Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

avg ps Schoenbein, M., Geiger, A. Omnidirectional 3D Reconstruction in Augmented Manhattan Worlds International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 716 - 723, IEEE, Chicago, IL, USA, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and System, October 2014 (conference)

Can I recognize my body’s weight? The influence of shape and texture on the perception of self

Piryankova, I., Stefanucci, J., Romero, J., de la Rosa, S., Black, M., Mohler, B.

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception for the Symposium on Applied Perception, 11(3):13:1-13:18, September 2014 (article)

Abstract

The goal of this research was to investigate women’s sensitivity to changes in their perceived weight by altering the body mass index (BMI) of the participants’ personalized avatars displayed on a large-screen immersive display. We created the personalized avatars with a full-body 3D scanner that records both the participants’ body geometry and texture. We altered the weight of the personalized avatars to produce changes in BMI while keeping height, arm length and inseam fixed and exploited the correlation between body geometry and anthropometric measurements encapsulated in a statistical body shape model created from thousands of body scans. In a 2x2 psychophysical experiment, we investigated the relative importance of visual cues, namely shape (own shape vs. an average female body shape with equivalent height and BMI to the participant) and texture (own photo-realistic texture or checkerboard pattern texture) on the ability to accurately perceive own current body weight (by asking them ‘Is the avatar the same weight as you?’). Our results indicate that shape (where height and BMI are fixed) had little effect on the perception of body weight. Interestingly, the participants perceived their body weight veridically when they saw their own photo-realistic texture and significantly underestimated their body weight when the avatar had a checkerboard patterned texture. The range that the participants accepted as their own current weight was approximately a 0.83 to −6.05 BMI% change tolerance range around their perceived weight. Both the shape and the texture had an effect on the reported similarity of the body parts and the whole avatar to the participant’s body. This work has implications for new measures for patients with body image disorders, as well as researchers interested in creating personalized avatars for games, training applications or virtual reality.

ps Piryankova, I., Stefanucci, J., Romero, J., de la Rosa, S., Black, M., Mohler, B. Can I recognize my body’s weight? The influence of shape and texture on the perception of self ACM Transactions on Applied Perception for the Symposium on Applied Perception, 11(3):13:1-13:18, September 2014 (article)

pdf Supplementary pdf Supplementary Material Project Page DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Human Pose Estimation with Fields of Parts

Kiefel, M., Gehler, P.

In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, LNCS 8693, pages: 331-346, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Fleet, David and Pajdla, Tomas and Schiele, Bernt and Tuytelaars, Tinne), Springer, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

This paper proposes a new formulation of the human pose estimation problem. We present the Fields of Parts model, a binary Conditional Random Field model designed to detect human body parts of articulated people in single images. The Fields of Parts model is inspired by the idea of Pictorial Structures, it models local appearance and joint spatial configuration of the human body. However the underlying graph structure is entirely different. The idea is simple: we model the presence and absence of a body part at every possible position, orientation, and scale in an image with a binary random variable. This results into a vast number of random variables, however, we show that approximate inference in this model is efficient. Moreover we can encode the very same appearance and spatial structure as in Pictorial Structures models. This approach allows us to combine ideas from segmentation and pose estimation into a single model. The Fields of Parts model can use evidence from the background, include local color information, and it is connected more densely than a kinematic chain structure. On the challenging Leeds Sports Poses dataset we improve over the Pictorial Structures counterpart by 5.5% in terms of Average Precision of Keypoints (APK).

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website pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ei ps Kiefel, M., Gehler, P. Human Pose Estimation with Fields of Parts In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, LNCS 8693, pages: 331-346, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Fleet, David and Pajdla, Tomas and Schiele, Bernt and Tuytelaars, Tinne), Springer, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

website pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Capturing Hand Motion with an RGB-D Sensor, Fusing a Generative Model with Salient Points

Tzionas, D., Srikantha, A., Aponte, P., Gall, J.

In German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), pages: 1-13, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, GCPR, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Hand motion capture has been an active research topic in recent years, following the success of full-body pose tracking. Despite similarities, hand tracking proves to be more challenging, characterized by a higher dimensionality, severe occlusions and self-similarity between fingers. For this reason, most approaches rely on strong assumptions, like hands in isolation or expensive multi-camera systems, that limit the practical use. In this work, we propose a framework for hand tracking that can capture the motion of two interacting hands using only a single, inexpensive RGB-D camera. Our approach combines a generative model with collision detection and discriminatively learned salient points. We quantitatively evaluate our approach on 14 new sequences with challenging interactions.

ps Tzionas, D., Srikantha, A., Aponte, P., Gall, J. Capturing Hand Motion with an RGB-D Sensor, Fusing a Generative Model with Salient Points In German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), pages: 1-13, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, GCPR, September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Supplementary pdf Supplementary Material Project Page DOI Project Page [BibTex]

OpenDR: An Approximate Differentiable Renderer

Loper, M. M., Black, M. J.

In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8695, pages: 154-169, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Inverse graphics attempts to take sensor data and infer 3D geometry, illumination, materials, and motions such that a graphics renderer could realistically reproduce the observed scene. Renderers, however, are designed to solve the forward process of image synthesis. To go in the other direction, we propose an approximate differentiable renderer (DR) that explicitly models the relationship between changes in model parameters and image observations. We describe a publicly available OpenDR framework that makes it easy to express a forward graphics model and then automatically obtain derivatives with respect to the model parameters and to optimize over them. Built on a new autodifferentiation package and OpenGL, OpenDR provides a local optimization method that can be incorporated into probabilistic programming frameworks. We demonstrate the power and simplicity of programming with OpenDR by using it to solve the problem of estimating human body shape from Kinect depth and RGB data.

pdf Code Chumpy Supplementary video of talk DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Loper, M. M., Black, M. J. OpenDR: An Approximate Differentiable Renderer In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8695, pages: 154-169, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Code Chumpy Supplementary video of talk DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Discovering Object Classes from Activities

Srikantha, A., Gall, J.

