SFINGE 3D: A novel benchmark for online detection and recognition of heterogeneous hand gestures from 3D fingers' trajectories

In recent years gesture recognition has become an increasingly interesting topic for both research and industry. While interaction with a device through a gestural interface is a promising idea in several applications especially in the industrial field, some of the issues related to the task are still considered a challenge. In the scientific literature, a relevant amount of work has been recently presented on the problem of detecting and classifying gestures from 3D hands' joints trajectories that can be captured by cheap devices installed on head-mounted displays and desktop computers. The methods proposed so far can achieve very good results on benchmarks requiring the offline supervised classification of segmented gestures of a particular kind but are not usually tested on the more realistic task of finding gestures execution within a continuous hand tracking session.In this paper, we present a novel benchmark, SFINGE 3D, aimed at evaluating online gesture detection and recognition. The dataset is composed of a dictionary of 13 segmented gestures used as a training set and 72 trajectories each containing 3-5 of the 13 gestures, performed in continuous tracking, padded with random hand movements acting as noise. The presented dataset, captured with a head-mounted Leap Motion device, is particularly suitable to evaluate gesture detection methods in a realistic use-case scenario, as it allows the analysis of online detection performance on heterogeneous gestures, characterized by static hand pose, global hand motions, and finger articulation.We exploited SFINGE 3D to compare two different approaches for the online detection and classification, one based on visual rendering and Convolutional Neural Networks and the other based on geometrybased handcrafted features and dissimilarity-based classifiers. We discuss the results, analyzing strengths and weaknesses of the methods, and deriving useful hints for their improvement. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Intelligent textiles: Designing a gesture-controlled illuminated textile based on computer vision

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential for the development of e-textiles that give wearers a smart and intuitive experience. An emerging challenge in intelligent materials design is hand gesture recognition textiles. Most current research focuses on number gesture recognition via smart gloves, so there is a gap in research that studies contact-less number gesture recognition textiles via computer vision. Meanwhile, there is lack of exploration on the integration of illuminating function and number gesture recognition textiles to improve interactivity by real-time visualizing detection results. In this research, a novel interactive illuminating textile with a touch-less number gesture recognition function has been designed and fabricated by using an open-source AI model. It is used in sync with a polymeric optical fiber textile with illuminative features. The textile is color-changing, controlled by the system's mid-air interactive number gesture recognition capability and has a woven stripe pattern and a double-layer weave structure with open pockets to facilitate integration of the system's components. Also described here is a novel design process that permits textile design and intelligent technology to integrate seamlessly and in synchronization, so that design in effect mediates continuously between the physical textile and the intangible technology. Moreover, this design method serves as a reference for the integration of open-source intelligent hardware and software into e-textiles for enhancement of the intuitive function and value via economy of labor

Application of Machine Learning within Visual Content Production

We are living in an era where digital content is being produced at a dazzling pace. The heterogeneity of contents and contexts is so varied that a numerous amount of applications have been created to respond to people and market demands. The visual content production pipeline is the generalisation of the process that allows a content editor to create and evaluate their product, such as a video, an image, a 3D model, etc. Such data is then displayed on one or more devices such as TVs, PC monitors, virtual reality head-mounted displays, tablets, mobiles, or even smartwatches. Content creation can be simple as clicking a button to film a video and then share it into a social network, or complex as managing a dense user interface full of parameters by using keyboard and mouse to generate a realistic 3D model for a VR game. In this second example, such sophistication results in a steep learning curve for beginner-level users. In contrast, expert users regularly need to refine their skills via expensive lessons, time-consuming tutorials, or experience. Thus, user interaction plays an essential role in the diffusion of content creation software, primarily when it is targeted to untrained people. In particular, with the fast spread of virtual reality devices into the consumer market, new opportunities for designing reliable and intuitive interfaces have been created. Such new interactions need to take a step beyond the point and click interaction typical of the 2D desktop environment. The interactions need to be smart, intuitive and reliable, to interpret 3D gestures and therefore, more accurate algorithms are needed to recognise patterns. In recent years, machine learning and in particular deep learning have achieved outstanding results in many branches of computer science, such as computer graphics and human-computer interface, outperforming algorithms that were considered state of the art, however, there are only fleeting efforts to translate this into virtual reality. In this thesis, we seek to apply and take advantage of deep learning models to two different content production pipeline areas embracing the following subjects of interest: advanced methods for user interaction and visual quality assessment. First, we focus on 3D sketching to retrieve models from an extensive database of complex geometries and textures, while the user is immersed in a virtual environment. We explore both 2D and 3D strokes as tools for model retrieval in VR. Therefore, we implement a novel system for improving accuracy in searching for a 3D model. We contribute an efficient method to describe models through 3D sketch via an iterative descriptor generation, focusing both on accuracy and user experience. To evaluate it, we design a user study to compare different interactions for sketch generation. Second, we explore the combination of sketch input and vocal description to correct and fine-tune the search for 3D models in a database containing fine-grained variation. We analyse sketch and speech queries, identifying a way to incorporate both of them into our system's interaction loop. Third, in the context of the visual content production pipeline, we present a detailed study of visual metrics. We propose a novel method for detecting rendering-based artefacts in images. It exploits analogous deep learning algorithms used when extracting features from sketches

