Research cases are documented in 32 chapters organized within 7 categories next described

Text Similarity Between Concepts Extracted from Source Code and Documentation

Context: Constant evolution in software systems often results in its documentation losing sync with the content of the source code. The traceability research field has often helped in the past with the aim to recover links between code and documentation, when the two fell out of sync. Objective: The aim of this paper is to compare the concepts contained within the source code of a system with those extracted from its documentation, in order to detect how similar these two sets are. If vastly different, the difference between the two sets might indicate a considerable ageing of the documentation, and a need to update it. Methods: In this paper we reduce the source code of 50 software systems to a set of key terms, each containing the concepts of one of the systems sampled. At the same time, we reduce the documentation of each system to another set of key terms. We then use four different approaches for set comparison to detect how the sets are similar. Results: Using the well known Jaccard index as the benchmark for the comparisons, we have discovered that the cosine distance has excellent comparative powers, and depending on the pre-training of the machine learning model. In particular, the SpaCy and the FastText embeddings offer up to 80% and 90% similarity scores. Conclusion: For most of the sampled systems, the source code and the documentation tend to contain very similar concepts. Given the accuracy for one pre-trained model (e.g., FastText), it becomes also evident that a few systems show a measurable drift between the concepts contained in the documentation and in the source code.</p

Task-based Adaptation of Graphical Content in Smart Visual Interfaces

To be effective visual representations must be adapted to their respective context of use, especially in so-called Smart Visual Interfaces striving to present specifically those information required for the task at hand. This thesis proposes a generic approach that facilitate the automatic generation of task-specific visual representations from suitable task descriptions. It is discussed how the approach is applied to four principal content types raster images, 2D vector and 3D graphics as well as data visualizations, and how existing display techniques can be integrated into the approach.Effektive visuelle Repräsentationen müssen an den jeweiligen Nutzungskontext angepasst sein, insbesondere in sog. Smart Visual Interfaces, welche anstreben, möglichst genau für die aktuelle Aufgabe benötigte Informationen anzubieten. Diese Arbeit entwirft einen generischen Ansatz zur automatischen Erzeugung aufgabenspezifischer Darstellungen anhand geeigneter Aufgabenbeschreibungen. Es wird gezeigt, wie dieser Ansatz auf vier grundlegende Inhaltstypen Rasterbilder, 2D-Vektor- und 3D-Grafik sowie Datenvisualisierungen anwendbar ist, und wie existierende Darstellungstechniken integrierbar sind

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ROMANIA

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main opportunities and limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The survey was defined with the aim to involve the highest possible number of relevant CSR topics and give the issue a more wholesome perspective. It provides a basis for further comprehension and deeper analyses of specific CSR areas. The conditions determining the success of CSR in Romania have been defined in the paper on the basis of the previously cumulative knowledge as well as the results of various researches. This paper provides knowledge which may be useful in the programs promoting CSR.Corporate social responsibility, Supportive policies, Romania

Implementation of a service-dominant logic in a Portuguese SME wine seller

ProjectThe present master thesis is an applied project focused in a SME in the wine market located in the Lisbon area. The company is a traditional family-based wine seller who lacks a strategic vision of the overall customer experience. Service-dominant logic theoretical frameworks guided the work developed in this thesis. The literature review framed the research to develop the strategic vision, focusing on concepts such as customer experience, resources, sustainable competitive advantages and value offering density. The macro environment was analysed in terms of the national economical, social and environmental context to better understand the Portuguese wine market. A consumer analysis allowed the characterization of the wine Portuguese consumer while the internal analysis determined the company’s current situation in terms of market development and financial solidity. The definition of the new strategic paradigm unbundled and rebundled the customer’s experience to allow for a comprehensive strategic vision divided into 10 points of contact for the company. A financial analysis was done to access the viability of the proposed actions, including a sensitivity analysis that concluded the project is financially solid. The new strategic paradigm gives the company a sustainable competitive advantage for the future.A seguinte tese de mestrado é um projeto aplicado, focado numa PME no mercado dos vinhos localizada na região de Lisboa. A empresa vende vinhos e tem um forte cariz de tradição familiar carecendo, no entanto, de uma visão estratégica que englobe a experiência total do consumidor. Quadros teóricos focados na service-dominant logic orientaram o trabalho desenvolvido nesta tese. A revisão literária enquadrou a pesquisa para desenvolver a visão estratégica, focada em conceitos como a experiência do cliente, recursos, vantagens competitivas sustentáveis e value offering density. O macro contexto foi analisado em termos do enquadramento económico, social e ambiental para compreender melhor o mercado do vinho Português. Uma análise ao consumidor permitiu a caracterização do consumidor de vinho Português enquanto a análise interna determinou a situação atual da empresa em termos de desenvolvimento de mercado e solidez financeira. A definição do novo paradigma estratégico desagregou e recombinou a experiência do cliente para permitir uma visão estratégica compreensiva dividida em 10 pontos de contato para a empresa. Uma análise financeira foi realizada para estudar a viabilidade das ações propostas, incluindo uma análise de sensibilidade que concluiu que o projeto é financeiramente sólido. O novo paradigma estratégico confere à empresa uma vantagem competitiva sustentável para o futuro