2,577 research outputs found
Vision-Based Road Detection in Automotive Systems: A Real-Time Expectation-Driven Approach
The main aim of this work is the development of a vision-based road detection
system fast enough to cope with the difficult real-time constraints imposed by
moving vehicle applications. The hardware platform, a special-purpose massively
parallel system, has been chosen to minimize system production and operational
costs. This paper presents a novel approach to expectation-driven low-level
image segmentation, which can be mapped naturally onto mesh-connected massively
parallel SIMD architectures capable of handling hierarchical data structures.
The input image is assumed to contain a distorted version of a given template;
a multiresolution stretching process is used to reshape the original template
in accordance with the acquired image content, minimizing a potential function.
The distorted template is the process output.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file
Machine vision for space telerobotics and planetary rovers
Machine vision allows a non-contact means of determining the three-dimensional shape of objects in the environment, enabling the control of contact forces when manipulation by a telerobot or traversal by a vehicle is desired. Telerobotic manipulation in Earth orbit requires a system that can recognize known objects in spite of harsh lighting conditions and highly specular or absorptive surfaces. Planetary surface traversal requires a system that can recognize the surface shape and properties of an unknown and arbitrary terrain. Research on these two rather disparate types of vision systems is described
Analysis of surface parametrizations for modern photometric stereo modeling
Tridimensional shape recovery based on Photometric Stereo (PS) recently received a strong improvement due to new mathematical models based on partial differential irradiance equation ratios. This modern approach to PS faces more realistic physical effects among which light attenuation and radial light propagation from a point light source. Since the approximation of the surface is performed with single step method, accurate reconstruction is prevented by sensitiveness to noise. In this paper we analyse a well-known parametrization of the tridimensional surface extending it on any auxiliary convex projection functions. Experiments on synthetic data show preliminary results where more accurate reconstruction can be achieved using more suitable parametrization specially in case of noisy input images
A family of stereoscopic image compression algorithms using wavelet transforms
With the standardization of JPEG-2000, wavelet-based image and video
compression technologies are gradually replacing the popular DCT-based methods. In
parallel to this, recent developments in autostereoscopic display technology is now
threatening to revolutionize the way in which consumers are used to enjoying the
traditional 2-D display based electronic media such as television, computer and
movies. However, due to the two-fold bandwidth/storage space requirement of
stereoscopic imaging, an essential requirement of a stereo imaging system is efficient
data compression.
In this thesis, seven wavelet-based stereo image compression algorithms are
proposed, to take advantage of the higher data compaction capability and better
flexibility of wavelets. [Continues.
A family of stereoscopic image compression algorithms using wavelet transforms
With the standardization of JPEG-2000, wavelet-based image and video
compression technologies are gradually replacing the popular DCT-based methods. In
parallel to this, recent developments in autostereoscopic display technology is now
threatening to revolutionize the way in which consumers are used to enjoying the
traditional 2D display based electronic media such as television, computer and
movies. However, due to the two-fold bandwidth/storage space requirement of
stereoscopic imaging, an essential requirement of a stereo imaging system is efficient
data compression.
In this thesis, seven wavelet-based stereo image compression algorithms are
proposed, to take advantage of the higher data compaction capability and better
flexibility of wavelets. In the proposed CODEC I, block-based disparity
estimation/compensation (DE/DC) is performed in pixel domain. However, this
results in an inefficiency when DWT is applied on the whole predictive error image
that results from the DE process. This is because of the existence of artificial block
boundaries between error blocks in the predictive error image. To overcome this
problem, in the remaining proposed CODECs, DE/DC is performed in the wavelet
domain. Due to the multiresolution nature of the wavelet domain, two methods of
disparity estimation and compensation have been proposed. The first method is
performing DEJDC in each subband of the lowest/coarsest resolution level and then
propagating the disparity vectors obtained to the corresponding subbands of
higher/finer resolution. Note that DE is not performed in every subband due to the
high overhead bits that could be required for the coding of disparity vectors of all
subbands. This method is being used in CODEC II. In the second method, DEJDC is
performed m the wavelet-block domain. This enables disparity estimation to be
performed m all subbands simultaneously without increasing the overhead bits
required for the coding disparity vectors. This method is used by CODEC III.