In European Conference on Computer Vision, 8694, pages: 415-430, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In order to avoid an expensive manual labeling process or to learn object classes autonomously without human intervention, object discovery techniques have been proposed that extract visual similar objects from weakly labelled videos. However, the problem of discovering small or medium sized objects is largely unexplored. We observe that videos with activities involving human-object interactions can serve as weakly labelled data for such cases. Since neither object appearance nor motion is distinct enough to discover objects in these videos, we propose a framework that samples from a space of algorithms and their parameters to extract sequences of object proposals. Furthermore, we model similarity of objects based on appearance and functionality, which is derived from human and object motion. We show that functionality is an important cue for discovering objects from activities and demonstrate the generality of the model on three challenging RGB-D and RGB datasets.

pdf anno poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Srikantha, A., Gall, J. Discovering Object Classes from Activities In European Conference on Computer Vision, 8694, pages: 415-430, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf anno poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Probabilistic Progress Bars

Kiefel, M., Schuler, C., Hennig, P.

In Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 8753, pages: 331-341, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Jiang, X., Hornegger, J., and Koch, R.), Springer, GCPR, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Predicting the time at which the integral over a stochastic process reaches a target level is a value of interest in many applications. Often, such computations have to be made at low cost, in real time. As an intuitive example that captures many features of this problem class, we choose progress bars, a ubiquitous element of computer user interfaces. These predictors are usually based on simple point estimators, with no error modelling. This leads to fluctuating behaviour confusing to the user. It also does not provide a distribution prediction (risk values), which are crucial for many other application areas. We construct and empirically evaluate a fast, constant cost algorithm using a Gauss-Markov process model which provides more information to the user.

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website+code pdf DOI [BibTex]

ei ps pn Kiefel, M., Schuler, C., Hennig, P. Probabilistic Progress Bars In Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 8753, pages: 331-341, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Jiang, X., Hornegger, J., and Koch, R.), Springer, GCPR, September 2014 (inproceedings)

website+code pdf DOI [BibTex]

Optical Flow Estimation with Channel Constancy

Sevilla-Lara, L., Sun, D., Learned-Miller, E. G., Black, M. J.

In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8689, pages: 423-438, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Large motions remain a challenge for current optical flow algorithms. Traditionally, large motions are addressed using multi-resolution representations like Gaussian pyramids. To deal with large displacements, many pyramid levels are needed and, if an object is small, it may be invisible at the highest levels. To address this we decompose images using a channel representation (CR) and replace the standard brightness constancy assumption with a descriptor constancy assumption. CRs can be seen as an over-segmentation of the scene into layers based on some image feature. If the appearance of a foreground object differs from the background then its descriptor will be different and they will be represented in different layers.We create a pyramid by smoothing these layers, without mixing foreground and background or losing small objects. Our method estimates more accurate flow than the baseline on the MPI-Sintel benchmark, especially for fast motions and near motion boundaries.

ps Sevilla-Lara, L., Sun, D., Learned-Miller, E. G., Black, M. J. Optical Flow Estimation with Channel Constancy In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8689, pages: 423-438, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Supplementary Video DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Modeling Blurred Video with Layers

Wulff, J., Black, M. J.

In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8694, pages: 236-252, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Videos contain complex spatially-varying motion blur due to the combination of object motion, camera motion, and depth variation with finite shutter speeds. Existing methods to estimate optical flow, deblur the images, and segment the scene fail in such cases. In particular, boundaries between differently moving objects cause problems, because here the blurred images are a combination of the blurred appearances of multiple surfaces. We address this with a novel layered model of scenes in motion. From a motion-blurred video sequence, we jointly estimate the layer segmentation and each layer's appearance and motion. Since the blur is a function of the layer motion and segmentation, it is completely determined by our generative model. Given a video, we formulate the optimization problem as minimizing the pixel error between the blurred frames and images synthesized from the model, and solve it using gradient descent. We demonstrate our approach on synthetic and real sequences.

pdf Supplemental Video Data DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Wulff, J., Black, M. J. Modeling Blurred Video with Layers In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8694, pages: 236-252, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Supplemental Video Data DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Intrinsic Video

Kong, N., Gehler, P. V., Black, M. J.

In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8690, pages: 360-375, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Intrinsic images such as albedo and shading are valuable for later stages of visual processing. Previous methods for extracting albedo and shading use either single images or images together with depth data. Instead, we define intrinsic video estimation as the problem of extracting temporally coherent albedo and shading from video alone. Our approach exploits the assumption that albedo is constant over time while shading changes slowly. Optical flow aids in the accurate estimation of intrinsic video by providing temporal continuity as well as putative surface boundaries. Additionally, we find that the estimated albedo sequence can be used to improve optical flow accuracy in sequences with changing illumination. The approach makes only weak assumptions about the scene and we show that it substantially outperforms existing single-frame intrinsic image methods. We evaluate this quantitatively on synthetic sequences as well on challenging natural sequences with complex geometry, motion, and illumination.

ps Kong, N., Gehler, P. V., Black, M. J. Intrinsic Video In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8690, pages: 360-375, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Supplementary Video DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Automated Detection of New or Evolving Melanocytic Lesions Using a 3D Body Model

Bogo, F., Romero, J., Peserico, E., Black, M. J.

In Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 8673, pages: 593-600, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Golland, Polina and Hata, Nobuhiko and Barillot, Christian and Hornegger, Joachim and Howe, Robert), Spring International Publishing, Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Detection of new or rapidly evolving melanocytic lesions is crucial for early diagnosis and treatment of melanoma.We propose a fully automated pre-screening system for detecting new lesions or changes in existing ones, on the order of 2 - 3mm, over almost the entire body surface. Our solution is based on a multi-camera 3D stereo system. The system captures 3D textured scans of a subject at different times and then brings these scans into correspondence by aligning them with a learned, parametric, non-rigid 3D body model. This means that captured skin textures are in accurate alignment across scans, facilitating the detection of new or changing lesions. The integration of lesion segmentation with a deformable 3D body model is a key contribution that makes our approach robust to changes in illumination and subject pose.

pdf Poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Bogo, F., Romero, J., Peserico, E., Black, M. J. Automated Detection of New or Evolving Melanocytic Lesions Using a 3D Body Model In Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 8673, pages: 593-600, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Golland, Polina and Hata, Nobuhiko and Barillot, Christian and Hornegger, Joachim and Howe, Robert), Spring International Publishing, Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Tracking using Multilevel Quantizations

Hong, Z., Wang, C., Mei, X., Prokhorov, D., Tao, D.

