BCN Perceptual Computing Lab

New Book: Traffic-Sign Recognition Systems.

jordivitria — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:49:52 +0000

We have published a new book: Escalera, S., Baró, X., Pujol, O., Vitrià, J., Radeva, P. Traffic-Sign Recognition Systems. Sringer. Series: SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. 2011, ISBN 978-1-4471-2244-9, based on our work in a long coordinated project with the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya.

This work presents a full generic approach to the detection and recognition of traffic signs. The approach, originally developed for a mobile mapping application, is based on the latest computer vision methods for object detection, and on powerful methods for multiclass classification. The challenge was to robustly detect a set of different sign classes in real time, and to classify each detected sign into a large, extensible set of classes. To address this challenge, several state-of-the-art methods were developed that can be used for different recognition problems. Following an introduction to the problems of traffic sign detection and categorization, the text focuses on the problem of detection, and presents recent developments in this field. The text then surveys a specific methodology for the problem of traffic sign categorization – Error-Correcting Output Codes – and presents several algorithms, performing experimental validation on a mobile mapping application. The work ends with a discussion on future lines of research, and continuing challenges for traffic sign recognition.

You can get your copy at Amazon!

New PLOS One publication.

jordivitria — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:39:12 +0000

We have recently published a new paper in the Journal PLOS One:

Rojas Q. M, Masip D, Todorov A, Vitria J (2011) Automatic Prediction of Facial Trait Judgments: Appearance vs. Structural Models. PLoS ONE 6(8): e23323. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023323

This paper, which studied whether the ability to decide which faces fall into social categories like attractive or threatening is learnable from the point of view of computer science, has attracted a lot of interest and it has been featured in:

Internet Media:

Newspapers and Journals:

TV & Radio Stations:

New paper in Plos ONE on Automatic Prediction of Facial Trait Judgments

bcnpcl — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:50:05 +0000

Evaluating other individuals with respect to personality characteristics plays a crucial role in human relations and it is the focus of attention for research in diverse fields such as psychology and interactive computer systems. In a collaboration work with A.Todorov (Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) we experimentally tested whether the automatic prediction of facial trait judgments (e.g. dominance) can be made by using the full appearance information of the face and whether a reduced representation of its structure is sufficient. This work has been recently accepted for publication in Plos ONE (available in a few days). Congratulations Mario!

Master’s Fellowship

bcnpcl — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:00:30 +0000

Caixa Catalunya provides some Master’s fellowships that are open to students interested in the Master in Artificial Intelligence at UB-UPC-URV. If you are interested to work with our group on computer vision and machine learning problems, this is an excellent opportunity. Hurry up!

More information (in Catalan) at: Beca.pdf

ICMI Deadline

jordivitria — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:14:42 +0000

The ICMI 2011 deadline, for papers and demonstrations and exhibits, is near. Don’t miss it, it will be a great conference!

ICCV 2011 Workshop on Human Interaction in Computer Vision

bcnpcl — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:20:09 +0000

We are organizing an ICCV Workshop: Human Interaction in Computer Vision.

Social and industrial demands for Multimodal Interactive (MI) technologies and advanced man‐machine interfaces are increasing dramatically. Computer Vision (CV) plays a highly relevant role of in the development of these MI technologies and interfaces. However, traditional CV technologies have mainly focused on full automation, even though full automation often proves elusive or unnatural in many applications, where technology is expected to assist rather than replace human agents.

In the framework of the ICCV conference, this workshop focuses on discussing the human interaction role in computer vision algorithms. HICV attempts to analyze how existing CV technologies can naturally take benefit from the development of advanced interactive systems.

The interactive computer vision topic includes several research lines, ranging from efficient data annotation, image segmentation, applications to medical image analysis, semi‐supervised learning and other novel techniques involving Human‐in‐the‐Loop Computer Vision. Finally, this workshop pretends to identify the future challenges and opportunities entailed by the human‐interaction paradigm.

The workshop is sponsored by MIPRCV, the Spanish project about Multimodal Interaction in Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision:

More information on http://hicv2011.wordpress.com/about/

IbPRIA Deadline Extension

jordivitria — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 09:30:01 +0000

We are also deeply involved in the organization of the Fifth
Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, which will be held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), June 8-10, 2011. The deadline for proposals has been extended until November 29th.

ICMI 2011 Call for Papers and Demos

jordivitria — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 09:15:23 +0000

The 13th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, ICMI 2011, will be held in Alicante, Spain, 14-18 November 2011. Our group is involved in the organization. We expect a great success for this conference!

The public website of the conference is available at: http://www.acm.org/icmi/2011

Success of our team in the 2010 VOC Pascal Challenge

jordivitria — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:33:50 +0000

This summer, some of our lab members participated in preparing a submission for the Pascal VOC competition. The Pascal VOC is an opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of computer vision techniques on a large-scale dataset of hidden test data.

The BCNPCL team placed FIRST in the challenging person layout competition. The organizers of the Pascal Workshop this year were especially interesting in the renewed interest in the difficult problem. Full results here:
http://pascallin.ecs.soton.ac.uk/challenges/VOC/voc2010/results/index.html (search for ‘comp8′)

In the news: Visual system interprets sign languages.

bcnpcl — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:39:07 +0000

Our work on an automatic system to interpret sign languages has been referenced in several news services and newpapers: PhysOrg.com, Life Science World, Alpha Galileo, Red Orbit, Science Daily, World News, EurekAlert, Sordonautas, Consumer-Eroski, Europa Press, Iberestudios, Protocolo, Computer Vision Central and ABC.