SOVEREIGN: A Self-Organizing, Vision, Expectation, Recognition, Emotion, Intelligent, Goal-Oriented Navigation System

Both animals and mobile robots, or animats, need adaptive control systems to guide their movements through a novel environment. Such control systems need reactive mechanisms for exploration, and learned plans to efficiently reach goal objects once the environment is familiar. How reactive and planned behaviors interact together in real time, and arc released at the appropriate times, during autonomous navigation remains a major unsolved problern. This work presents an end-to-end model to address this problem, named SOVEREIGN: A Self-Organizing, Vision, Expectation, Recognition, Emotion, Intelligent, Goal-oriented Navigation system. The model comprises several interacting subsystems, governed by systems of nonlinear differential equations. As the animat explores the environment, a vision module processes visual inputs using networks that arc sensitive to visual form and motion. Targets processed within the visual form system arc categorized by real-time incremental learning. Simultaneously, visual target position is computed with respect to the animat's body. Estimates of target position activate a motor system to initiate approach movements toward the target. Motion cues from animat locomotion can elicit orienting head or camera movements to bring a never target into view. Approach and orienting movements arc alternately performed during animat navigation. Cumulative estimates of each movement, based on both visual and proprioceptive cues, arc stored within a motor working memory. Sensory cues are stored in a parallel sensory working memory. These working memories trigger learning of sensory and motor sequence chunks, which together control planned movements. Effective chunk combinations arc selectively enhanced via reinforcement learning when the animat is rewarded. The planning chunks effect a gradual transition from reactive to planned behavior. The model can read-out different motor sequences under different motivational states and learns more efficient paths to rewarded goals as exploration proceeds. Several volitional signals automatically gate the interactions between model subsystems at appropriate times. A 3-D visual simulation environment reproduces the animat's sensory experiences as it moves through a simplified spatial environment. The SOVEREIGN model exhibits robust goal-oriented learning of sequential motor behaviors. Its biomimctic structure explicates a number of brain processes which are involved in spatial navigation.

Boosting Nearest Neighbor Classifiers for Multiclass Recognition

This paper introduces an algorithm that uses boosting to learn a distance measure for multiclass k-nearest neighbor classification. Given a family of distance measures as input, AdaBoost is used to learn a weighted distance measure, that is a linear combination of the input measures. The proposed method can be seen both as a novel way to learn a distance measure from data, and as a novel way to apply boosting to multiclass recognition problems, that does not require output codes. In our approach, multiclass recognition of objects is reduced into a single binary recognition task, defined on triples of objects. Preliminary experiments with eight UCI datasets yield no clear winner among our method, boosting using output codes, and k-nn classification using an unoptimized distance measure. Our algorithm did achieve lower error rates in some of the datasets, which indicates that, in some domains, it may lead to better results than existing methods.

Simultaneous Localization and Recognition of Dynamic Hand Gestures

A framework for the simultaneous localization and recognition of dynamic hand gestures is proposed. At the core of this framework is a dynamic space-time warping (DSTW) algorithm, that aligns a pair of query and model gestures in both space and time. For every frame of the query sequence, feature detectors generate multiple hand region candidates. Dynamic programming is then used to compute both a global matching cost, which is used to recognize the query gesture, and a warping path, which aligns the query and model sequences in time, and also finds the best hand candidate region in every query frame. The proposed framework includes translation invariant recognition of gestures, a desirable property for many HCI systems. The performance of the approach is evaluated on a dataset of hand signed digits gestured by people wearing short sleeve shirts, in front of a background containing other non-hand skin-colored objects. The algorithm simultaneously localizes the gesturing hand and recognizes the hand-signed digit. Although DSTW is illustrated in a gesture recognition setting, the proposed algorithm is a general method for matching time series, that allows for multiple candidate feature vectors to be extracted at each time step.

Handsignals Recognition From Video Using 3D Motion Capture Data

Hand signals are commonly used in applications such as giving instructions to a pilot for airplane take off or direction of a crane operator by a foreman on the ground. A new algorithm for recognizing hand signals from a single camera is proposed. Typically, tracked 2D feature positions of hand signals are matched to 2D training images. In contrast, our approach matches the 2D feature positions to an archive of 3D motion capture sequences. The method avoids explicit reconstruction of the 3D articulated motion from 2D image features. Instead, the matching between the 2D and 3D sequence is done by backprojecting the 3D motion capture data onto 2D. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in an example application: recognizing six classes of basketball referee hand signals in video.

