LCrowdV: Generating Labeled Videos for Simulation-based Crowd Behavior Learning

We present a novel procedural framework to generate an arbitrary number of labeled crowd videos (LCrowdV). The resulting crowd video datasets are used to design accurate algorithms or training models for crowded scene understanding. Our overall approach is composed of two components: a procedural simulation framework for generating crowd movements and behaviors, and a procedural rendering framework to generate different videos or images. Each video or image is automatically labeled based on the environment, number of pedestrians, density, behavior, flow, lighting conditions, viewpoint, noise, etc. Furthermore, we can increase the realism by combining synthetically-generated behaviors with real-world background videos. We demonstrate the benefits of LCrowdV over prior lableled crowd datasets by improving the accuracy of pedestrian detection and crowd behavior classification algorithms. LCrowdV would be released on the WWW

An Immersive Telepresence System using RGB-D Sensors and Head-mounted Display

We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the instructor to effectively and efficiently explain and illustrate complex concepts or sophisticated problems in an intuitive manner. The highly interactive and flexible environment can capture and sustain more student attention than the traditional classroom setting and, thus, delivers a compelling experience to the students. Our main focus here is to investigate possible solutions for the system design and implementation and devise strategies for fast, efficient computation suitable for visual data processing and network transmission. We describe the technique and experiments in details and provide quantitative performance results, demonstrating our system can be run comfortably and reliably for different application scenarios. Our preliminary results are promising and demonstrate the potential for more compelling directions in cyberlearning

Evaluating rules of interaction for object manipulation in cluttered virtual environments

A set of rules is presented for the design of interfaces that allow virtual objects to be manipulated in 3D virtual environments (VEs). The rules differ from other interaction techniques because they focus on the problems of manipulating objects in cluttered spaces rather than open spaces. Two experiments are described that were used to evaluate the effect of different interaction rules on participants' performance when they performed a task known as "the piano mover's problem." This task involved participants in moving a virtual human through parts of a virtual building while simultaneously manipulating a large virtual object that was held in the virtual human's hands, resembling the simulation of manual materials handling in a VE for ergonomic design. Throughout, participants viewed the VE on a large monitor, using an "over-the-shoulder" perspective. In the most cluttered VEs, the time that participants took to complete the task varied by up to 76% with different combinations of rules, thus indicating the need for flexible forms of interaction in such environments

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Calipso: Physics-based Image and Video Editing through CAD Model Proxies

We present Calipso, an interactive method for editing images and videos in a physically-coherent manner. Our main idea is to realize physics-based manipulations by running a full physics simulation on proxy geometries given by non-rigidly aligned CAD models. Running these simulations allows us to apply new, unseen forces to move or deform selected objects, change physical parameters such as mass or elasticity, or even add entire new objects that interact with the rest of the underlying scene. In Calipso, the user makes edits directly in 3D; these edits are processed by the simulation and then transfered to the target 2D content using shape-to-image correspondences in a photo-realistic rendering process. To align the CAD models, we introduce an efficient CAD-to-image alignment procedure that jointly minimizes for rigid and non-rigid alignment while preserving the high-level structure of the input shape. Moreover, the user can choose to exploit image flow to estimate scene motion, producing coherent physical behavior with ambient dynamics. We demonstrate Calipso's physics-based editing on a wide range of examples producing myriad physical behavior while preserving geometric and visual consistency.Comment: 11 page

Shape Animation with Combined Captured and Simulated Dynamics

We present a novel volumetric animation generation framework to create new types of animations from raw 3D surface or point cloud sequence of captured real performances. The framework considers as input time incoherent 3D observations of a moving shape, and is thus particularly suitable for the output of performance capture platforms. In our system, a suitable virtual representation of the actor is built from real captures that allows seamless combination and simulation with virtual external forces and objects, in which the original captured actor can be reshaped, disassembled or reassembled from user-specified virtual physics. Instead of using the dominant surface-based geometric representation of the capture, which is less suitable for volumetric effects, our pipeline exploits Centroidal Voronoi tessellation decompositions as unified volumetric representation of the real captured actor, which we show can be used seamlessly as a building block for all processing stages, from capture and tracking to virtual physic simulation. The representation makes no human specific assumption and can be used to capture and re-simulate the actor with props or other moving scenery elements. We demonstrate the potential of this pipeline for virtual reanimation of a real captured event with various unprecedented volumetric visual effects, such as volumetric distortion, erosion, morphing, gravity pull, or collisions

A framework for realistic 3D tele-immersion

Meeting, socializing and conversing online with a group of people using teleconferencing systems is still quite differ- ent from the experience of meeting face to face. We are abruptly aware that we are online and that the people we are engaging with are not in close proximity. Analogous to how talking on the telephone does not replicate the experi- ence of talking in person. Several causes for these differences have been identified and we propose inspiring and innova- tive solutions to these hurdles in attempt to provide a more realistic, believable and engaging online conversational expe- rience. We present the distributed and scalable framework REVERIE that provides a balanced mix of these solutions. Applications build on top of the REVERIE framework will be able to provide interactive, immersive, photo-realistic ex- periences to a multitude of users that for them will feel much more similar to having face to face meetings than the expe- rience offered by conventional teleconferencing systems