In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8694, pages: 155-171, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Most object tracking methods only exploit a single quantization of an image space: pixels, superpixels, or bounding boxes, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. It is highly unlikely that a common optimal quantization level, suitable for tracking all objects in all environments, exists. We therefore propose a hierarchical appearance representation model for tracking, based on a graphical model that exploits shared information across multiple quantization levels. The tracker aims to find the most possible position of the target by jointly classifying the pixels and superpixels and obtaining the best configuration across all levels. The motion of the bounding box is taken into consideration, while Online Random Forests are used to provide pixel- and superpixel-level quantizations and progressively updated on-the-fly. By appropriately considering the multilevel quantizations, our tracker exhibits not only excellent performance in non-rigid object deformation handling, but also its robustness to occlusions. A quantitative evaluation is conducted on two benchmark datasets: a non-rigid object tracking dataset (11 sequences) and the CVPR2013 tracking benchmark (50 sequences). Experimental results show that our tracker overcomes various tracking challenges and is superior to a number of other popular tracking methods.

ps Hong, Z., Wang, C., Mei, X., Prokhorov, D., Tao, D. Tracking using Multilevel Quantizations In Computer Vision – ECCV 2014, 8694, pages: 155-171, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: D. Fleet and T. Pajdla and B. Schiele and T. Tuytelaars ), Springer International Publishing, 13th European Conference on Computer Vision, September 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf video link (url) DOI Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Breathing Life into Shape: Capturing, Modeling and Animating 3D Human Breathing

Tsoli, A., Mahmood, N., Black, M. J.

ACM Transactions on Graphics, (Proc. SIGGRAPH), 33(4):52:1-52:11, ACM, New York, NY, July 2014 (article)

Abstract

Modeling how the human body deforms during breathing is important for the realistic animation of lifelike 3D avatars. We learn a model of body shape deformations due to breathing for different breathing types and provide simple animation controls to render lifelike breathing regardless of body shape. We capture and align high-resolution 3D scans of 58 human subjects. We compute deviations from each subject’s mean shape during breathing, and study the statistics of such shape changes for different genders, body shapes, and breathing types. We use the volume of the registered scans as a proxy for lung volume and learn a novel non-linear model relating volume and breathing type to 3D shape deformations and pose changes. We then augment a SCAPE body model so that body shape is determined by identity, pose, and the parameters of the breathing model. These parameters provide an intuitive interface with which animators can synthesize 3D human avatars with realistic breathing motions. We also develop a novel interface for animating breathing using a spirometer, which measures the changes in breathing volume of a “breath actor.”

ps Tsoli, A., Mahmood, N., Black, M. J. Breathing Life into Shape: Capturing, Modeling and Animating 3D Human Breathing ACM Transactions on Graphics, (Proc. SIGGRAPH), 33(4):52:1-52:11, ACM, New York, NY, July 2014 (article)

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Human Pose Estimation: New Benchmark and State of the Art Analysis

Andriluka, M., Pishchulin, L., Gehler, P., Schiele, B.

In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3686 - 3693, IEEE, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf DOI Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Andriluka, M., Pishchulin, L., Gehler, P., Schiele, B. Human Pose Estimation: New Benchmark and State of the Art Analysis In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3686 - 3693, IEEE, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

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FAUST: Dataset and evaluation for 3D mesh registration

(Dataset Award, Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP), 2016)

Bogo, F., Romero, J., Loper, M., Black, M. J.

In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3794 -3801, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

New scanning technologies are increasing the importance of 3D mesh data and the need for algorithms that can reliably align it. Surface registration is important for building full 3D models from partial scans, creating statistical shape models, shape retrieval, and tracking. The problem is particularly challenging for non-rigid and articulated objects like human bodies. While the challenges of real-world data registration are not present in existing synthetic datasets, establishing ground-truth correspondences for real 3D scans is difficult. We address this with a novel mesh registration technique that combines 3D shape and appearance information to produce high-quality alignments. We define a new dataset called FAUST that contains 300 scans of 10 people in a wide range of poses together with an evaluation methodology. To achieve accurate registration, we paint the subjects with high-frequency textures and use an extensive validation process to ensure accurate ground truth. We find that current shape registration methods have trouble with this real-world data. The dataset and evaluation website are available for research purposes at http://faust.is.tue.mpg.de.

pdf Video Dataset Poster Talk DOI Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Bogo, F., Romero, J., Loper, M., Black, M. J. FAUST: Dataset and evaluation for 3D mesh registration In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3794 -3801, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Video Dataset Poster Talk DOI Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Model Transport: Towards Scalable Transfer Learning on Manifolds

Freifeld, O., Hauberg, S., Black, M. J.

In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1378 -1385, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE Intenational Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We consider the intersection of two research fields: transfer learning and statistics on manifolds. In particular, we consider, for manifold-valued data, transfer learning of tangent-space models such as Gaussians distributions, PCA, regression, or classifiers. Though one would hope to simply use ordinary Rn-transfer learning ideas, the manifold structure prevents it. We overcome this by basing our method on inner-product-preserving parallel transport, a well-known tool widely used in other problems of statistics on manifolds in computer vision. At first, this straightforward idea seems to suffer from an obvious shortcoming: Transporting large datasets is prohibitively expensive, hindering scalability. Fortunately, with our approach, we never transport data. Rather, we show how the statistical models themselves can be transported, and prove that for the tangent-space models above, the transport “commutes” with learning. Consequently, our compact framework, applicable to a large class of manifolds, is not restricted by the size of either the training or test sets. We demonstrate the approach by transferring PCA and logistic-regression models of real-world data involving 3D shapes and image descriptors.

pdf SupMat Video poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Freifeld, O., Hauberg, S., Black, M. J. Model Transport: Towards Scalable Transfer Learning on Manifolds In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1378 -1385, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE Intenational Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf SupMat Video poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Robot Arm Pose Estimation through Pixel-Wise Part Classification

Bohg, J., Romero, J., Herzog, A., Schaal, S.

