6,501 research outputs found
A Novel Rate Control Algorithm for Onboard Predictive Coding of Multispectral and Hyperspectral Images
Predictive coding is attractive for compression onboard of spacecrafts thanks
to its low computational complexity, modest memory requirements and the ability
to accurately control quality on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Traditionally,
predictive compression focused on the lossless and near-lossless modes of
operation where the maximum error can be bounded but the rate of the compressed
image is variable. Rate control is considered a challenging problem for
predictive encoders due to the dependencies between quantization and prediction
in the feedback loop, and the lack of a signal representation that packs the
signal's energy into few coefficients. In this paper, we show that it is
possible to design a rate control scheme intended for onboard implementation.
In particular, we propose a general framework to select quantizers in each
spatial and spectral region of an image so as to achieve the desired target
rate while minimizing distortion. The rate control algorithm allows to achieve
lossy, near-lossless compression, and any in-between type of compression, e.g.,
lossy compression with a near-lossless constraint. While this framework is
independent of the specific predictor used, in order to show its performance,
in this paper we tailor it to the predictor adopted by the CCSDS-123 lossless
compression standard, obtaining an extension that allows to perform lossless,
near-lossless and lossy compression in a single package. We show that the rate
controller has excellent performance in terms of accuracy in the output rate,
rate-distortion characteristics and is extremely competitive with respect to
state-of-the-art transform coding
Coding local and global binary visual features extracted from video sequences
Binary local features represent an effective alternative to real-valued
descriptors, leading to comparable results for many visual analysis tasks,
while being characterized by significantly lower computational complexity and
memory requirements. When dealing with large collections, a more compact
representation based on global features is often preferred, which can be
obtained from local features by means of, e.g., the Bag-of-Visual-Word (BoVW)
model. Several applications, including for example visual sensor networks and
mobile augmented reality, require visual features to be transmitted over a
bandwidth-limited network, thus calling for coding techniques that aim at
reducing the required bit budget, while attaining a target level of efficiency.
In this paper we investigate a coding scheme tailored to both local and global
binary features, which aims at exploiting both spatial and temporal redundancy
by means of intra- and inter-frame coding. In this respect, the proposed coding
scheme can be conveniently adopted to support the Analyze-Then-Compress (ATC)
paradigm. That is, visual features are extracted from the acquired content,
encoded at remote nodes, and finally transmitted to a central controller that
performs visual analysis. This is in contrast with the traditional approach, in
which visual content is acquired at a node, compressed and then sent to a
central unit for further processing, according to the Compress-Then-Analyze
(CTA) paradigm. In this paper we experimentally compare ATC and CTA by means of
rate-efficiency curves in the context of two different visual analysis tasks:
homography estimation and content-based retrieval. Our results show that the
novel ATC paradigm based on the proposed coding primitives can be competitive
with CTA, especially in bandwidth limited scenarios.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Image Processin
Reduced Memory Region Based Deep Convolutional Neural Network Detection
Accurate pedestrian detection has a primary role in automotive safety: for
example, by issuing warnings to the driver or acting actively on car's brakes,
it helps decreasing the probability of injuries and human fatalities. In order
to achieve very high accuracy, recent pedestrian detectors have been based on
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). Unfortunately, such approaches require
vast amounts of computational power and memory, preventing efficient
implementations on embedded systems. This work proposes a CNN-based detector,
adapting a general-purpose convolutional network to the task at hand. By
thoroughly analyzing and optimizing each step of the detection pipeline, we
develop an architecture that outperforms methods based on traditional image
features and achieves an accuracy close to the state-of-the-art while having
low computational complexity. Furthermore, the model is compressed in order to
fit the tight constrains of low power devices with a limited amount of embedded
memory available. This paper makes two main contributions: (1) it proves that a
region based deep neural network can be finely tuned to achieve adequate
accuracy for pedestrian detection (2) it achieves a very low memory usage
without reducing detection accuracy on the Caltech Pedestrian dataset.Comment: IEEE 2016 ICCE-Berli
Tracking-Optimized Quantization for H.264 Compression in Transportation Video Surveillance Applications
We propose a tracking-aware system that removes video components of low tracking interest and optimizes the quantization during compression of frequency coefficients, particularly those that most influence trackers, significantly reducing bitrate while maintaining comparable tracking accuracy. We utilize tracking accuracy as our compression criterion in lieu of mean squared error metrics. The process of optimizing quantization tables suitable for automated tracking can be executed online or offline. The online implementation initializes the encoding procedure for a specific scene, but introduces delay. On the other hand, the offline procedure produces globally optimum quantization tables where the optimization occurs for a collection of video sequences. Our proposed system is designed with low processing power and memory requirements in mind, and as such can be deployed on remote nodes. Using H.264/AVC video coding and a commonly used state-of-the-art tracker we show that while maintaining comparable tracking accuracy our system allows for over 50% bitrate savings on top of existing savings from previous work
Extrinisic Calibration of a Camera-Arm System Through Rotation Identification
Determining extrinsic calibration parameters is a necessity in any robotic
system composed of actuators and cameras. Once a system is outside the lab
environment, parameters must be determined without relying on outside artifacts
such as calibration targets. We propose a method that relies on structured
motion of an observed arm to recover extrinsic calibration parameters. Our
method combines known arm kinematics with observations of conics in the image
plane to calculate maximum-likelihood estimates for calibration extrinsics.
This method is validated in simulation and tested against a real-world model,
yielding results consistent with ruler-based estimates. Our method shows
promise for estimating the pose of a camera relative to an articulated arm's
end effector without requiring tedious measurements or external artifacts.
Index Terms: robotics, hand-eye problem, self-calibration, structure from
motio
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