Exploring Human Vision Driven Features for Pedestrian Detection

Motivated by the center-surround mechanism in the human visual attention system, we propose to use average contrast maps for the challenge of pedestrian detection in street scenes due to the observation that pedestrians indeed exhibit discriminative contrast texture. Our main contributions are first to design a local, statistical multi-channel descriptorin order to incorporate both color and gradient information. Second, we introduce a multi-direction and multi-scale contrast scheme based on grid-cells in order to integrate expressive local variations. Contributing to the issue of selecting most discriminative features for assessing and classification, we perform extensive comparisons w.r.t. statistical descriptors, contrast measurements, and scale structures. This way, we obtain reasonable results under various configurations. Empirical findings from applying our optimized detector on the INRIA and Caltech pedestrian datasets show that our features yield state-of-the-art performance in pedestrian detection.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (TCSVT

Support of Collaborative Structural Design Processes through the Integration of Peer-to-Peer and Multiagent Architectures

Structural engineering projects are increasingly organized in networked cooperations due to a permanently enlarged competition pressure and a high degree of complexity while performing the concurrent design activities. Software that intends to support such collaborative structural design processes implicates enormous requirements. In the course of our common research work, we analyzed the pros and cons of the application of both the peer-to-peer (University of Bonn) and multiagent architecture style (University of Bochum) within the field of collaborative structural design. In this paper, we join the benefits of both architecture styles in an integrated conceptual approach. We demonstrate the surplus value of the integrated multiagent–peer-to-peer approach by means of an example scenario in which several structural engineers are co-operatively designing the basic structural elements of an arched bridge, applying heterogeneous CAD systems

Support of Collaborative Structural Design Processes through the Integration of Peer-to-Peer and Multiagent Architectures

Structural engineering projects are increasingly organized in networked cooperations due to a permanently enlarged competition pressure and a high degree of complexity while performing the concurrent design activities. Software that intends to support such collaborative structural design processes implicates enormous requirements. In the course of our common research work, we analyzed the pros and cons of the application of both the peer-to-peer (University of Bonn) and multiagent architecture style (University of Bochum) within the field of collaborative structural design. In this paper, we join the benefits of both architecture styles in an integrated conceptual approach. We demonstrate the surplus value of the integrated multiagent–peer-to-peer approach by means of an example scenario in which several structural engineers are co-operatively designing the basic structural elements of an arched bridge, applying heterogeneous CAD systems

Holistic Support for the Collaborative Planning of Fire Protection Concepts in Building Design

Der Bauplanungsprozess ist durch ein hohes Maß an Kooperation zwischen Planungsbeteiligten verschiedener Fachrichtungen gekennzeichnet. Hierbei werden zum einen Planungen auf der Basis von Planungsinformationen anderer Planungsbeteiligter detailliert, zum anderen geben Planungen einzelner auch wichtige Rahmenbedingungen für die Gesamtplanung vor. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt einen Ansatz zur ganzheitlichen Unterstützungen verteilter Planungen am Beispiel des baulichen Brandschutzes. Der Antrag trägt hierbei der verteilten und parallelen Planung Rechnung, wie sie heute bei der Planung großer und mittlerer Bauwerke angewendet wird. Die Verteiltheit wird nicht nur für die Planungsbeteiligten modelliert, sondern auch die einzelnen Planungsinformationen liegen im gemeinsamen Kooperationsverbund verteilt vor. Der Fokus dieses Beitrags liegt auf der Wahrnehmung von Planungsänderungen und Ereignissen während der Planung und die Verarbeitung dieser Informationen um eine durchgängige Planung zu gewährleisten. Dies wird zum einen durch das CoBE Awarenessmodell erreicht, mit dem Ereignisse erkannt und dem Informationsverbund zur Verfügung gestellt werden können. Zum anderen werden die Ereignisbehandlung und die darauf folgende fachgerechte Informationsverarbeitung mit Hilfe eines Multi-Agentensystems beschrieben