Integration of Macro-Fiber Composite Material on a Low Cost Unmanned Aerial System

The development, deployment, and operation of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have grown exponentially in recent years and have provided researchers with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with aircraft in a manner that was previously limited to institutions and companies with large budgets. This allows the generation and testing of UAS advanced technologies using low cost systems. The scope of this thesis does not aim to make vast improvements to the control strategy itself, but to expand upon previous UAV work carried out at Embry-Riddle by designing, implementing, and demonstrating a simulation environment for mechanical and Macro-Fiber Composite (MFC) actuated ailerons in a Skywalker 1880 UAV using model reference adaptive control law. This work will contribute to a baseline model for the research and development of future UAV with morphing control surfaces up to a flight test stage. Meanwhile the extensive use of low-cost hardware and open source software allows the opportunity to explore the feasibility of using affordable open-source technology in an academic context. Future students who are interested in morphing designs for UAV may find the baseline system presented here to be a useful starting point from which to begin their own research

Efficient distributed privacy preserving clustering

With recent growing concerns about data privacy, researchers have focused their attention to developing new algorithms to perform privacy preserving data mining. However, methods proposed until now are either very inefficient to deal with large datasets, or compromise privacy with accuracy of data mining results. Secure multiparty computation helps researchers develop privacy preserving data mining algorithms without having to compromise quality of data mining results with data privacy. Also it provides formal guarantees about privacy. On the other hand, algorithms based on secure multiparty computation often rely on computationally expensive cryptographic operations, thus making them infeasible to use in real world scenarios. In this thesis, we study the problem of privacy preserving distributed clustering and propose an efficient and secure algorithm for this problem based on secret sharing and compare it to the state of the art. Experiments show that our algorithm has a lower communication overhead and a much lower computation overhead than the state of the art

A Self-Managed System for Automated Assessment of UPDRS Upper Limb Tasks in Parkinson’s Disease

A home-based, reliable, objective and automated assessment of motor performance of patients affected by Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is important in disease management, both to monitor therapy efficacy and to reduce costs and discomforts. In this context, we have developed a self-managed system for the automated assessment of the PD upper limb motor tasks as specified by the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). The system is built around a Human Computer Interface (HCI) based on an optical RGB-Depth device and a replicable software. The HCI accuracy and reliability of the hand tracking compares favorably against consumer hand tracking devices as verified by an optoelectronic system as reference. The interface allows gestural interactions with visual feedback, providing a system management suitable for motor impaired users. The system software characterizes hand movements by kinematic parameters of their trajectories. The correlation between selected parameters and clinical UPDRS scores of patient performance is used to assess new task instances by a machine learning approach based on supervised classifiers. The classifiers have been trained by an experimental campaign on cohorts of PD patients. Experimental results show that automated assessments of the system replicate clinical ones, demonstrating its effectiveness in home monitoring of PD

Privacy leaks in spatio-temporal trajectory publishing

Trajectories are spatio-temporal traces of moving objects which contain valuable information to be harvested by spatio-temporal data mining techniques. Applications like city traffic planning, identification of evacuation routes, trend detection, and many more can benefit from trajectory mining. However, the trajectories of individuals often contain private and sensitive information, so anyone who possess trajectory data must take special care when disclosing this data. Removing identifiers from trajectories before the release is not effective against linkage type attacks, and rich sources of background information make it even worse. An alternative is to apply transformation techniques to map the given set of trajectories into another set where the distances are preserved. This way, the actual trajectories are not released, but the distance information can still be used for data mining techniques such as clustering. In this thesis, we show that an unknown private trajectory can be reconstructed using the available background information together with the mutual distances released for data mining purposes. The background knowledge is in the form of known trajectories and extra information such as the speed limit. We provide analytical results which bound the number of the known trajectories needed to reconstruct private trajectories. Experiments performed on real trajectory data sets show that the number of known samples is surprisingly smaller than the actual theoretical bounds

Parametric tracking with spatial extraction across an array of cameras

Video surveillance is a rapidly growing area that has been fuelled by an increase in the concerns of security and safety in both public and private areas. With heighten security concerns, the utilization of video surveillance systems spread over a large area is becoming the norm. Surveillance of a large area requires a number of cameras to be deployed, which presents problems for human operators. In the surveillance of a large area, the need to monitor numerous screens makes an operator less effective in monitoring, observing or tracking groups or targets of interest. In such situations, the application of computer systems can prove highly effective in assisting human operators. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate different methods for tracking a target across an array of cameras. This required a set of parameters to be identified that could be passed between cameras as the target moved in and out of the fields of view. Initial investigations focussed on identifying the most effective colour space to use. A normalized cross correlation method was used initially with a reference image to track the target of interest. A second method investigated the use of histogram similarity in tracking targets. In this instance a reference target’s histogram or pixel distribution was used as a means for tracking. Finally a method was investigated that used the relationship between colour regions that make up a whole target. An experimental method was developed that used the information between colour regions such as the vector and colour difference as a means for tracking a target. This method was tested on a single camera configuration and multiple camera configuration and shown to be effective. In addition to the experimental tracking method investigated, additional data can be extracted to estimate a spatial map of a target as the target of interest is tracked across an array of cameras. For each method investigated the experimental results are presented in this thesis and it has been demonstrated that minimal data exchange can be used in order to track a target across an array of cameras. In addition to tracking a target, the spatial position of the target of interest could be estimated as it moves across the array

Suivi visuel multi-cibles par partitionnement de détections (application à la construction d'albums de visages)