Modal Matching for Correspondence and Recognition

Modal matching is a new method for establishing correspondences and computing canonical descriptions. The method is based on the idea of describing objects in terms of generalized symmetries, as defined by each object's eigenmodes. The resulting modal description is used for object recognition and categorization, where shape similarities are expressed as the amounts of modal deformation energy needed to align the two objects. In general, modes provide a global-to-local ordering of shape deformation and thus allow for selecting which types of deformations are used in object alignment and comparison. In contrast to previous techniques, which required correspondence to be computed with an initial or prototype shape, modal matching utilizes a new type of finite element formulation that allows for an object's eigenmodes to be computed directly from available image information. This improved formulation provides greater generality and accuracy, and is applicable to data of any dimensionality. Correspondence results with 2-D contour and point feature data are shown, and recognition experiments with 2-D images of hand tools and airplanes are described.

Color Region Grouping and Shape Recognition with Deformable Models

A new deformable shape-based method for color region segmentation is described. The method includes two stages: over-segmentation using a traditional color region segmentation algorithm, followed by deformable model-based region merging via grouping and hypothesis selection. During the second stage, region merging and object identification are executed simultaneously. A statistical shape model is used to estimate the likelihood of region groupings and model hypotheses. The prior distribution on deformation parameters is precomputed using principal component analysis over a training set of region groupings. Once trained, the system autonomously segments deformed shapes from the background, while not merging them with similarly colored adjacent objects. Furthermore, the recovered parametric shape model can be used directly in object recognition and comparison. Experiments in segmentation and image retrieval are reported.

Indexing Methods for Efficient Multiclass Recognition

Many real world image analysis problems, such as face recognition and hand pose estimation, involve recognizing a large number of classes of objects or shapes. Large margin methods, such as AdaBoost and Support Vector Machines (SVMs), often provide competitive accuracy rates, but at the cost of evaluating a large number of binary classifiers, thus making it difficult to apply such methods when thousands or millions of classes need to be recognized. This thesis proposes a filter-and-refine framework, whereby, given a test pattern, a small number of candidate classes can be identified efficiently at the filter step, and computationally expensive large margin classifiers are used to evaluate these candidates at the refine step. Two different filtering methods are proposed, ClassMap and OVA-VS (One-vs.-All classification using Vector Search). ClassMap is an embedding-based method, works for both boosted classifiers and SVMs, and tends to map the patterns and their associated classes close to each other in a vector space. OVA-VS maps OVA classifiers and test patterns to vectors based on the weights and outputs of weak classifiers of the boosting scheme. At runtime, finding the strongest-responding OVA classifier becomes a classical vector search problem, where well-known methods can be used to gain efficiency. In our experiments, the proposed methods achieve significant speed-ups, in some cases up to two orders of magnitude, compared to exhaustive evaluation of all OVA classifiers. This was achieved in hand pose recognition and face recognition systems where the number of classes ranges from 535 to 48,600.

3D Trajectory Recovery for Tracking Multiple Objects and Trajectory Guided Recognition of Actions

A mechanism is proposed that integrates low-level (image processing), mid-level (recursive 3D trajectory estimation), and high-level (action recognition) processes. It is assumed that the system observes multiple moving objects via a single, uncalibrated video camera. A novel extended Kalman filter formulation is used in estimating the relative 3D motion trajectories up to a scale factor. The recursive estimation process provides a prediction and error measure that is exploited in higher-level stages of action recognition. Conversely, higher-level mechanisms provide feedback that allows the system to reliably segment and maintain the tracking of moving objects before, during, and after occlusion. The 3D trajectory, occlusion, and segmentation information are utilized in extracting stabilized views of the moving object. Trajectory-guided recognition (TGR) is proposed as a new and efficient method for adaptive classification of action. The TGR approach is demonstrated using "motion history images" that are then recognized via a mixture of Gaussian classifier. The system was tested in recognizing various dynamic human outdoor activities; e.g., running, walking, roller blading, and cycling. Experiments with synthetic data sets are used to evaluate stability of the trajectory estimator with respect to noise.

