1,158 research outputs found
Fast global kernel density mode seeking with application to localisation and tracking
Copyright © 2005 IEEE.We address the problem of seeking the global mode of a density function using the mean shift algorithm. Mean shift, like other gradient ascent optimisation methods, is susceptible to local maxima, and hence often fails to find the desired global maximum. In this work, we propose a multi-bandwidth mean shift procedure that alleviates this problem, which we term annealed mean shift, as it shares similarities with the annealed importance sampling procedure. The bandwidth of the algorithm plays the same role as the temperature in annealing. We observe that the over-smoothed density function with a sufficiently large bandwidth is uni-modal. Using a continuation principle, the influence of the global peak in the density function is introduced gradually. In this way the global maximum is more reliably located. Generally, the price of this annealing-like procedure is that more iterations are required. Since it is imperative that the computation complexity is minimal in real-time applications such as visual tracking. We propose an accelerated version of the mean shift algorithm. Compared with the conventional mean shift algorithm, the accelerated mean shift can significantly decrease the number of iterations required for convergence. The proposed algorithm is applied to the problems of visual tracking and object localisation. We empirically show on various data sets that the proposed algorithm can reliably find the true object location when the starting position of mean shift is far away from the global maximum, in contrast with the conventional mean shift algorithm that will usually get trapped in a spurious local maximum.Chunhua Shen, Michael J. Brooks and Anton van den Henge
Object Search Strategy in Tracking Algorithms
The demand for real-time video surveillance systems is increasing rapidly. The purpose of these systems includes surveillance as well as monitoring and controlling the events. Today there are several real-time computer vision applications based on image understanding which emulate the human vision and intelligence. These machines include object tracking as their primary task. Object tracking refers to estimating the trajectory of an object of interest in a video. A tracking system works on the principle of video processing algorithms. Video processing includes a huge amount of data to be processed and this fact dictates while implementing the algorithms on any hardware. However, the problems becomes challenging due to unexpected motion of the object, scene appearance change, object appearance change, structures of objects that are not rigid. Besides this full and partial occlusions and motion of the camera also pose challenges. Current tracking algorithms treat this problem as a classification task and use online learning algorithms to update the object model. Here, we explore the data redundancy in the sampling techniques and develop a highly structured kernel. This kernel acquires a circulant structure which is extremely easy to manipulate. Also, we take it further by using mean shift density algorithm and optical flow by Lucas Kanade method which gives us a heavy improvement in the results
On the use of autonomous unmanned vehicles in response to hazardous atmospheric release incidents
Recent events have induced a surge of interest in the methods of response to releases of hazardous materials or gases into the atmosphere. In the last decade there has been particular interest in mapping and quantifying emissions for regulatory purposes, emergency response, and environmental monitoring. Examples include: responding to events such as gas leaks, nuclear accidents or chemical, biological or radiological (CBR) accidents or attacks, and even exploring sources of methane emissions on the planet Mars. This thesis presents a review of the potential responses to hazardous releases, which includes source localisation, boundary tracking, mapping and source term estimation. [Continues.]</div
Exploiting Structural Regularities and Beyond: Vision-based Localization and Mapping in Man-Made Environments
Image-based estimation of camera motion, known as visual odometry
(VO), plays a very important role in many robotic applications
such as control and navigation of unmanned mobile robots,
especially when no external navigation reference signal is
available. The core problem of VO is the estimation of the
camera’s ego-motion (i.e. tracking) either between successive
frames, namely relative pose estimation, or with respect to a
global map, namely absolute pose estimation. This thesis aims to
develop efficient, accurate and robust VO solutions by taking
advantage of structural regularities in man-made environments,
such as piece-wise planar structures, Manhattan World and more
generally, contours and edges. Furthermore, to handle challenging
scenarios that are beyond the limits of classical sensor based VO
solutions, we investigate a recently emerging sensor — the
event camera and study on event-based mapping — one of the key
problems in the event-based VO/SLAM. The main achievements are
summarized as follows.
First, we revisit an old topic on relative pose estimation:
accurately and robustly estimating the fundamental matrix given a
collection of independently estimated homograhies. Three
classical methods are reviewed and then we show a simple but
nontrivial two-step normalization
within the direct linear method that achieves similar performance
to the less attractive and more computationally intensive
hallucinated points based method.
Second, an efficient 3D rotation estimation algorithm for depth
cameras in piece-wise planar environments is presented. It shows
that by using surface normal vectors as an input, planar modes in
the corresponding density distribution function can be discovered
and continuously
tracked using efficient non-parametric estimation techniques. The
relative rotation can be estimated by registering entire bundles
of planar modes by using robust L1-norm minimization.
Third, an efficient alternative to the iterative closest point
algorithm for real-time tracking of modern depth cameras in
ManhattanWorlds is developed. We exploit the common orthogonal
structure of man-made environments in order to decouple the
estimation of the rotation and the three degrees of freedom of
the translation. The derived camera orientation is absolute and
thus free of long-term drift, which in turn benefits the accuracy
of the translation estimation as well.
Fourth, we look into a more general structural
regularity—edges. A real-time VO system that uses Canny edges
is proposed for RGB-D cameras. Two novel alternatives to
classical distance transforms are developed with great properties
that significantly improve the classical Euclidean distance field
based methods in terms of efficiency, accuracy and robustness.