In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2014, pages: 3143-3150, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), June 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We propose to frame the problem of marker-less robot arm pose estimation as a pixel-wise part classification problem. As input, we use a depth image in which each pixel is classified to be either from a particular robot part or the background. The classifier is a random decision forest trained on a large number of synthetically generated and labeled depth images. From all the training samples ending up at a leaf node, a set of offsets is learned that votes for relative joint positions. Pooling these votes over all foreground pixels and subsequent clustering gives us an estimate of the true joint positions. Due to the intrinsic parallelism of pixel-wise classification, this approach can run in super real-time and is more efficient than previous ICP-like methods. We quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of this approach on synthetic data. We also demonstrate that the method produces accurate joint estimates on real data despite being purely trained on synthetic data.

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video code pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

am ps Bohg, J., Romero, J., Herzog, A., Schaal, S. Robot Arm Pose Estimation through Pixel-Wise Part Classification In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2014, pages: 3143-3150, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), June 2014 (inproceedings)

video code pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Efficient Non-linear Markov Models for Human Motion

Lehrmann, A. M., Gehler, P. V., Nowozin, S.

In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1314-1321, IEEE, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Dynamic Bayesian networks such as Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are successfully used as probabilistic models for human motion. The use of hidden variables makes them expressive models, but inference is only approximate and requires procedures such as particle filters or Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. In this work we propose to instead use simple Markov models that only model observed quantities. We retain a highly expressive dynamic model by using interactions that are nonlinear and non-parametric. A presentation of our approach in terms of latent variables shows logarithmic growth for the computation of exact loglikelihoods in the number of latent states. We validate our model on human motion capture data and demonstrate state-of-the-art performance on action recognition and motion completion tasks.

Project page pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Lehrmann, A. M., Gehler, P. V., Nowozin, S. Efficient Non-linear Markov Models for Human Motion In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1314-1321, IEEE, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

Project page pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Grassmann Averages for Scalable Robust PCA

Hauberg, S., Feragen, A., Black, M. J.

In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3810 -3817, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

As the collection of large datasets becomes increasingly automated, the occurrence of outliers will increase – "big data" implies "big outliers". While principal component analysis (PCA) is often used to reduce the size of data, and scalable solutions exist, it is well-known that outliers can arbitrarily corrupt the results. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art approaches for robust PCA do not scale beyond small-to-medium sized datasets. To address this, we introduce the Grassmann Average (GA), which expresses dimensionality reduction as an average of the subspaces spanned by the data. Because averages can be efficiently computed, we immediately gain scalability. GA is inherently more robust than PCA, but we show that they coincide for Gaussian data. We exploit that averages can be made robust to formulate the Robust Grassmann Average (RGA) as a form of robust PCA. Robustness can be with respect to vectors (subspaces) or elements of vectors; we focus on the latter and use a trimmed average. The resulting Trimmed Grassmann Average (TGA) is particularly appropriate for computer vision because it is robust to pixel outliers. The algorithm has low computational complexity and minimal memory requirements, making it scalable to "big noisy data." We demonstrate TGA for background modeling, video restoration, and shadow removal. We show scalability by performing robust PCA on the entire Star Wars IV movie.

pdf code supplementary material tutorial video results video talk poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Hauberg, S., Feragen, A., Black, M. J. Grassmann Averages for Scalable Robust PCA In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3810 -3817, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf code supplementary material tutorial video results video talk poster DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Posebits for Monocular Human Pose Estimation

Pons-Moll, G., Fleet, D. J., Rosenhahn, B.

In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 2345-2352, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We advocate the inference of qualitative information about 3D human pose, called posebits, from images. Posebits represent boolean geometric relationships between body parts (e.g., left-leg in front of right-leg or hands close to each other). The advantages of posebits as a mid-level representation are 1) for many tasks of interest, such qualitative pose information may be sufficient (e.g. , semantic image retrieval), 2) it is relatively easy to annotate large image corpora with posebits, as it simply requires answers to yes/no questions; and 3) they help resolve challenging pose ambiguities and therefore facilitate the difficult talk of image-based 3D pose estimation. We introduce posebits, a posebit database, a method for selecting useful posebits for pose estimation and a structural SVM model for posebit inference. Experiments show the use of posebits for semantic image retrieval and for improving 3D pose estimation.

pdf Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Pons-Moll, G., Fleet, D. J., Rosenhahn, B. Posebits for Monocular Human Pose Estimation In Proceedings IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 2345-2352, Columbus, Ohio, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 2014 (inproceedings)

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Simultaneous Underwater Visibility Assessment, Enhancement and Improved Stereo

Roser, M., Dunbabin, M., Geiger, A.

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 3840 - 3847 , Hong Kong, China, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, June 2014 (conference)

Abstract

Vision-based underwater navigation and obstacle avoidance demands robust computer vision algorithms, particularly for operation in turbid water with reduced visibility. This paper describes a novel method for the simultaneous underwater image quality assessment, visibility enhancement and disparity computation to increase stereo range resolution under dynamic, natural lighting and turbid conditions. The technique estimates the visibility properties from a sparse 3D map of the original degraded image using a physical underwater light attenuation model. Firstly, an iterated distance-adaptive image contrast enhancement enables a dense disparity computation and visibility estimation. Secondly, using a light attenuation model for ocean water, a color corrected stereo underwater image is obtained along with a visibility distance estimate. Experimental results in shallow, naturally lit, high-turbidity coastal environments show the proposed technique improves range estimation over the original images as well as image quality and color for habitat classification. Furthermore, the recursiveness and robustness of the technique allows real-time implementation onboard an Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for improved navigation and obstacle avoidance performance.