Recognition of Human Action Using Moment-Based Feature

The performance of different classification approaches is evaluated using a view-based approach for motion representation. The view-based approach uses computer vision and image processing techniques to register and process the video sequence. Two motion representations called Motion Energy Images and Motion History Image are then constructed. These representations collapse the temporal component in a way that no explicit temporal analysis or sequence matching is needed. Statistical descriptions are then computed using moment-based features and dimensionality reduction techniques. For these tests, we used 7 Hu moments, which are invariant to scale and translation. Principal Components Analysis is used to reduce the dimensionality of this representation. The system is trained using different subjects performing a set of examples of every action to be recognized. Given these samples, K-nearest neighbor, Gaussian, and Gaussian mixture classifiers are used to recognize new actions. Experiments are conducted using instances of eight human actions (i.e., eight classes) performed by seven different subjects. Comparisons in the performance among these classifiers under different conditions are analyzed and reported. Our main goals are to test this dimensionality-reduced representation of actions, and more importantly to use this representation to compare the advantages of different classification approaches in this recognition task.

Trajectory Guided Tracking and Recognition of Actions

A combined 2D, 3D approach is presented that allows for robust tracking of moving people and recognition of actions. It is assumed that the system observes multiple moving objects via a single, uncalibrated video camera. Low-level features are often insufficient for detection, segmentation, and tracking of non-rigid moving objects. Therefore, an improved mechanism is proposed that integrates low-level (image processing), mid-level (recursive 3D trajectory estimation), and high-level (action recognition) processes. A novel extended Kalman filter formulation is used in estimating the relative 3D motion trajectories up to a scale factor. The recursive estimation process provides a prediction and error measure that is exploited in higher-level stages of action recognition. Conversely, higher-level mechanisms provide feedback that allows the system to reliably segment and maintain the tracking of moving objects before, during, and after occlusion. The 3D trajectory, occlusion, and segmentation information are utilized in extracting stabilized views of the moving object that are then used as input to action recognition modules. Trajectory-guided recognition (TGR) is proposed as a new and efficient method for adaptive classification of action. The TGR approach is demonstrated using "motion history images" that are then recognized via a mixture-of-Gaussians classifier. The system was tested in recognizing various dynamic human outdoor activities: running, walking, roller blading, and cycling. Experiments with real and synthetic data sets are used to evaluate stability of the trajectory estimator with respect to noise.

Online and Offline Character Recognition Using Alignment to Prototypes

Nearest neighbor classifiers are simple to implement, yet they can model complex non-parametric distributions, and provide state-of-the-art recognition accuracy in OCR databases. At the same time, they may be too slow for practical character recognition, especially when they rely on similarity measures that require computationally expensive pairwise alignments between characters. This paper proposes an efficient method for computing an approximate similarity score between two characters based on their exact alignment to a small number of prototypes. The proposed method is applied to both online and offline character recognition, where similarity is based on widely used and computationally expensive alignment methods, i.e., Dynamic Time Warping and the Hungarian method respectively. In both cases significant recognition speedup is obtained at the expense of only a minor increase in recognition error.

Learning Embeddings for Indexing, Retrieval, and Classification, with Applications to Object and Shape Recognition in Image Databases