Human behavior understanding for worker-centered intelligent manufacturing

“In a worker-centered intelligent manufacturing system, sensing and understanding of the worker’s behavior are the primary tasks, which are essential for automatic performance evaluation & optimization, intelligent training & assistance, and human-robot collaboration. In this study, a worker-centered training & assistant system is proposed for intelligent manufacturing, which is featured with self-awareness and active-guidance. To understand the hand behavior, a method is proposed for complex hand gesture recognition using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) with multiview augmentation and inference fusion, from depth images captured by Microsoft Kinect. To sense and understand the worker in a more comprehensive way, a multi-modal approach is proposed for worker activity recognition using Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) signals obtained from a Myo armband and videos from a visual camera. To automatically learn the importance of different sensors, a novel attention-based approach is proposed to human activity recognition using multiple IMU sensors worn at different body locations. To deploy the developed algorithms to the factory floor, a real-time assembly operation recognition system is proposed with fog computing and transfer learning. The proposed worker-centered training & assistant system has been validated and demonstrated the feasibility and great potential for applying to the manufacturing industry for frontline workers. Our developed approaches have been evaluated: 1) the multi-view approach outperforms the state-of-the-arts on two public benchmark datasets, 2) the multi-modal approach achieves an accuracy of 97% on a worker activity dataset including 6 activities and achieves the best performance on a public dataset, 3) the attention-based method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on five publicly available datasets, and 4) the developed transfer learning model achieves a real-time recognition accuracy of 95% on a dataset including 10 worker operations”--Abstract, page iv

Computational Approaches to Explainable Artificial Intelligence:Advances in Theory, Applications and Trends

Deep Learning (DL), a groundbreaking branch of Machine Learning (ML), has emerged as a driving force in both theoretical and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI). DL algorithms, rooted in complex and non-linear artificial neural systems, excel at extracting high-level features from data. DL has demonstrated human-level performance in real-world tasks, including clinical diagnostics, and has unlocked solutions to previously intractable problems in virtual agent design, robotics, genomics, neuroimaging, computer vision, and industrial automation. In this paper, the most relevant advances from the last few years in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and several applications to neuroscience, neuroimaging, computer vision, and robotics are presented, reviewed and discussed. In this way, we summarize the state-of-the-art in AI methods, models and applications within a collection of works presented at the 9 International Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation (IWINAC). The works presented in this paper are excellent examples of new scientific discoveries made in laboratories that have successfully transitioned to real-life applications

Computational approaches to Explainable Artificial Intelligence: Advances in theory, applications and trends

Deep Learning (DL), a groundbreaking branch of Machine Learning (ML), has emerged as a driving force in both theoretical and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI). DL algorithms, rooted in complex and non-linear artificial neural systems, excel at extracting high-level features from data. DL has demonstrated human-level performance in real-world tasks, including clinical diagnostics, and has unlocked solutions to previously intractable problems in virtual agent design, robotics, genomics, neuroimaging, computer vision, and industrial automation. In this paper, the most relevant advances from the last few years in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and several applications to neuroscience, neuroimaging, computer vision, and robotics are presented, reviewed and discussed. In this way, we summarize the state-of-the-art in AI methods, models and applications within a collection of works presented at the 9 International Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation (IWINAC). The works presented in this paper are excellent examples of new scientific discoveries made in laboratories that have successfully transitioned to real-life applications