Sensing and mapping for interactive performance

This paper describes a trans-domain mapping (TDM) framework for translating meaningful activities from one creative domain onto another. The multi-disciplinary framework is designed to facilitate an intuitive and non-intrusive interactive multimedia performance interface that offers the users or performers real-time control of multimedia events using their physical movements. It is intended to be a highly dynamic real-time performance tool, sensing and tracking activities and changes, in order to provide interactive multimedia performances. From a straightforward definition of the TDM framework, this paper reports several implementations and multi-disciplinary collaborative projects using the proposed framework, including a motion and colour-sensitive system, a sensor-based system for triggering musical events, and a distributed multimedia server for audio mapping of a real-time face tracker, and discusses different aspects of mapping strategies in their context. Plausible future directions, developments and exploration with the proposed framework, including stage augmenta tion, virtual and augmented reality, which involve sensing and mapping of physical and non-physical changes onto multimedia control events, are discussed

Learning Human Pose Estimation Features with Convolutional Networks

This paper introduces a new architecture for human pose estimation using a multi- layer convolutional network architecture and a modified learning technique that learns low-level features and higher-level weak spatial models. Unconstrained human pose estimation is one of the hardest problems in computer vision, and our new architecture and learning schema shows significant improvement over the current state-of-the-art results. The main contribution of this paper is showing, for the first time, that a specific variation of deep learning is able to outperform all existing traditional architectures on this task. The paper also discusses several lessons learned while researching alternatives, most notably, that it is possible to learn strong low-level feature detectors on features that might even just cover a few pixels in the image. Higher-level spatial models improve somewhat the overall result, but to a much lesser extent then expected. Many researchers previously argued that the kinematic structure and top-down information is crucial for this domain, but with our purely bottom up, and weak spatial model, we could improve other more complicated architectures that currently produce the best results. This mirrors what many other researchers, like those in the speech recognition, object recognition, and other domains have experienced

Modelling the Northeast Atlantic circulation : implications for the spring invasion of shelf regions by Calanus finmarchicus

The appearance in spring of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus in continental shelf waters of the northeastern Atlantic has been hypothesized to be mainly attributable to invasion from across the continental slope rather than in situ overwintering. This paper describes the application of a hydrodynamic circulation model and a particle-tracking model to Northeast Atlantic waters in order to assess the influence of the flow field and ascent migration parameters on the spring invasion of C. finmarchicus. For hydrodynamic modelling, the Hamburg Shelf-Ocean Model (HAMSOM) was applied to the North Atlantic and Nordic Seas and forced with daily mean atmospheric data. Simulated flow fields from HAMSOM serve as forcing functions for a particle-tracking model of the same region. The robustness of the simulated shelf invasion in three target boxes of the Northeast Atlantic Shelf was assessed by means of a sensitivity analysis with respect to variations in four key migration parameters: overwintering depth, ascent rate, ascent timing, and depth during residence in upper layers. The invasion of the northern North Sea and Norwegian Shelf waters is more sensitive to ascent migration parameters than invasion of the Faroese Shelf. The main reason for enhanced sensitivity of the North Sea invasion is the time and space-dependent flow structure in the Faroe-Shetland Channel. Dense aggregations of overwintering C. finmarchicus are found in the Channel, but because of the complex flow field only a proportion of the overwintering stock has the capacity to reach the North Sea