Nearest neighbor retrieval is the task of identifying, given a database of objects and a query object, the objects in the database that are the most similar to the query. Retrieving nearest neighbors is a necessary component of many practical applications, in fields as diverse as computer vision, pattern recognition, multimedia databases, bioinformatics, and computer networks. At the same time, finding nearest neighbors accurately and efficiently can be challenging, especially when the database contains a large number of objects, and when the underlying distance measure is computationally expensive. This thesis proposes new methods for improving the efficiency and accuracy of nearest neighbor retrieval and classification in spaces with computationally expensive distance measures. The proposed methods are domain-independent, and can be applied in arbitrary spaces, including non-Euclidean and non-metric spaces. In this thesis particular emphasis is given to computer vision applications related to object and shape recognition, where expensive non-Euclidean distance measures are often needed to achieve high accuracy. The first contribution of this thesis is the BoostMap algorithm for embedding arbitrary spaces into a vector space with a computationally efficient distance measure. Using this approach, an approximate set of nearest neighbors can be retrieved efficiently - often orders of magnitude faster than retrieval using the exact distance measure in the original space. The BoostMap algorithm has two key distinguishing features with respect to existing embedding methods. First, embedding construction explicitly maximizes the amount of nearest neighbor information preserved by the embedding. Second, embedding construction is treated as a machine learning problem, in contrast to existing methods that are based on geometric considerations. The second contribution is a method for constructing query-sensitive distance measures for the purposes of nearest neighbor retrieval and classification. In high-dimensional spaces, query-sensitive distance measures allow for automatic selection of the dimensions that are the most informative for each specific query object. It is shown theoretically and experimentally that query-sensitivity increases the modeling power of embeddings, allowing embeddings to capture a larger amount of the nearest neighbor structure of the original space. The third contribution is a method for speeding up nearest neighbor classification by combining multiple embedding-based nearest neighbor classifiers in a cascade. In a cascade, computationally efficient classifiers are used to quickly classify easy cases, and classifiers that are more computationally expensive and also more accurate are only applied to objects that are harder to classify. An interesting property of the proposed cascade method is that, under certain conditions, classification time actually decreases as the size of the database increases, a behavior that is in stark contrast to the behavior of typical nearest neighbor classification systems. The proposed methods are evaluated experimentally in several different applications: hand shape recognition, off-line character recognition, online character recognition, and efficient retrieval of time series. In all datasets, the proposed methods lead to significant improvements in accuracy and efficiency compared to existing state-of-the-art methods. In some datasets, the general-purpose methods introduced in this thesis even outperform domain-specific methods that have been custom-designed for such datasets.

Biologically Inspired Approaches to Automated Feature Extraction and Target Recognition

Ongoing research at Boston University has produced computational models of biological vision and learning that embody a growing corpus of scientific data and predictions. Vision models perform long-range grouping and figure/ground segmentation, and memory models create attentionally controlled recognition codes that intrinsically cornbine botton-up activation and top-down learned expectations. These two streams of research form the foundation of novel dynamically integrated systems for image understanding. Simulations using multispectral images illustrate road completion across occlusions in a cluttered scene and information fusion from incorrect labels that are simultaneously inconsistent and correct. The CNS Vision and Technology Labs (cns.bu.edulvisionlab and cns.bu.edu/techlab) are further integrating science and technology through analysis, testing, and development of cognitive and neural models for large-scale applications, complemented by software specification and code distribution.

View-Invariant Object Category Learning, Recognition, and Search: How Spatial and Object Attention Are Coordinated Using Surface-Based Attentional Shrouds

Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-01-1-0397); National Science Foundation (SBE-0354378); Office of Naval Research (N00014-01-1-0624)

Cortical Learning of Recognition Categories: A Resolution of the Exemplar Vs. Prototype Debate

Do humans and animals learn exemplars or prototypes when they categorize objects and events in the world? How are different degrees of abstraction realized through learning by neurons in inferotemporal and prefrontal cortex? How do top-down expectations influence the course of learning? Thirty related human cognitive experiments (the 5-4 category structure) have been used to test competing views in the prototype-exemplar debate. In these experiments, during the test phase, subjects unlearn in a characteristic way items that they had learned to categorize perfectly in the training phase. Many cognitive models do not describe how an individual learns or forgets such categories through time. Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) neural models provide such a description, and also clarify both psychological and neurobiological data. Matching of bottom-up signals with learned top-down expectations plays a key role in ART model learning. Here, an ART model is used to learn incrementally in response to 5-4 category structure stimuli. Simulation results agree with experimental data, achieving perfect categorization in training and a good match to the pattern of errors exhibited by human subjects in the testing phase. These results show how the model learns both prototypes and certain exemplars in the training phase. ART prototypes are, however, unlike the ones posited in the traditional prototype-exemplar debate. Rather, they are critical patterns of features to which a subject learns to pay attention based on past predictive success and the order in which exemplars are experienced. Perturbations of old memories by newly arriving test items generate a performance curve that closely matches the performance pattern of human subjects. The model also clarifies exemplar-based accounts of data concerning amnesia.