Down-Sampling coupled to Elastic Kernel Machines for Efficient Recognition of Isolated Gestures

In the field of gestural action recognition, many studies have focused on dimensionality reduction along the spatial axis, to reduce both the variability of gestural sequences expressed in the reduced space, and the computational complexity of their processing. It is noticeable that very few of these methods have explicitly addressed the dimensionality reduction along the time axis. This is however a major issue with regard to the use of elastic distances characterized by a quadratic complexity. To partially fill this apparent gap, we present in this paper an approach based on temporal down-sampling associated to elastic kernel machine learning. We experimentally show, on two data sets that are widely referenced in the domain of human gesture recognition, and very different in terms of quality of motion capture, that it is possible to significantly reduce the number of skeleton frames while maintaining a good recognition rate. The method proves to give satisfactory results at a level currently reached by state-of-the-art methods on these data sets. The computational complexity reduction makes this approach eligible for real-time applications.Comment: ICPR 2014, International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Stockholm : Sweden (2014

Probabilistic Human-Robot Information Fusion

This thesis is concerned with combining the perceptual abilities of mobile robots and human operators to execute tasks cooperatively. It is generally agreed that a synergy of human and robotic skills offers an opportunity to enhance the capabilities of today’s robotic systems, while also increasing their robustness and reliability. Systems which incorporate both human and robotic information sources have the potential to build complex world models, essential for both automated and human decision making. In this work, humans and robots are regarded as equal team members who interact and communicate on a peer-to-peer basis. Human-robot communication is addressed using probabilistic representations common in robotics. While communication can in general be bidirectional, this work focuses primarily on human-to-robot information flow. More specifically, the approach advocated in this thesis is to let robots fuse their sensor observations with observations obtained from human operators. While robotic perception is well-suited for lower level world descriptions such as geometric properties, humans are able to contribute perceptual information on higher abstraction levels. Human input is translated into the machine representation via Human Sensor Models. A common mathematical framework for humans and robots reinforces the notion of true peer-to-peer interaction. Human-robot information fusion is demonstrated in two application domains: (1) scalable information gathering, and (2) cooperative decision making. Scalable information gathering is experimentally demonstrated on a system comprised of a ground vehicle, an unmanned air vehicle, and two human operators in a natural environment. Information from humans and robots was fused in a fully decentralised manner to build a shared environment representation on multiple abstraction levels. Results are presented in the form of information exchange patterns, qualitatively demonstrating the benefits of human-robot information fusion. The second application domain adds decision making to the human-robot task. Rational decisions are made based on the robots’ current beliefs which are generated by fusing human and robotic observations. Since humans are considered a valuable resource in this context, operators are only queried for input when the expected benefit of an observation exceeds the cost of obtaining it. The system can be seen as adjusting its autonomy at run-time based on the uncertainty in the robots’ beliefs. A navigation task is used to demonstrate the adjustable autonomy system experimentally. Results from two experiments are reported: a quantitative evaluation of human-robot team effectiveness, and a user study to compare the system to classical teleoperation. Results show the superiority of the system with respect to performance, operator workload, and usability

Contributions to the study of Austism Spectrum Brain conectivity

164 p.Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a largely prevalent neurodevelopmental condition with a big social and economical impact affecting the entire life of families. There is an intense search for biomarkers that can be assessed as early as possible in order to initiate treatment and preparation of the family to deal with the challenges imposed by the condition. Brain imaging biomarkers have special interest. Specifically, functional connectivity data extracted from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) should allow to detect brain connectivity alterations. Machine learning pipelines encompass the estimation of the functional connectivity matrix from brain parcellations, feature extraction and building classification models for ASD prediction. The works reported in the literature are very heterogeneous from the computational and methodological point of view. In this Thesis we carry out a comprehensive computational exploration of the impact of the choices involved while building these machine learning pipelines

Data-driven fMRI data analysis based on parcellation

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is one of the most popular neuroimaging methods for investigating the activity of the human brain during cognitive tasks. As with many other neuroiroaging tools, the group analysis of fMRI data often requires a transformation of the individual datasets to a common stereotaxic space, where the different brains have a similar global shape and size. However, the local inaccuracy of this procedure gives rise to a series of issues including a lack of true anatomical correspondence and a loss of subject specific activations. Inter-subject parcellation of fMRI data has been proposed as a means to alleviate these problems. Within this frame, the inter-subject correspondence is achieved by isolating homologous functional parcels across individuals, rather than by matching voxels coordinates within a stereotaxic space. However, the large majority of parcellation methods still suffer from a number of shortcomings owing to their dependence on a general linear model. Indeed, for all its appeal, a GLM-based parcellation approach introduces its own biases in the form of a priori knowledge about such matters as the shape of the Hemodynamic Response Function (HRF) and taskrelated signal changes. In this thesis, we propose a model-free data-driven parcellation approach to singleand multi-subject parcellation. By modelling brain activation without an relying on an a priori model, parcellation is optimized for each individual subject. In order to establish correspondences of parcels across different subjects, we cast this problem as a multipartite graph partitioning task. Parcels are considered as the vertices of a weighted complete multipartite graph. Cross subject parcel matching becomes equivalent to partitioning this graph into disjoint cliques with one and only one parcel from each subject in each clique. In order to solve this NP-hard problem, we present three methods: the OBSA algorithm, a method with quadratic programming and an intuitive approach. We also introduce two quantitative measures of the quality of parcellation results. We apply our framework to two fMRI data sets and show that both our single- and multi-subject parcellation techniques rival or outperform model-based methods in terms of parcellation accuracy

Development and Application of Chemometric Methods for Modelling Metabolic Spectral Profiles