Finally, to deal with challenging scenarios that go beyond what
standard RGB/RGB-D cameras can handle, we investigate the
recently emerging event camera and focus on the problem of 3D
reconstruction from data captured by a stereo event-camera rig
moving in a static
scene, such as in the context of stereo Simultaneous Localization
and Mapping
Parametric POMDPs for planning in continuous state spaces
This thesis is concerned with planning and acting under uncertainty in partially-observable continuous domains. In particular, it focusses on the problem of mobile robot navigation given a known map. The dominant paradigm for robot localisation is to use Bayesian estimation to maintain a probability distribution over possible robot poses. In contrast, control algorithms often base their decisions on the assumption that a single state, such as the mode of this distribution, is correct. In scenarios involving significant uncertainty, this can lead to serious control errors. It is generally agreed that the reliability of navigation in uncertain environments would be greatly improved by the ability to consider the entire distribution when acting, rather than the single most likely state. The framework adopted in this thesis for modelling navigation problems mathematically is the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). An exact solution to a POMDP problem provides the optimal balance between reward-seeking behaviour and information-seeking behaviour, in the presence of sensor and actuation noise. Unfortunately, previous exact and approximate solution methods have had difficulty scaling to real applications. The contribution of this thesis is the formulation of an approach to planning in the space of continuous parameterised approximations to probability distributions. Theoretical and practical results are presented which show that, when compared with similar methods from the literature, this approach is capable of scaling to larger and more realistic problems. In order to apply the solution algorithm to real-world problems, a number of novel improvements are proposed. Specifically, Monte Carlo methods are employed to estimate distributions over future parameterised beliefs, improving planning accuracy without a loss of efficiency. Conditional independence assumptions are exploited to simplify the problem, reducing computational requirements. Scalability is further increased by focussing computation on likely beliefs, using metric indexing structures for efficient function approximation. Local online planning is incorporated to assist global offline planning, allowing the precision of the latter to be decreased without adversely affecting solution quality. Finally, the algorithm is implemented and demonstrated during real-time control of a mobile robot in a challenging navigation task. We argue that this task is substantially more challenging and realistic than previous problems to which POMDP solution methods have been applied. Results show that POMDP planning, which considers the evolution of the entire probability distribution over robot poses, produces significantly more robust behaviour when compared with a heuristic planner which considers only the most likely states and outcomes
Parametric POMDPs for planning in continuous state spaces
This thesis is concerned with planning and acting under uncertainty in partially-observable continuous domains. In particular, it focusses on the problem of mobile robot navigation given a known map. The dominant paradigm for robot localisation is to use Bayesian estimation to maintain a probability distribution over possible robot poses. In contrast, control algorithms often base their decisions on the assumption that a single state, such as the mode of this distribution, is correct. In scenarios involving significant uncertainty, this can lead to serious control errors. It is generally agreed that the reliability of navigation in uncertain environments would be greatly improved by the ability to consider the entire distribution when acting, rather than the single most likely state. The framework adopted in this thesis for modelling navigation problems mathematically is the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). An exact solution to a POMDP problem provides the optimal balance between reward-seeking behaviour and information-seeking behaviour, in the presence of sensor and actuation noise. Unfortunately, previous exact and approximate solution methods have had difficulty scaling to real applications. The contribution of this thesis is the formulation of an approach to planning in the space of continuous parameterised approximations to probability distributions. Theoretical and practical results are presented which show that, when compared with similar methods from the literature, this approach is capable of scaling to larger and more realistic problems. In order to apply the solution algorithm to real-world problems, a number of novel improvements are proposed. Specifically, Monte Carlo methods are employed to estimate distributions over future parameterised beliefs, improving planning accuracy without a loss of efficiency. Conditional independence assumptions are exploited to simplify the problem, reducing computational requirements. Scalability is further increased by focussing computation on likely beliefs, using metric indexing structures for efficient function approximation. Local online planning is incorporated to assist global offline planning, allowing the precision of the latter to be decreased without adversely affecting solution quality. Finally, the algorithm is implemented and demonstrated during real-time control of a mobile robot in a challenging navigation task. We argue that this task is substantially more challenging and realistic than previous problems to which POMDP solution methods have been applied. Results show that POMDP planning, which considers the evolution of the entire probability distribution over robot poses, produces significantly more robust behaviour when compared with a heuristic planner which considers only the most likely states and outcomes
Real-time people tracking in a camera network
Visual tracking is a fundamental key to the recognition and analysis of human behaviour.
In this thesis we present an approach to track several subjects using multiple
cameras in real time. The tracking framework employs a numerical Bayesian estimator,
also known as a particle lter, which has been developed for parallel implementation on
a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). In order to integrate multiple cameras into a single
tracking unit we represent the human body by a parametric ellipsoid in a 3D world.
The elliptical boundary can be projected rapidly, several hundred times per subject per
frame, onto any image for comparison with the image data within a likelihood model.
Adding variables to encode visibility and persistence into the state vector, we tackle the
problems of distraction and short-period occlusion. However, subjects may also disappear
for longer periods due to blind spots between cameras elds of view. To recognise
a desired subject after such a long-period, we add coloured texture to the ellipsoid surface,
which is learnt and retained during the tracking process. This texture signature
improves the recall rate from 60% to 70-80% when compared to state only data association.
Compared to a standard Central Processing Unit (CPU) implementation, there
is a signi cant speed-up ratio
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