An approximated Snake Function for Road Extraction from digital images

This paper proposes an optimized mathematical model (Snake-ant) for linear feature extraction from satellite images. The model first uses the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) to establish a pheromone matrix that represents the pheromone information at each pixel position of the image, according to the movements of a number of ants which are sent to move on the image. Next pheromone matrix is used in the snake model as external energy to extract the linear features like roads edges in image. Snake is a parametric curve which is allowed to deform from some arbitrary initial location toward the desired final location by minimizing an energy function based on the internal and external energy. Our approach is validated by a series of tests on satellite images

Asphalted Road Temperature Variations Due to Wind Turbine Cast Shadows

The contribution of this paper is a technique that in certain circumstances allows one to avoid the removal of dynamic shadows in the visible spectrum making use of images in the infrared spectrum. This technique emerged from a real problem concerning the autonomous navigation of a vehicle in a wind farm. In this environment, the dynamic shadows cast by the wind turbines' blades make it necessary to include a shadows removal stage in the preprocessing of the visible spectrum images in order to avoid the shadows being misclassified as obstacles. In the thermal images, dynamic shadows completely disappear, something that does not always occur in the visible spectrum, even when the preprocessing is executed. Thus, a fusion on thermal and visible bands is performed

Automatic Generation of Road Geometries to Create Challenging Scenarios for Automated Vehicles Based on the Sensor Setup

For the offline safety assessment of automated vehicles, the most challenging and critical scenarios must be identified efficiently. Therefore, we present a new approach to define challenging scenarios based on a sensor setup model of the ego-vehicle. First, a static optimal approaching path of a road user to the ego-vehicle is calculated using an A* algorithm. We consider a poor perception of the road user by the automated vehicle as optimal, because we want to define scenarios that are as critical as possible. The path is then transferred to a dynamic scenario, where the trajectory of the road user and the road layout are determined. The result is an optimal road geometry, so that the ego-vehicle can perceive an approaching object as poorly as possible. The focus of our work is on the highway as the Operational Design Domain (ODD).Comment: Accepted at the 2020 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), October 20-23, 202

Computational intelligence approaches to robotics, automation, and control [Volume guest editors]

No abstract available

K-Space at TRECVid 2007

In this paper we describe K-Space participation in TRECVid 2007. K-Space participated in two tasks, high-level feature extraction and interactive search. We present our approaches for each of these activities and provide a brief analysis of our results. Our high-level feature submission utilized multi-modal low-level features which included visual, audio and temporal elements. Specific concept detectors (such as Face detectors) developed by K-Space partners were also used. We experimented with different machine learning approaches including logistic regression and support vector machines (SVM). Finally we also experimented with both early and late fusion for feature combination. This year we also participated in interactive search, submitting 6 runs. We developed two interfaces which both utilized the same retrieval functionality. Our objective was to measure the effect of context, which was supported to different degrees in each interface, on user performance. The first of the two systems was a ‘shot’ based interface, where the results from a query were presented as a ranked list of shots. The second interface was ‘broadcast’ based, where results were presented as a ranked list of broadcasts. Both systems made use of the outputs of our high-level feature submission as well as low-level visual features