Ce mémoire décrit mes travaux de thèse menés au sein de l'équipe ComSee (Computers that See) rattachée à l'axe ISPR (Image, Systèmes de Perception et Robotique) de l'Institut Pascal. Celle-ci a été financée par la société Vesalis par le biais d'une convention CIFRE avec l'Institut Pascal, subventionnée par l'ANRT (Association Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie). Les travaux de thèse s'inscrivent dans le cadre de l'automatisation de la fouille d'archives vidéo intervenant lors d'enquêtes policières. L'application rattachée à cette thèse concerne la création automatique d'un album photo des individus apparaissant sur une séquence de vidéosurveillance. En s'appuyant sur un détecteur de visages, l'objectif est de regrouper par identité les visages détectés sur l'ensemble d'une séquence vidéo. Comme la reconnaissance faciale en environnement non-contrôlé reste difficilement exploitable, les travaux se sont orientés vers le suivi visuel multi-cibles global basé détections. Ce type de suivi est relativement récent. Il fait intervenir un détecteur d'objets et traite la vidéo dans son ensemble (en opposition au traitement séquentiel couramment utilisé). Cette problématique a été représentée par un modèle probabiliste de type Maximum A Posteriori. La recherche de ce maximum fait intervenir un algorithme de circulation de flot sur un graphe, issu de travaux antérieurs. Ceci permet l'obtention d'une solution optimale au problème (défini par l'a posteriori) du regroupement des détections pour le suivi. L'accent a particulièrement été mis sur la représentation de la similarité entre les détections qui s'intègre dans le terme de vraisemblance du modèle. Plusieurs mesures de similarités s'appuyant sur différents indices (temps, position dans l'image, apparence et mouvement local) ont été testées. Une méthode originale d'estimation de ces similarités entre les visages détectés a été développée pour fusionner les différentes informations et s'adapter à la situation rencontrée. Plusieurs expérimentations ont été menées sur des situations complexes, mais réalistes, de scènes de vidéosurveillance. Même si les qualités des albums construits ne satisfont pas encore à une utilisation pratique, le système de regroupement de détections mis en œuvre au cours de cette thèse donne déjà une première solution. Grâce au point de vue partitionnement de données adopté au cours de cette thèse, le suivi multi-cibles développé permet une extension simple à du suivi autre que celui des visages.This report describes my thesis work conducted within the ComSee (Computers That See) team related to the ISPR axis (ImageS, Perception Systems and Robotics) of Institut Pascal. It was financed by the Vesalis company via a CIFRE (Research Training in Industry Convention) agreement with Institut Pascal and publicly funded by ANRT (National Association of Research and Technology). The thesis was motivated by issues related to automation of video analysis encountered during police investigations. The theoretical research carried out in this thesis is applied to the automatic creation of a photo album summarizing people appearing in a CCTV sequence. Using a face detector, the aim is to group by identity all the faces detected throughout the whole video sequence. As the use of facial recognition techniques in unconstrained environments remains unreliable, we have focused instead on global multi-target tracking based on detections. This type of tracking is relatively recent. It involves an object detector and global processing of the video (as opposed to sequential processing commonly used). This issue has been represented by a Maximum A Posteriori probabilistic model. To find an optimal solution of Maximum A Posteriori formulation, we use a graph-based network flow approach, built upon third-party research. The study concentrates on the definition of inter-detections similarities related to the likelihood term of the model. Multiple similarity metrics based on different clues (time, position in the image, appearance and local movement) were tested. An original method to estimate these similarities was developed to merge these various clues and adjust to the encountered situation. Several experiments were done on challenging but real-world situations which may be gathered from CCTVs. Although the quality of generated albums do not yet satisfy practical use, the detections clustering system developed in this thesis provides a good initial solution. Thanks to the data clustering point of view adopted in this thesis, the proposed detection-based multi-target tracking allows easy transfer to other tracking domains.CLERMONT FD-Bib.électronique (631139902) / SudocSudocFranceF

Performance Evaluation Metrics and Statistics for Positional Tracker Evaluation

Abstract. This paper discusses methods behind tracker evaluation, the aim being to evaluate how well a tracker is able to determine the position of a target object. Few metrics exist for positional tracker evaluation; here the fundamental issues of trajectory comparison are addressed, and metrics are presented which allow the key features to be described. Often little evaluation on how precisely a target is tracked is presented in the literature, with results detailing for what percentage of the time the target was tracked. This issue is now emerging as a key aspect of tracker performance evaluation. The metrics developed are applied to real trajectories for positional tracker evaluation. Data obtained from a sports player tracker on video of a 5-a-side soccer game, and from a vehicle tracker, is analysed. These give quantitative positional evaluation of the performance of computer vision tracking systems, and provides a framework for comparison of different methods and systems on benchmark data sets.

Visual motion estimation and tracking of rigid bodies by physical simulation

This thesis applies knowledge of the physical dynamics of objects to estimating object motion from vision when estimation from vision alone fails. It differentiates itself from existing physics-based vision by building in robustness to situations where existing visual estimation tends to fail: fast motion, blur, glare, distractors, and partial or full occlusion. A real-time physics simulator is incorporated into a stochastic framework by adding several different models of how noise is injected into the dynamics. Several different algorithms are proposed and experimentally validated on two problems: motion estimation and object tracking. The performance of visual motion estimation from colour histograms of a ball moving in two dimensions is improved considerably when a physics simulator is integrated into a MAP procedure involving non-linear optimisation and RANSAC-like methods. Process noise or initial condition noise in conjunction with a physics-based dynamics results in improved robustness on hard visual problems. A particle filter applied to the task of full 6D visual tracking of the pose an object being pushed by a robot in a table-top environment is improved on difficult visual problems by incorporating a simulator as a dynamics model and injecting noise as forces into the simulator.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo