Substructure and Boundary Modeling for Continuous Action Recognition

This paper introduces a probabilistic graphical model for continuous action recognition with two novel components: substructure transition model and discriminative boundary model. The first component encodes the sparse and global temporal transition prior between action primitives in state-space model to handle the large spatial-temporal variations within an action class. The second component enforces the action duration constraint in a discriminative way to locate the transition boundaries between actions more accurately. The two components are integrated into a unified graphical structure to enable effective training and inference. Our comprehensive experimental results on both public and in-house datasets show that, with the capability to incorporate additional information that had not been explicitly or efficiently modeled by previous methods, our proposed algorithm achieved significantly improved performance for continuous action recognition.Comment: Detailed version of the CVPR 2012 paper. 15 pages, 6 figure

Getting beyond the surface : using geometric data analysis in cultural sociology

Geometric Data Analysis (GDA) refers to a group of statistical techniques that disclose underlying patterns in categorized data. GDA represents categories of variables and individuals as points in a multi-dimensional Euclidean space. This contribution presents some of GDA’s analytic properties and their connection to a relational approach of the social world. Moreover, the potential of GDA for cultural sociology will be discussed. What does GDA add to insights based on ‘orthodox’ correlational techniques and exactly how does it get beyond the surface of things? Research on the association between cultural consumption and socio-economic background will serve as an illustration

Slisp: A Flexible Software Toolkit for Hybrid, Embedded and Distributed Applications

We describe Slisp (pronounced ‘Ess-Lisp’), a hybrid Lisp–C programming toolkit for the development of scriptable and distributed applications. Computationally expensive operations implemented as separate C-coded modules are selectively compiled into a small Xlisp interpreter, then called as Lisp functions in a Lisp-coded program. The resulting hybrid program may run in several modes: as a stand-alone executable, embedded in a different C program, as a networked server accessed from another Slisp client, or as a networked server accessed from a C-coded client. Five years of experience with Slisp, as well experience with other scripting languages such as Tcl and Perl, are summarized. These experiences suggest that Slisp will be most useful for mid-sized applications in which the kinds of scripting and embeddability features provided by Tcl and Perl can be extended in an efficient manner to larger applications, while maintaining a well-defined standard (Common Lisp) for these extensions. In addition, the generality of Lisp makes Lisp a good candidate for an application-level communication language in distributed environments

BodySpace: inferring body pose for natural control of a music player

We describe the BodySpace system, which uses inertial sensing and pattern recognition to allow the gestural control of a music player by placing the device at different parts of the body. We demonstrate a new approach to the segmentation and recognition of gestures for this kind of application and show how simulated physical model-based techniques can shape gestural interaction

Modeling and segmentation of audio descriptor profiles with segmental models

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Towards automatic extraction of expressive elements from motion pictures : tempo

This paper proposes a unique computational approach to extraction of expressive elements of motion pictures for deriving high level semantics of stories portrayed, thus enabling better video annotation and interpretation systems. This approach, motivated and directed by the existing cinematic conventions known as film grammar, as a first step towards demonstrating its effectiveness, uses the attributes of motion and shot length to define and compute a novel measure of tempo of a movie. Tempo flow plots are defined and derived for four full-length movies and edge analysis is performed leading to the extraction of dramatic story sections and events signaled by their unique tempo. The results confirm tempo as a useful attribute in its own right and a promising component of semantic constructs such as tone or mood of a film

The Palaeographical Method under the Light of a Digital Approach

This paper has the twofold aim of reflecting upon a humanities computing approach to palaeography, and of making such reflections - together with its related experimental results - fruitful at the implementation level. Firstly, the paper explores the methodological issues related to the use of a digital tool to support the palaeographical analysis of medieval handwriting. It claims that humanities computing methods can assist in making explicit those processes of the palaeographical research that encompass detailed analyses, in particular of the handwriting and, more generally, of other idiosyncratic features of written cultural artefacts. Thus, palaeographical tools are to be contextualised and used within a broader methodological framework where their role is to mediate the vision, the comparison, the representation, the analysis and the interpretation of these objects. Secondly, the paper attempts to evaluate the experimentations carried out with a specific software and, in so doing, to test a humanities computing approach to palaeography at a practical level, so as to direct future implementations. Some of these implementations have already been carried out by the current developers of the application in question with whom the author collaborates closely, while others are still in progress and in need of future iterative refinements