Sensor fusion in smart camera networks for ambient intelligence

This short report introduces the topics of PhD research that was conducted on 2008-2013 and was defended on July 2013. The PhD thesis covers sensor fusion theory, gathers it into a framework with design rules for fusion-friendly design of vision networks, and elaborates on the rules through fusion experiments performed with four distinct applications of Ambient Intelligence

Heel strike detection based on human walking movement for surveillance analysis

Heel strike detection is an important cue for human gait recognition and detection in visual surveillance since the heel strike position can be used to derive the gait periodicity, stride and step length. We propose a novel method for heel strike detection using a gait trajectory model, which is robust to occlusion, camera view, and low resolution. When a person walks, the movement of the head is conspicuous and sinusoidal. The highest point of the trajectory of the head occurs when the feet cross (stance) and the lowest point is when the gait stride is the largest (heel strike). Our gait trajectory model is constructed from trajectory data using non-linear optimisation. Then, the key frames in which the heel strikes take place are calculated. A Region Of Interest (ROI) is extracted using the silhouette image of the key frame as a filter. For candidate detection, Gradient Descent is applied to detect maxima which are considered to be the time of the heel strikes. For candidate verification, two filtering methods are used to reconstruct the 3D position of a heel strike using the given camera projection matrix. The contribution of this research is the first use of the gait trajectory in the heel strike position estimation process and we contend that it is a new approach for basic analysis in surveillance imagery

Tri-level Unified Framework for Human Gait Analysis

There are several applications that can be related to multimedia content analysis. Considering video as one of the prominent forms of multimedia content, this paper presents analysis of human walking motion (gait) found in video sequences by using promising strategy of integrating techniques from data fusion and computer vision. To provide solutions to the challenges in human gait analysis a unified framework is proposed comprising of three different levels: data level, feature descriptor level and decision level. The three levels perform specific tasks assigned to them. At the data level, features are extracted from input video sequences for minimal representation. At the feature descriptor level, features from minimal representation are rearranged to build a feature descriptor and finally at decision level meaningful interpretations are performed. For analysing human walking motion found in video sequences, initially, moving silhouettes are extracted using background subtraction for minimal representation at the data level. The extracted silhouettes are then represented in a common representation in a spatial form followed by correlation analysis and a feature descriptor is developed with minimum interest points at the feature descriptor level. Finally, interpretation of normal gait poses and transition poses are made at the decision level.Keywords:Multimedia content; Data Fusion; Unified Framework; Background Subtraction;Correlation; Feature Descriptor; interpretation of Gaits

Video object tracking : contributions to object description and performance assessment

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Fast detection and modeling of human-body parts from monocular video

This paper presents a novel and fast scheme to detect different body parts in human motion. Using monocular video sequences, trajectory estimation and body modeling of moving humans are combined in a co-operating processing architecture. More specifically, for every individual person, features of body ratio, silhouette and appearance are integrated into a hybrid model to detect body parts. The conventional assumption of upright body posture is not required. We also present a new algorithm for accurately finding the center point of the human body. The body configuration is finally described by a skeleton model. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed scheme are analyzed by evaluating its performance for various sequences with different subjects and motion types (walking, pointing, kicking, leaping and falling). Our detection system achieves nearly real-time performance (around 10 frames/second)

Combining Particle Filter and Population-based Metaheuristics for Visual Articulated Motion Tracking

Visual tracking of articulated motion is a complex task with high computational costs. Because of the fact that articulated objects are usually represented as a set of linked limbs, tracking is performed with the support of a model. Model-based tracking allows determining object pose in an effortless way and handling occlusions. However, the use of articulated models generates a multidimensional state-space and, therefore, the tracking becomes computationally very expensive or even infeasible. Due to the dynamic nature of the problem, some sequential estimation algorithms like particle filters are usually applied to visual tracking. Unfortunately, particle filter fails in high dimensional estimation problems such as articulated objects or multiple object tracking. These problems are called \emph{dynamic optimization problems}. Metaheuristics, which are high level general strategies for designing heuristics procedures, have emerged for solving many real world combinatorial problems as a way to efficiently and effectively exploring the problem search space. Path relinking (PR) and scatter search (SS) are evolutionary metaheuristics successfully applied to several hard optimization problems. PRPF and SSPF algorithms respectively hybridize both, particle filter and these two population-based metaheuristic schemes. In this paper, We present and compare two different hybrid algorithms called Path Relinking Particle Filter (PRPF) and Scatter Search Particle Filter (SSPF), applied to 2D human motion tracking. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms increase the performance of standard particle filters