Scene Segmentation Driven by Deep Learning and Surface Fitting

This paper proposes a joint color and depth segmentation scheme exploiting together geometrical clues and a learning stage. The approach starts from an initial over-segmentation based on spectral clustering. The input data is also fed to a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) thus producing a per-pixel descriptor vector for each scene sample. An iterative merging procedure is then used to recombine the segments into the regions corresponding to the various objects and surfaces. The proposed algorithm starts by considering all the adjacent segments and computing a similarity metric according to the CNN features. The couples of segments with higher similarity are considered for merging. Finally the algorithm uses a NURBS surface fitting scheme on the segments in order to understand if the selected couples correspond to a single surface. The comparison with state-of-the-art methods shows how the proposed method provides an accurate and reliable scene segmentation

Segmentation and semantic labelling of RGBD data with convolutional neural networks and surface fitting

We present an approach for segmentation and semantic labelling of RGBD data exploiting together geometrical cues and deep learning techniques. An initial over-segmentation is performed using spectral clustering and a set of non-uniform rational B-spline surfaces is fitted on the extracted segments. Then a convolutional neural network (CNN) receives in input colour and geometry data together with surface fitting parameters. The network is made of nine convolutional stages followed by a softmax classifier and produces a vector of descriptors for each sample. In the next step, an iterative merging algorithm recombines the output of the over-segmentation into larger regions matching the various elements of the scene. The couples of adjacent segments with higher similarity according to the CNN features are candidate to be merged and the surface fitting accuracy is used to detect which couples of segments belong to the same surface. Finally, a set of labelled segments is obtained by combining the segmentation output with the descriptors from the CNN. Experimental results show how the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods and provides an accurate segmentation and labelling

Data-Driven Shape Analysis and Processing

Data-driven methods play an increasingly important role in discovering geometric, structural, and semantic relationships between 3D shapes in collections, and applying this analysis to support intelligent modeling, editing, and visualization of geometric data. In contrast to traditional approaches, a key feature of data-driven approaches is that they aggregate information from a collection of shapes to improve the analysis and processing of individual shapes. In addition, they are able to learn models that reason about properties and relationships of shapes without relying on hard-coded rules or explicitly programmed instructions. We provide an overview of the main concepts and components of these techniques, and discuss their application to shape classification, segmentation, matching, reconstruction, modeling and exploration, as well as scene analysis and synthesis, through reviewing the literature and relating the existing works with both qualitative and numerical comparisons. We conclude our report with ideas that can inspire future research in data-driven shape analysis and processing.Comment: 10 pages, 19 figure

Event-based Vision: A Survey

Event cameras are bio-inspired sensors that differ from conventional frame cameras: Instead of capturing images at a fixed rate, they asynchronously measure per-pixel brightness changes, and output a stream of events that encode the time, location and sign of the brightness changes. Event cameras offer attractive properties compared to traditional cameras: high temporal resolution (in the order of microseconds), very high dynamic range (140 dB vs. 60 dB), low power consumption, and high pixel bandwidth (on the order of kHz) resulting in reduced motion blur. Hence, event cameras have a large potential for robotics and computer vision in challenging scenarios for traditional cameras, such as low-latency, high speed, and high dynamic range. However, novel methods are required to process the unconventional output of these sensors in order to unlock their potential. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of event-based vision, with a focus on the applications and the algorithms developed to unlock the outstanding properties of event cameras. We present event cameras from their working principle, the actual sensors that are available and the tasks that they have been used for, from low-level vision (feature detection and tracking, optic flow, etc.) to high-level vision (reconstruction, segmentation, recognition). We also discuss the techniques developed to process events, including learning-based techniques, as well as specialized processors for these novel sensors, such as spiking neural networks. Additionally, we highlight the challenges that remain to be tackled and the opportunities that lie ahead in the search for a more efficient, bio-inspired way for machines to perceive and interact with the world

Im2Pano3D: Extrapolating 360 Structure and Semantics Beyond the Field of View

We present Im2Pano3D, a convolutional neural network that generates a dense prediction of 3D structure and a probability distribution of semantic labels for a full 360 panoramic view of an indoor scene when given only a partial observation (<= 50%) in the form of an RGB-D image. To make this possible, Im2Pano3D leverages strong contextual priors learned from large-scale synthetic and real-world indoor scenes. To ease the prediction of 3D structure, we propose to parameterize 3D surfaces with their plane equations and train the model to predict these parameters directly. To provide meaningful training supervision, we use multiple loss functions that consider both pixel level accuracy and global context consistency. Experiments demon- strate that Im2Pano3D is able to predict the semantics and 3D structure of the unobserved scene with more than 56% pixel accuracy and less than 0.52m average distance error, which is significantly better than alternative approaches.Comment: Video summary: https://youtu.be/Au3GmktK-S