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avg ps Roser, M., Dunbabin, M., Geiger, A. Simultaneous Underwater Visibility Assessment, Enhancement and Improved Stereo IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 3840 - 3847 , Hong Kong, China, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, June 2014 (conference)

pdf SupMat link (url) Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Preserving Modes and Messages via Diverse Particle Selection

Pacheco, J., Zuffi, S., Black, M. J., Sudderth, E.

In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-14), 32(1):1152-1160, J. Machine Learning Research Workshop and Conf. and Proc., Beijing, China, International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), June 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In applications of graphical models arising in domains such as computer vision and signal processing, we often seek the most likely configurations of high-dimensional, continuous variables. We develop a particle-based max-product algorithm which maintains a diverse set of posterior mode hypotheses, and is robust to initialization. At each iteration, the set of hypotheses at each node is augmented via stochastic proposals, and then reduced via an efficient selection algorithm. The integer program underlying our optimization-based particle selection minimizes errors in subsequent max-product message updates. This objective automatically encourages diversity in the maintained hypotheses, without requiring tuning of application-specific distances among hypotheses. By avoiding the stochastic resampling steps underlying particle sum-product algorithms, we also avoid common degeneracies where particles collapse onto a single hypothesis. Our approach significantly outperforms previous particle-based algorithms in experiments focusing on the estimation of human pose from single images.

ps Pacheco, J., Zuffi, S., Black, M. J., Sudderth, E. Preserving Modes and Messages via Diverse Particle Selection In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-14), 32(1):1152-1160, J. Machine Learning Research Workshop and Conf. and Proc., Beijing, China, International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), June 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf SupMat link (url) Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Calibrating and Centering Quasi-Central Catadioptric Cameras

Schoenbein, M., Strauss, T., Geiger, A.

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 4443 - 4450, Hong Kong, China, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, June 2014 (conference)

Abstract

Non-central catadioptric models are able to cope with irregular camera setups and inaccuracies in the manufacturing process but are computationally demanding and thus not suitable for robotic applications. On the other hand, calibrating a quasi-central (almost central) system with a central model introduces errors due to a wrong relationship between the viewing ray orientations and the pixels on the image sensor. In this paper, we propose a central approximation to quasi-central catadioptric camera systems that is both accurate and efficient. We observe that the distance to points in 3D is typically large compared to deviations from the single viewpoint. Thus, we first calibrate the system using a state-of-the-art non-central camera model. Next, we show that by remapping the observations we are able to match the orientation of the viewing rays of a much simpler single viewpoint model with the true ray orientations. While our approximation is general and applicable to all quasi-central camera systems, we focus on one of the most common cases in practice: hypercatadioptric cameras. We compare our model to a variety of baselines in synthetic and real localization and motion estimation experiments. We show that by using the proposed model we are able to achieve near non-central accuracy while obtaining speed-ups of more than three orders of magnitude compared to state-of-the-art non-central models.

avg ps

avg ps Schoenbein, M., Strauss, T., Geiger, A. Calibrating and Centering Quasi-Central Catadioptric Cameras IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 4443 - 4450, Hong Kong, China, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, June 2014 (conference)

3D Traffic Scene Understanding from Movable Platforms

Geiger, A., Lauer, M., Wojek, C., Stiller, C., Urtasun, R.

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 36(5):1012-1025, published, IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, May 2014 (article)

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel probabilistic generative model for multi-object traffic scene understanding from movable platforms which reasons jointly about the 3D scene layout as well as the location and orientation of objects in the scene. In particular, the scene topology, geometry and traffic activities are inferred from short video sequences. Inspired by the impressive driving capabilities of humans, our model does not rely on GPS, lidar or map knowledge. Instead, it takes advantage of a diverse set of visual cues in the form of vehicle tracklets, vanishing points, semantic scene labels, scene flow and occupancy grids. For each of these cues we propose likelihood functions that are integrated into a probabilistic generative model. We learn all model parameters from training data using contrastive divergence. Experiments conducted on videos of 113 representative intersections show that our approach successfully infers the correct layout in a variety of very challenging scenarios. To evaluate the importance of each feature cue, experiments using different feature combinations are conducted. Furthermore, we show how by employing context derived from the proposed method we are able to improve over the state-of-the-art in terms of object detection and object orientation estimation in challenging and cluttered urban environments.

avg ps

pdf link (url) [BibTex]

avg ps Geiger, A., Lauer, M., Wojek, C., Stiller, C., Urtasun, R. 3D Traffic Scene Understanding from Movable Platforms IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 36(5):1012-1025, published, IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, May 2014 (article)

pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Modeling the Human Body in 3D: Data Registration and Human Shape Representation

Tsoli, A.

Brown University, Department of Computer Science, May 2014 (phdthesis)

ps Tsoli, A. Modeling the Human Body in 3D: Data Registration and Human Shape Representation Brown University, Department of Computer Science, May 2014 (phdthesis)

pdf Youtube Supplements Project page link (url) [BibTex]

Model transport: towards scalable transfer learning on manifolds - supplemental material

Freifeld, O., Hauberg, S., Black, M. J.

(9), April 2014 (techreport)

Abstract

This technical report is complementary to "Model Transport: Towards Scalable Transfer Learning on Manifolds" and contains proofs, explanation of the attached video (visualization of bases from the body shape experiments), and high-resolution images of select results of individual reconstructions from the shape experiments. It is identical to the supplemental mate- rial submitted to the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2014) on November 2013.

PDF [BibTex]

ps Freifeld, O., Hauberg, S., Black, M. J. Model transport: towards scalable transfer learning on manifolds - supplemental material (9), April 2014 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

Probabilistic Solutions to Differential Equations and their Application to Riemannian Statistics

Hennig, P., Hauberg, S.

