Categorization of indoor places using the Kinect sensor

The categorization of places in indoor environments is an important capability for service robots working and interacting with humans. In this paper we present a method to categorize different areas in indoor environments using a mobile robot equipped with a Kinect camera. Our approach transforms depth and grey scale images taken at each place into histograms of local binary patterns (LBPs) whose dimensionality is further reduced following a uniform criterion. The histograms are then combined into a single feature vector which is categorized using a supervised method. In this work we compare the performance of support vector machines and random forests as supervised classifiers. Finally, we apply our technique to distinguish five different place categories: corridors, laboratories, offices, kitchens, and study rooms. Experimental results show that we can categorize these places with high accuracy using our approach

Cumulative object categorization in clutter

In this paper we present an approach based on scene- or part-graphs for geometrically categorizing touching and occluded objects. We use additive RGBD feature descriptors and hashing of graph configuration parameters for describing the spatial arrangement of constituent parts. The presented experiments quantify that this method outperforms our earlier part-voting and sliding window classification. We evaluated our approach on cluttered scenes, and by using a 3D dataset containing over 15000 Kinect scans of over 100 objects which were grouped into general geometric categories. Additionally, color, geometric, and combined features were compared for categorization tasks

Action Recognition in Videos: from Motion Capture Labs to the Web

This paper presents a survey of human action recognition approaches based on visual data recorded from a single video camera. We propose an organizing framework which puts in evidence the evolution of the area, with techniques moving from heavily constrained motion capture scenarios towards more challenging, realistic, "in the wild" videos. The proposed organization is based on the representation used as input for the recognition task, emphasizing the hypothesis assumed and thus, the constraints imposed on the type of video that each technique is able to address. Expliciting the hypothesis and constraints makes the framework particularly useful to select a method, given an application. Another advantage of the proposed organization is that it allows categorizing newest approaches seamlessly with traditional ones, while providing an insightful perspective of the evolution of the action recognition task up to now. That perspective is the basis for the discussion in the end of the paper, where we also present the main open issues in the area.Comment: Preprint submitted to CVIU, survey paper, 46 pages, 2 figures, 4 table

Enhancing Automatic Annotation for Optimal Image Retrieval

Image search and retrieval based on content is very cumbersome task particularly when the image database is large. The accuracy of the retrieval as well as the processing speed are two important measures used for assessing and comparing the effectiveness of various systems. Text retrieval is more mature and advanced than image content retrieval. In this dissertation, the focus is on converting image content into text tags that can be easily searched using standard search engines where the size and speed issues of the database have been already dealt with. Therefore, image tagging becomes an essential tool for image retrieval from large image databases. Automation of image tagging has received considerable attention by many researchers in recent years. The optimal goal of image description is to automatically annotate images with tags that semantically represent the image content. The speed and accuracy of Image retrieval from large databases are few of the important domains that can benefit from automatic tagging. In this work, several state of the art image classification and image tagging techniques are reviewed. We propose a new self-learning multilayered tagging framework that can address the limitations of current approaches and provide mutual accuracy improvement between the recognition layer and the annotation layer. Our results indicate that the proposed framework can improve the overall accuracy of information retrieval in a variety of image databases