However, performing disparity estimation/compensation in all subbands would result
in a significant improvement of CODEC III. To further improve the performance of
CODEC ill, pioneering wavelet-block search technique is implemented in CODEC
IV. The pioneering wavelet-block search technique enables the right/predicted image
to be reconstructed at the decoder end without the need of transmitting the disparity
vectors. In proposed CODEC V, pioneering block search is performed in all subbands
of DWT decomposition which results in an improvement of its performance. Further,
the CODEC IV and V are able to perform at very low bit rates(< 0.15 bpp). In
CODEC VI and CODEC VII, Overlapped Block Disparity Compensation (OBDC) is
used with & without the need of coding disparity vector. Our experiment results
showed that no significant coding gains could be obtained for these CODECs over
CODEC IV & V.
All proposed CODECs m this thesis are wavelet-based stereo image coding
algorithms that maximise the flexibility and benefits offered by wavelet transform
technology when applied to stereo imaging. In addition the use of a baseline-JPEG
coding architecture would enable the easy adaptation of the proposed algorithms
within systems originally built for DCT-based coding. This is an important feature
that would be useful during an era where DCT-based technology is only slowly being
phased out to give way for DWT based compression technology.
In addition, this thesis proposed a stereo image coding algorithm that uses JPEG-2000
technology as the basic compression engine. The proposed CODEC, named RASTER
is a rate scalable stereo image CODEC that has a unique ability to preserve the image
quality at binocular depth boundaries, which is an important requirement in the design
of stereo image CODEC. The experimental results have shown that the proposed
CODEC is able to achieve PSNR gains of up to 3.7 dB as compared to directly
transmitting the right frame using JPEG-2000
Using Fuzzy Logic to Enhance Stereo Matching in Multiresolution Images
Stereo matching is an open problem in Computer Vision, for which local features are extracted to identify corresponding points in pairs of images. The results are heavily dependent on the initial steps. We apply image decomposition in multiresolution levels, for reducing the search space, computational time, and errors. We propose a solution to the problem of how deep (coarse) should the stereo measures start, trading between error minimization and time consumption, by starting stereo calculation at varying resolution levels, for each pixel, according to fuzzy decisions. Our heuristic enhances the overall execution time since it only employs deeper resolution levels when strictly necessary. It also reduces errors because it measures similarity between windows with enough details. We also compare our algorithm with a very fast multi-resolution approach, and one based on fuzzy logic. Our algorithm performs faster and/or better than all those approaches, becoming, thus, a good candidate for robotic vision applications. We also discuss the system architecture that efficiently implements our solution
Modelling and analysis of plant image data for crop growth monitoring in horticulture
Plants can be characterised by a range of attributes, and measuring these attributes accurately and reliably is a major challenge for the horticulture industry. The measurement of those plant characteristics that are most relevant to a grower has previously been tackled almost exclusively by a combination of manual measurement and visual inspection. The purpose of this work is to propose an automated image analysis approach in order to provide an objective measure of plant attributes to remove subjective factors from assessment and to reduce labour requirements in the glasshouse. This thesis describes a stereopsis approach for estimating plant height, since height information cannot be easily determined from a single image. The stereopsis algorithm proposed in this thesis is efficient in terms of the running time, and is more accurate when compared with other algorithms.
The estimated geometry, together with colour information from the image, are then used to build a statistical plant surface model, which represents all the information from the visible spectrum. A self-organising map approach can be adopted to model plant surface attributes, but the model can be improved by using a probabilistic model such as a mixture model formulated in a Bayesian framework. Details of both methods are discussed in this thesis.
A Kalman filter is developed to track the plant model over time, extending the model to the time dimension, which enables smoothing of the noisy measurements to produce a development trend for a crop. The outcome of this work could lead to a number of potentially important applications in horticulture
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