Low-cost natural interface based on head movements

Sometimes people look for freedom in the virtual world. However, not all have the possibility to interact with a computer in the same way. Nowadays, almost every job requires interaction with computerized systems, so people with physical impairments do not have the same freedom to control a mouse, a keyboard or a touchscreen. In the last years, some of the government programs to help people with reduced mobility suffered a lot with the global economic crisis and some of those programs were even cut down to reduce costs. This paper focuses on the development of a touchless human-computer interface, which allows anyone to control a computer without using a keyboard, mouse or touchscreen. By reusing Microsoft Kinect sensors from old videogames consoles, a cost-reduced, easy to use, and open-source interface was developed, allowing control of a computer using only the head, eyes or mouth movements, with the possibility of complementary sound commands. There are already available similar commercial solutions, but they are so expensive that their price tends to be a real obstacle in their purchase; on the other hand, free solutions usually do not offer the freedom that people with reduced mobility need. The present solution tries to address these drawbacks. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V

Using computer vision in security applications

In this paper we present projects developed in the Computer Vision Laboratory, which address the issue of safety. First, we present the Internet Video Server (IVS) monitoring system [5] that sends live video stream over the Internet and enables remote camera control. Its extension GlobalView [1,6], which incorporates intuitive user interface for remote camera control, is based on panoramic image. Then we describe our method for automatic face detection [3] based on color segmentation and feature extraction. Finally, we introduce our SecurityAgent system [4] for automatic surveillance of observed location