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 33, pages: 347-355, JMLR: Workshop and Conference Proceedings, (Editors: S Kaski and J Corander), Microtome Publishing, Brookline, MA, AISTATS, April 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We study a probabilistic numerical method for the solution of both boundary and initial value problems that returns a joint Gaussian process posterior over the solution. Such methods have concrete value in the statistics on Riemannian manifolds, where non-analytic ordinary differential equations are involved in virtually all computations. The probabilistic formulation permits marginalising the uncertainty of the numerical solution such that statistics are less sensitive to inaccuracies. This leads to new Riemannian algorithms for mean value computations and principal geodesic analysis. Marginalisation also means results can be less precise than point estimates, enabling a noticeable speed-up over the state of the art. Our approach is an argument for a wider point that uncertainty caused by numerical calculations should be tracked throughout the pipeline of machine learning algorithms.

ei ps pn

ei ps pn Hennig, P., Hauberg, S. Probabilistic Solutions to Differential Equations and their Application to Riemannian Statistics In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 33, pages: 347-355, JMLR: Workshop and Conference Proceedings, (Editors: S Kaski and J Corander), Microtome Publishing, Brookline, MA, AISTATS, April 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Youtube Supplements Project page link (url) [BibTex]

Multi-View Priors for Learning Detectors from Sparse Viewpoint Data

Pepik, B., Stark, M., Gehler, P., Schiele, B.

International Conference on Learning Representations, International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), April 2014 (conference)

Abstract

While the majority of today's object class models provide only 2D bounding boxes, far richer output hypotheses are desirable including viewpoint, fine-grained category, and 3D geometry estimate. However, models trained to provide richer output require larger amounts of training data, preferably well covering the relevant aspects such as viewpoint and fine-grained categories. In this paper, we address this issue from the perspective of transfer learning, and design an object class model that explicitly leverages correlations between visual features. Specifically, our model represents prior distributions over permissible multi-view detectors in a parametric way -- the priors are learned once from training data of a source object class, and can later be used to facilitate the learning of a detector for a target class. As we show in our experiments, this transfer is not only beneficial for detectors based on basic-level category representations, but also enables the robust learning of detectors that represent classes at finer levels of granularity, where training data is typically even scarcer and more unbalanced. As a result, we report largely improved performance in simultaneous 2D object localization and viewpoint estimation on a recent dataset of challenging street scenes.

reviews pdf Project Page [BibTex]

ps Pepik, B., Stark, M., Gehler, P., Schiele, B. Multi-View Priors for Learning Detectors from Sparse Viewpoint Data International Conference on Learning Representations, International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), April 2014 (conference)

reviews pdf Project Page [BibTex]

Adaptive Offset Correction for Intracortical Brain Computer Interfaces

Homer, M. L., Perge, J. A., Black, M. J., Harrison, M. T., Cash, S. S., Hochberg, L. R.

IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 22(2):239-248, March 2014 (article)

Abstract

Intracortical brain computer interfaces (iBCIs) decode intended movement from neural activity for the control of external devices such as a robotic arm. Standard approaches include a calibration phase to estimate decoding parameters. During iBCI operation, the statistical properties of the neural activity can depart from those observed during calibration, sometimes hindering a user’s ability to control the iBCI. To address this problem, we adaptively correct the offset terms within a Kalman filter decoder via penalized maximum likelihood estimation. The approach can handle rapid shifts in neural signal behavior (on the order of seconds) and requires no knowledge of the intended movement. The algorithm, called MOCA, was tested using simulated neural activity and evaluated retrospectively using data collected from two people with tetraplegia operating an iBCI. In 19 clinical research test cases, where a nonadaptive Kalman filter yielded relatively high decoding errors, MOCA significantly reduced these errors (10.6 ± 10.1\%; p < 0.05, pairwise t-test). MOCA did not significantly change the error in the remaining 23 cases where a nonadaptive Kalman filter already performed well. These results suggest that MOCA provides more robust decoding than the standard Kalman filter for iBCIs.

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Homer, M. L., Perge, J. A., Black, M. J., Harrison, M. T., Cash, S. S., Hochberg, L. R. Adaptive Offset Correction for Intracortical Brain Computer Interfaces IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 22(2):239-248, March 2014 (article)

pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Model-based Anthropometry: Predicting Measurements from 3D Human Scans in Multiple Poses

Tsoli, A., Loper, M., Black, M. J.

In Proceedings Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, pages: 83-90, IEEE , IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) , March 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Extracting anthropometric or tailoring measurements from 3D human body scans is important for applications such as virtual try-on, custom clothing, and online sizing. Existing commercial solutions identify anatomical landmarks on high-resolution 3D scans and then compute distances or circumferences on the scan. Landmark detection is sensitive to acquisition noise (e.g. holes) and these methods require subjects to adopt a specific pose. In contrast, we propose a solution we call model-based anthropometry. We fit a deformable 3D body model to scan data in one or more poses; this model-based fitting is robust to scan noise. This brings the scan into registration with a database of registered body scans. Then, we extract features from the registered model (rather than from the scan); these include, limb lengths, circumferences, and statistical features of global shape. Finally, we learn a mapping from these features to measurements using regularized linear regression. We perform an extensive evaluation using the CAESAR dataset and demonstrate that the accuracy of our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

ps Tsoli, A., Loper, M., Black, M. J. Model-based Anthropometry: Predicting Measurements from 3D Human Scans in Multiple Poses In Proceedings Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, pages: 83-90, IEEE , IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) , March 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Supplementary DOI Project Page [BibTex]

A freely-moving monkey treadmill model

Foster, J., Nuyujukian, P., Freifeld, O., Gao, H., Walker, R., Ryu, S., Meng, T., Murmann, B., Black, M., Shenoy, K.

