Gait Recognition from Motion Capture Data

Gait recognition from motion capture data, as a pattern classification discipline, can be improved by the use of machine learning. This paper contributes to the state-of-the-art with a statistical approach for extracting robust gait features directly from raw data by a modification of Linear Discriminant Analysis with Maximum Margin Criterion. Experiments on the CMU MoCap database show that the suggested method outperforms thirteen relevant methods based on geometric features and a method to learn the features by a combination of Principal Component Analysis and Linear Discriminant Analysis. The methods are evaluated in terms of the distribution of biometric templates in respective feature spaces expressed in a number of class separability coefficients and classification metrics. Results also indicate a high portability of learned features, that means, we can learn what aspects of walk people generally differ in and extract those as general gait features. Recognizing people without needing group-specific features is convenient as particular people might not always provide annotated learning data. As a contribution to reproducible research, our evaluation framework and database have been made publicly available. This research makes motion capture technology directly applicable for human recognition.Comment: Preprint. Full paper accepted at the ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM), special issue on Representation, Analysis and Recognition of 3D Humans. 18 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1701.00995, arXiv:1609.04392, arXiv:1609.0693

Potential Unconventional Gas Plays in Mature Basin of the Czech Republic

The presence of unconventional resources has been proven in deeper parts of mature oil and gas provinces and coal basins of the world. In this context, it is worth to focus also on the prospects of unconventional gas production from within hydrocarbon provinces of the Moravian part of the Vienna basin. The estimation of hydrocarbon generation potential of Jurasic marls from the Mikulov Formation of the Czech part of the Vienna Basin was performed based on the Rock Eval pyrolysis

Tracking monetary-fiscal interactions across time and space

The long-term fiscal outlook of most high-income countries is grim. Should independent central bankers be afraid of an unpleasant monetarist arithmetic, i.e., fiscal imbalances spilling over to monetary policy and jeopardizing price stability? To provide some insights, this paper tracks the interactions between fiscal and monetary policies in the data since 1980 for Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In doing so it uses a combination of time-varying parameter vector autoregression with sign, magnitude, and contemporaneous restrictions identification. Unlike conventional approaches, this can capture changes in monetary and fiscal behavior that are gradual and differ across the two policies. Our results show that in the United States the degree of monetary policy accommodation of fiscal shocks (debt-financed government spending) increased gradually between the late 1980s and the 2008 crisis, i.e., over the whole tenure of Chairman Greenspan. In contrast, it seems to have decreased over this period in the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland, and Canada. Our benchmark analysis and several robustness checks show that legislating numerical inflation targets may account for some of the country differences, presumably because they may shift the strategic power from fiscal to monetary policy. We conclude by considering the implications of our results for the long-term likelihood of an unpleasant monetarist arithmetic in the six countries.Web of Science14322716

Scan matching by cross-correlation and differential evolution

Scan matching is an important task, solved in the context of many high-level problems including pose estimation, indoor localization, simultaneous localization and mapping and others. Methods that are accurate and adaptive and at the same time computationally efficient are required to enable location-based services in autonomous mobile devices. Such devices usually have a wide range of high-resolution sensors but only a limited processing power and constrained energy supply. This work introduces a novel high-level scan matching strategy that uses a combination of two advanced algorithms recently used in this field: cross-correlation and differential evolution. The cross-correlation between two laser range scans is used as an efficient measure of scan alignment and the differential evolution algorithm is used to search for the parameters of a transformation that aligns the scans. The proposed method was experimentally validated and showed good ability to match laser range scans taken shortly after each other and an excellent ability to match laser range scans taken with longer time intervals between them.Web of Science88art. no. 85

Plasticity of thinwalled beam modeled by spring network

Příspěvek představuje dynamický systém využívající fyzikální diskretizaci pomocí pružinové sítě. Popisuje jednotlivé fáze diskretizačního postupu na praktické, ale zároveň výpočetně náročné nelineární úloze. Všímá si současných aspektů modelu a rovněž demonstruje využití paralelních výpočtů prostřednictvím platformy Nvidia CUDA.The paper represents dynamical system with use of physical discretization method based on spring networks. It describes every phase of used discretization process on practical but also timeconsuming non-linear task. It observes contemporary model aspects and demonstrates use of parallel computation technique by Nvidia CUDA platform

The evaluation of a risk degree for the process of a brown coal spontaneous ignition on dumps with using of modern numeric methods

The article is a summary of information about evaluation of a risk degree for a brown coal spontaneous ignition which is realized on the base of a database analysis of information about the development of stative quantities and desorbated gases in the stored bodies of the brown coal. The data were gained from the long term complex measurements which were realized at chosen companies during the coal mining in the previous parts of the project. In the last part of the project, we examined results of temperature models from thermographs with results of gasses and coal samples from the mines. Then, the influence of atmospheric conditions (insolation, water downfall, changes of barometric pressure etc.), the influence of coal mass degradation, the influence of physical and chemical factors, and the influence of other defective factors on the process of the coal spontaneous ignition. The gasmetry was assess with gas in-situ samples and laboratory gas models of indicative gasses for the spontaneous ignition, which were taken from the method of the thermic oxidation with the aim of the correlation finding for an epicentre of temperature within the spontaneous ignition.Web of Science262757

Testing of Sealing Elements for FIB Apparatus Designed to Liquidate Open Eruption by Drilling Tools

Petroleum and natural gas still have their place among the most important resources in many industrial areas. Their global consumption influences an increasing demand on the quality of drilling works and the efficiency of extraction. Nonetheless, even in this field of human activity, we can encounter exceptional events and accidents. One of the most serious kinds of accidents during exploration is the so called open eruption of extracted medium. The specific case of this accident is an open eruption caused by drilling tools when a working crew is not capable of securing drilling workplace. In order to solve this emergency situation, Main Mining Rescue Station Hodonin (HBZS Hodonin),in cooperation with researchers from Faculty of Mining and Geology at VSB -Technical University of Ostrava, designed and developed specialised apparatus DPRP (Drill Pipe Rescue Press), working designation FIB-1. This apparatus enables the liquidation of eruption by pressing the drilling pipe. The residual crack, which remains following the pressing, must be eliminated by sealing materials. This paper reviews the testing of sealing elements (materials), designed by our team, in residual crack of circle shape with help of hydraulic press MTS 816 Rock Test System