The interpretation of metabolic information is crucial to understanding the functioning of a biological system. Latent information about the metabolic state of a sample can be acquired using analytical chemistry methods, which generate spectroscopic profiles. Thus, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry techniques can be employed to generate vast amounts of highly complex data on the metabolic content of biofluids and tissue, and this thesis discusses ways to process, analyse and interpret these data successfully. The evaluation of J -resolved spectroscopy in magnetic resonance profiling and the statistical techniques required to extract maximum information from the projections of these spectra are studied. In particular, data processing is evaluated, and correlation and regression methods are investigated with respect to enhanced model interpretation and biomarker identification. Additionally, it is shown that non-linearities in metabonomic data can be effectively modelled with kernel-based orthogonal partial least squares, for which an automated optimisation of the kernel parameter with nested cross-validation is implemented. The interpretation of orthogonal variation and predictive ability enabled by this approach are demonstrated in regression and classification models for applications in toxicology and parasitology. Finally, the vast amount of data generated with mass spectrometry imaging is investigated in terms of data processing, and the benefits of applying multivariate techniques to these data are illustrated, especially in terms of interpretation and visualisation using colour-coding of images. The advantages of methods such as principal component analysis, self-organising maps and manifold learning over univariate analysis are highlighted. This body of work therefore demonstrates new means of increasing the amount of biochemical information that can be obtained from a given set of samples in biological applications using spectral profiling. Various analytical and statistical methods are investigated and illustrated with applications drawn from diverse biomedical areas

Data-driven fMRI data analysis based on parcellation

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is one of the most popular neuroimaging methods for investigating the activity of the human brain during cognitive tasks. As with many other neuroiroaging tools, the group analysis of fMRI data often requires a transformation of the individual datasets to a common stereotaxic space, where the different brains have a similar global shape and size. However, the local inaccuracy of this procedure gives rise to a series of issues including a lack of true anatomical correspondence and a loss of subject specific activations. Inter-subject parcellation of fMRI data has been proposed as a means to alleviate these problems. Within this frame, the inter-subject correspondence is achieved by isolating homologous functional parcels across individuals, rather than by matching voxels coordinates within a stereotaxic space. However, the large majority of parcellation methods still suffer from a number of shortcomings owing to their dependence on a general linear model. Indeed, for all its appeal, a GLM-based parcellation approach introduces its own biases in the form of a priori knowledge about such matters as the shape of the Hemodynamic Response Function (HRF) and taskrelated signal changes. In this thesis, we propose a model-free data-driven parcellation approach to singleand multi-subject parcellation. By modelling brain activation without an relying on an a priori model, parcellation is optimized for each individual subject. In order to establish correspondences of parcels across different subjects, we cast this problem as a multipartite graph partitioning task. Parcels are considered as the vertices of a weighted complete multipartite graph. Cross subject parcel matching becomes equivalent to partitioning this graph into disjoint cliques with one and only one parcel from each subject in each clique. In order to solve this NP-hard problem, we present three methods: the OBSA algorithm, a method with quadratic programming and an intuitive approach. We also introduce two quantitative measures of the quality of parcellation results. We apply our framework to two fMRI data sets and show that both our single- and multi-subject parcellation techniques rival or outperform model-based methods in terms of parcellation accuracy

Recording behaviour of indoor-housed farm animals automatically using machine vision technology: a systematic review

Large-scale phenotyping of animal behaviour traits is time consuming and has led to increased demand for technologies that can automate these procedures. Automated tracking of animals has been successful in controlled laboratory settings, but recording from animals in large groups in highly variable farm settings presents challenges. The aim of this review is to provide a systematic overview of the advances that have occurred in automated, high throughput image detection of farm animal behavioural traits with welfare and production implications. Peer-reviewed publications written in English were reviewed systematically following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. After identification, screening, and assessment for eligibility, 108 publications met these specifications and were included for qualitative synthesis. Data collected from the papers included camera specifications, housing conditions, group size, algorithm details, procedures, and results. Most studies utilized standard digital colour video cameras for data collection, with increasing use of 3D cameras in papers published after 2013. Papers including pigs (across production stages) were the most common (n = 63). The most common behaviours recorded included activity level, area occupancy, aggression, gait scores, resource use, and posture. Our review revealed many overlaps in methods applied to analysing behaviour, and most studies started from scratch instead of building upon previous work. Training and validation sample sizes were generally small (mean±s.d. groups = 3.8±5.8) and in data collection and testing took place in relatively controlled environments. To advance our ability to automatically phenotype behaviour, future research should build upon existing knowledge and validate technology under commercial settings and publications should explicitly describe recording conditions in detail to allow studies to be reproduced

A Data-driven, Piecewise Linear Approach to Modeling Human Motions

Motion capture, or mocap, is a prevalent technique for capturing and analyzing human articulations. Nowadays, mocap data are becoming one of the primary sources of realistic human motions for computer animation as well as education, training, sports medicine, video games, and special effects in movies. As more and more applications rely on high-quality mocap data and huge amounts of mocap data become available, there are imperative needs for more effective and robust motion capture techniques, better ways of organizing motion databases, as well as more efficient methods to compress motion sequences. I propose a data-driven, segment-based, piecewise linear modeling approach to exploit the redundancy and local linearity exhibited by human motions and describe human motions with a small number of parameters. This approach models human motions with a collection of low-dimensional local linear models. I first segment motion sequences into subsequences, i.e. motion segments, of simple behaviors. Motion segments of similar behaviors are then grouped together and modeled with a unique local linear model. I demonstrate this approach's utility in four challenging driving problems: estimating human motions from a reduced marker set; missing marker estimation; motion retrieval; and motion compression