J. of Neural Engineering, 11(4):046020, 2014 (article)

Abstract

Objective: Motor neuroscience and brain-machine interface (BMI) design is based on examining how the brain controls voluntary movement, typically by recording neural activity and behavior from animal models. Recording technologies used with these animal models have traditionally limited the range of behaviors that can be studied, and thus the generality of science and engineering research. We aim to design a freely-moving animal model using neural and behavioral recording technologies that do not constrain movement. Approach: We have established a freely-moving rhesus monkey model employing technology that transmits neural activity from an intracortical array using a head-mounted device and records behavior through computer vision using markerless motion capture. We demonstrate the excitability and utility of this new monkey model, including the first recordings from motor cortex while rhesus monkeys walk quadrupedally on a treadmill. Main results: Using this monkey model, we show that multi-unit threshold-crossing neural activity encodes the phase of walking and that the average ring rate of the threshold crossings covaries with the speed of individual steps. On a population level, we find that neural state-space trajectories of walking at different speeds have similar rotational dynamics in some dimensions that evolve at the step rate of walking, yet robustly separate by speed in other state-space dimensions. Significance: Freely-moving animal models may allow neuroscientists to examine a wider range of behaviors and can provide a flexible experimental paradigm for examining the neural mechanisms that underlie movement generation across behaviors and environments. For BMIs, freely-moving animal models have the potential to aid prosthetic design by examining how neural encoding changes with posture, environment, and other real-world context changes. Understanding this new realm of behavior in more naturalistic settings is essential for overall progress of basic motor neuroscience and for the successful translation of BMIs to people with paralysis.

ps Foster, J., Nuyujukian, P., Freifeld, O., Gao, H., Walker, R., Ryu, S., Meng, T., Murmann, B., Black, M., Shenoy, K. A freely-moving monkey treadmill model J. of Neural Engineering, 11(4):046020, 2014 (article)

pdf Supplementary DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Simulated Annealing

Gall, J.

In Encyclopedia of Computer Vision, pages: 737-741, 0, (Editors: Ikeuchi, K. ), Springer Verlag, 2014, to appear (inbook)

[BibTex]

ps Gall, J. Simulated Annealing In Encyclopedia of Computer Vision, pages: 737-741, 0, (Editors: Ikeuchi, K. ), Springer Verlag, 2014, to appear (inbook)

[BibTex]

A Quantitative Analysis of Current Practices in Optical Flow Estimation and the Principles behind Them

Sun, D., Roth, S., Black, M. J.

International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV), 106(2):115-137, 2014 (article)

Abstract

The accuracy of optical flow estimation algorithms has been improving steadily as evidenced by results on the Middlebury optical flow benchmark. The typical formulation, however, has changed little since the work of Horn and Schunck. We attempt to uncover what has made recent advances possible through a thorough analysis of how the objective function, the optimization method, and modern implementation practices influence accuracy. We discover that "classical'' flow formulations perform surprisingly well when combined with modern optimization and implementation techniques. One key implementation detail is the median filtering of intermediate flow fields during optimization. While this improves the robustness of classical methods it actually leads to higher energy solutions, meaning that these methods are not optimizing the original objective function. To understand the principles behind this phenomenon, we derive a new objective function that formalizes the median filtering heuristic. This objective function includes a non-local smoothness term that robustly integrates flow estimates over large spatial neighborhoods. By modifying this new term to include information about flow and image boundaries we develop a method that can better preserve motion details. To take advantage of the trend towards video in wide-screen format, we further introduce an asymmetric pyramid downsampling scheme that enables the estimation of longer range horizontal motions. The methods are evaluated on Middlebury, MPI Sintel, and KITTI datasets using the same parameter settings.

pdf full text code [BibTex]

ps Sun, D., Roth, S., Black, M. J. A Quantitative Analysis of Current Practices in Optical Flow Estimation and the Principles behind Them International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV), 106(2):115-137, 2014 (article)

pdf full text code [BibTex]

2012

Virtual Human Bodies with Clothing and Hair: From Images to Animation

Guan, P.

Brown University, Department of Computer Science, December 2012 (phdthesis)

2012

ps Guan, P. Virtual Human Bodies with Clothing and Hair: From Images to Animation Brown University, Department of Computer Science, December 2012 (phdthesis)

Coregistration: Supplemental Material

Hirshberg, D., Loper, M., Rachlin, E., Black, M. J.

(No. 4), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2012 (techreport)

ps Hirshberg, D., Loper, M., Rachlin, E., Black, M. J. Coregistration: Supplemental Material (No. 4), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2012 (techreport)

Freifeld, O., Black, M. J.

Lie Bodies: A Manifold Representation of 3D Human Shape

In European Conf. on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 1-14, Part I, LNCS 7572, (Editors: A. Fitzgibbon et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Three-dimensional object shape is commonly represented in terms of deformations of a triangular mesh from an exemplar shape. Existing models, however, are based on a Euclidean representation of shape deformations. In contrast, we argue that shape has a manifold structure: For example, summing the shape deformations for two people does not necessarily yield a deformation corresponding to a valid human shape, nor does the Euclidean difference of these two deformations provide a meaningful measure of shape dissimilarity. Consequently, we define a novel manifold for shape representation, with emphasis on body shapes, using a new Lie group of deformations. This has several advantages. First we define triangle deformations exactly, removing non-physical deformations and redundant degrees of freedom common to previous methods. Second, the Riemannian structure of Lie Bodies enables a more meaningful definition of body shape similarity by measuring distance between bodies on the manifold of body shape deformations. Third, the group structure allows the valid composition of deformations. This is important for models that factor body shape deformations into multiple causes or represent shape as a linear combination of basis shapes. Finally, body shape variation is modeled using statistics on manifolds. Instead of modeling Euclidean shape variation with Principal Component Analysis we capture shape variation on the manifold using Principal Geodesic Analysis. Our experiments show consistent visual and quantitative advantages of Lie Bodies over traditional Euclidean models of shape deformation and our representation can be easily incorporated into existing methods.

pdf supplemental material youtube poster eigenshape video code Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Freifeld, O., Black, M. J. Lie Bodies: A Manifold Representation of 3D Human Shape In European Conf. on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 1-14, Part I, LNCS 7572, (Editors: A. Fitzgibbon et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

pdf supplemental material youtube poster eigenshape video code Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Coregistration: Simultaneous alignment and modeling of articulated 3D shape

Hirshberg, D., Loper, M., Rachlin, E., Black, M.

