62,021 research outputs found
Bootstrapping Probabilistic Models of Qualitative Spatial Relations for Active Visual Object Search
In many real world applications, autonomous mobile robots are required to observe or retrieve objects in their environment, despite not having accurate estimates of the objects ’ locations. Finding objects in real-world settings is a non-trivial task, given the complexity and the dynamics of human environments. However, by understanding and exploiting the structure of such environments, e.g. where objects are commonly placed as part of everyday activities, robots can perform search tasks more efficiently and effectively than without such knowledge. In this paper we investigate how probabilistic models of qualitative spatial relations can improve the performance in object search tasks. Specifically, we learn Gaussian Mixture Models of spatial relations between object classes from descriptive statistics of real office environments. Experimental results with a range of sensor models suggest that our model improves overall performance in object search tasks.
Geospatial Narratives and their Spatio-Temporal Dynamics: Commonsense Reasoning for High-level Analyses in Geographic Information Systems
The modelling, analysis, and visualisation of dynamic geospatial phenomena
has been identified as a key developmental challenge for next-generation
Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this context, the envisaged
paradigmatic extensions to contemporary foundational GIS technology raises
fundamental questions concerning the ontological, formal representational, and
(analytical) computational methods that would underlie their spatial
information theoretic underpinnings.
We present the conceptual overview and architecture for the development of
high-level semantic and qualitative analytical capabilities for dynamic
geospatial domains. Building on formal methods in the areas of commonsense
reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial and temporal representation and
reasoning, reasoning about actions and change, and computational models of
narrative, we identify concrete theoretical and practical challenges that
accrue in the context of formal reasoning about `space, events, actions, and
change'. With this as a basis, and within the backdrop of an illustrated
scenario involving the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban narratives, we address
specific problems and solutions techniques chiefly involving `qualitative
abstraction', `data integration and spatial consistency', and `practical
geospatial abduction'. From a broad topical viewpoint, we propose that
next-generation dynamic GIS technology demands a transdisciplinary scientific
perspective that brings together Geography, Artificial Intelligence, and
Cognitive Science.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; cognitive systems; human-computer
interaction; geographic information systems; spatio-temporal dynamics;
computational models of narrative; geospatial analysis; geospatial modelling;
ontology; qualitative spatial modelling and reasoning; spatial assistance
systemsComment: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964);
Special Issue on: Geospatial Monitoring and Modelling of Environmental
Change}. IJGI. Editor: Duccio Rocchini. (pre-print of article in press
Abstract Objects in a Metaphysical Perspective
The article presents an unconventional although not absolutely unprecedented view on abstract objects defending the position of metaphysical realism. It is argued that abstract objects taken in purely ontological sense are the forms of objects. The forms possess some common characteristics of abstract objects, they can exist not in physical space and time and play a grounding role in their relation to concrete objects. It is stated that commonly discussed abstract objects – properties, kinds, mathematical objects – are forms
Multi-Level Visual Alphabets
A central debate in visual perception theory is the argument for indirect versus direct perception; i.e., the use of intermediate, abstract, and hierarchical representations versus direct semantic interpretation of images through interaction with the outside world. We present a content-based representation that combines both approaches. The previously developed Visual Alphabet method is extended with a hierarchy of representations, each level feeding into the next one, but based on features that are not abstract but directly relevant to the task at hand. Explorative benchmark experiments are carried out on face images to investigate and explain the impact of the key parameters such as pattern size, number of prototypes, and distance measures used. Results show that adding an additional middle layer improves results, by encoding the spatial co-occurrence of lower-level pattern prototypes
Proposal Flow
Finding image correspondences remains a challenging problem in the presence
of intra-class variations and large changes in scene layout.~Semantic flow
methods are designed to handle images depicting different instances of the same
object or scene category. We introduce a novel approach to semantic flow,
dubbed proposal flow, that establishes reliable correspondences using object
proposals. Unlike prevailing semantic flow approaches that operate on pixels or
regularly sampled local regions, proposal flow benefits from the
characteristics of modern object proposals, that exhibit high repeatability at
multiple scales, and can take advantage of both local and geometric consistency
constraints among proposals. We also show that proposal flow can effectively be
transformed into a conventional dense flow field. We introduce a new dataset
that can be used to evaluate both general semantic flow techniques and
region-based approaches such as proposal flow. We use this benchmark to compare
different matching algorithms, object proposals, and region features within
proposal flow, to the state of the art in semantic flow. This comparison, along
with experiments on standard datasets, demonstrates that proposal flow
significantly outperforms existing semantic flow methods in various settings
Proposal Flow: Semantic Correspondences from Object Proposals
Finding image correspondences remains a challenging problem in the presence
of intra-class variations and large changes in scene layout. Semantic flow
methods are designed to handle images depicting different instances of the same
object or scene category. We introduce a novel approach to semantic flow,
dubbed proposal flow, that establishes reliable correspondences using object
proposals. Unlike prevailing semantic flow approaches that operate on pixels or
regularly sampled local regions, proposal flow benefits from the
characteristics of modern object proposals, that exhibit high repeatability at
multiple scales, and can take advantage of both local and geometric consistency
constraints among proposals. We also show that the corresponding sparse
proposal flow can effectively be transformed into a conventional dense flow
field. We introduce two new challenging datasets that can be used to evaluate
both general semantic flow techniques and region-based approaches such as
proposal flow. We use these benchmarks to compare different matching
algorithms, object proposals, and region features within proposal flow, to the
state of the art in semantic flow. This comparison, along with experiments on
standard datasets, demonstrates that proposal flow significantly outperforms
existing semantic flow methods in various settings.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1511.0506
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