In European Conf. on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 242-255, LNCS 7577, Part IV, (Editors: A. Fitzgibbon et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) shape models are powerful because they enable the inference of object shape from incomplete, noisy, or ambiguous 2D or 3D data. For example, realistic parameterized 3D human body models have been used to infer the shape and pose of people from images. To train such models, a corpus of 3D body scans is typically brought into registration by aligning a common 3D human-shaped template to each scan. This is an ill-posed problem that typically involves solving an optimization problem with regularization terms that penalize implausible deformations of the template. When aligning a corpus, however, we can do better than generic regularization. If we have a model of how the template can deform then alignments can be regularized by this model. Constructing a model of deformations, however, requires having a corpus that is already registered. We address this chicken-and-egg problem by approaching modeling and registration together. By minimizing a single objective function, we reliably obtain high quality registration of noisy, incomplete, laser scans, while simultaneously learning a highly realistic articulated body model. The model greatly improves robustness to noise and missing data. Since the model explains a corpus of body scans, it captures how body shape varies across people and poses.

pdf publisher site poster supplemental material (400MB) Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Hirshberg, D., Loper, M., Rachlin, E., Black, M. Coregistration: Simultaneous alignment and modeling of articulated 3D shape In European Conf. on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 242-255, LNCS 7577, Part IV, (Editors: A. Fitzgibbon et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

pdf publisher site poster supplemental material (400MB) Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Lie Bodies: A Manifold Representation of 3D Human Shape. Supplemental Material

Freifeld, O., Black, M. J.

(No. 5), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2012 (techreport)

ps Freifeld, O., Black, M. J. Lie Bodies: A Manifold Representation of 3D Human Shape. Supplemental Material (No. 5), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2012 (techreport)

publisher's site code pdf Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Coupled Action Recognition and Pose Estimation from Multiple Views

Yao, A., Gall, J., van Gool, L.

International Journal of Computer Vision, 100(1):16-37, October 2012 (article)

ps Yao, A., Gall, J., van Gool, L. Coupled Action Recognition and Pose Estimation from Multiple Views International Journal of Computer Vision, 100(1):16-37, October 2012 (article)

publisher's site code pdf Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

MPI-Sintel Optical Flow Benchmark: Supplemental Material

Butler, D. J., Wulff, J., Stanley, G. B., Black, M. J.

(No. 6), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2012 (techreport)

ps Butler, D. J., Wulff, J., Stanley, G. B., Black, M. J. MPI-Sintel Optical Flow Benchmark: Supplemental Material (No. 6), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2012 (techreport)

pdf dataset youtube talk supplemental material Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Lessons and insights from creating a synthetic optical flow benchmark

Wulff, J., Butler, D. J., Stanley, G. B., Black, M. J.

In ECCV Workshop on Unsolved Problems in Optical Flow and Stereo Estimation, pages: 168-177, Part II, LNCS 7584, (Editors: A. Fusiello et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

pdf dataset poster youtube Project Page [BibTex]

ps Wulff, J., Butler, D. J., Stanley, G. B., Black, M. J. Lessons and insights from creating a synthetic optical flow benchmark In ECCV Workshop on Unsolved Problems in Optical Flow and Stereo Estimation, pages: 168-177, Part II, LNCS 7584, (Editors: A. Fusiello et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

pdf dataset poster youtube Project Page [BibTex]

3D2PM – 3D Deformable Part Models

Pepik, B., Gehler, P., Stark, M., Schiele, B.

In Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 356-370, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Fitzgibbon, Andrew W. and Lazebnik, Svetlana and Perona, Pietro and Sato, Yoichi and Schmid, Cordelia), Springer, Firenze, October 2012 (inproceedings)

pdf video poster Project Page [BibTex]

ps Pepik, B., Gehler, P., Stark, M., Schiele, B. 3D2PM – 3D Deformable Part Models In Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 356-370, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Fitzgibbon, Andrew W. and Lazebnik, Svetlana and Perona, Pietro and Sato, Yoichi and Schmid, Cordelia), Springer, Firenze, October 2012 (inproceedings)

pdf video poster Project Page [BibTex]

A naturalistic open source movie for optical flow evaluation

Butler, D. J., Wulff, J., Stanley, G. B., Black, M. J.

In European Conf. on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 611-625, Part IV, LNCS 7577, (Editors: A. Fitzgibbon et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Ground truth optical flow is difficult to measure in real scenes with natural motion. As a result, optical flow data sets are restricted in terms of size, complexity, and diversity, making optical flow algorithms difficult to train and test on realistic data. We introduce a new optical flow data set derived from the open source 3D animated short film Sintel. This data set has important features not present in the popular Middlebury flow evaluation: long sequences, large motions, specular reflections, motion blur, defocus blur, and atmospheric effects. Because the graphics data that generated the movie is open source, we are able to render scenes under conditions of varying complexity to evaluate where existing flow algorithms fail. We evaluate several recent optical flow algorithms and find that current highly-ranked methods on the Middlebury evaluation have difficulty with this more complex data set suggesting further research on optical flow estimation is needed. To validate the use of synthetic data, we compare the image- and flow-statistics of Sintel to those of real films and videos and show that they are similar. The data set, metrics, and evaluation website are publicly available.

ps Butler, D. J., Wulff, J., Stanley, G. B., Black, M. J. A naturalistic open source movie for optical flow evaluation In European Conf. on Computer Vision (ECCV), pages: 611-625, Part IV, LNCS 7577, (Editors: A. Fitzgibbon et al. (Eds.)), Springer-Verlag, October 2012 (inproceedings)

pdf dataset youtube talk supplemental material Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

A framework for relating neural activity to freely moving behavior

Foster, J. D., Nuyujukian, P., Freifeld, O., Ryu, S., Black, M. J., Shenoy, K. V.

In 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’12), pages: 2736 -2739 , IEEE, San Diego, August 2012 (inproceedings)

ps Foster, J. D., Nuyujukian, P., Freifeld, O., Ryu, S., Black, M. J., Shenoy, K. V. A framework for relating neural activity to freely moving behavior In 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’12), pages: 2736 -2739 , IEEE, San Diego, August 2012 (inproceedings)