<p>This thesis covers topics relevant to model-based coding. Model-based coding is a promising very low bit rate video coding technique. The idea behind this technique is to parameterize a talking head and to extract and transmit the parameters describing facial movements. At the receiver, the parameters are used to reconstruct the talking head. Since only high-level animation parameters are transmitted, very high compression can be achieved with this coding scheme. This thesis covers the following three key problems.</p><p>Although it is a fundamental problem, the initialization problem, has been neglected some extent in the literature. In this thesis, we pay particular attention to the study of this problem. We propose a pseudo-automatic initialization scheme: an Analysis-by-Synthesis scheme based on Simulated Annealing. It has been proved to be an efficient scheme.</p><p>Owing to technical advance today and the newly emerged MPEG-4 standard, new schemes of performing texture mapping and motion estimation are suggested which use sample based direct texture mapping; the feasibility of using active motion estimation is explored which proves to be able to give more than 10 times tracking resolution. Based on the matured face detection technique, Dynamic Programming is introduced to face detection module and work for face tracking.</p><p>Another important problem addressed in this thesis is how to evaluate the face tracking techniques. We studied the evaluation problems by examining the commonly used method, which employs a physical magnetic sensor to provide "ground truth". In this thesis we point out that it is quite misleading to use such a method.</p>

This thesis covers topics relevant to model-based coding. Model-based coding is a promising very low bit rate video coding technique. The idea behind this technique is to parameterize a talking head and to extract and transmit the parameters describing facial movements. At the receiver, the parameters are used to reconstruct the talking head. Since only high-level animation parameters are transmitted, very high compression can be achieved with this coding scheme. This thesis covers the following three key problems. Although it is a fundamental problem, the initialization problem, has been neglected some extent in the literature. In this thesis, we pay particular attention to the study of this problem. We propose a pseudo-automatic initialization scheme: an Analysis-by-Synthesis scheme based on Simulated Annealing. It has been proved to be an efficient scheme. Owing to technical advance today and the newly emerged MPEG-4 standard, new schemes of performing texture mapping and motion estimation are suggested which use sample based direct texture mapping; the feasibility of using active motion estimation is explored which proves to be able to give more than 10 times tracking resolution. Based on the matured face detection technique, Dynamic Programming is introduced to face detection module and work for face tracking. Another important problem addressed in this thesis is how to evaluate the face tracking techniques. We studied the evaluation problems by examining the commonly used method, which employs a physical magnetic sensor to provide "ground truth". In this thesis we point out that it is quite misleading to use such a method.

Tracking of human motion and object identification and recognition are important in many applications including motion capture for human-machine interaction systems. This research is part of a global project to enable a service robot to recognize new objects and perform different object-related tasks based on task guidance and demonstration provided by a general user. This research consists of the calibration and testing of two vision systems which are part of a robot-vision system. First, real-time tracking of a human hand is achieved using images acquired from three calibrated synchronized cameras. Hand pose is determined from the positions of physical markers and input to the robot system in real-time. Second, a multi-line laser camera range sensor is designed, calibrated, and mounted on a robot end-effector to provide three-dimensional (3D) geometry information about objects in the robot environment. The laser-camera sensor includes two cameras to provide stereo vision. For the 3D hand tracking, a novel score-based hand tracking scheme is presented employing dynamic multi-threshold marker detection, a stereo camera-pair utilization scheme, marker matching and labeling using epipolar geometry and hand pose axis analysis, to enable real-time hand tracking under occlusion and non-uniform lighting environments. For surface-geometry measurement using the multi-line laser range sensor, two different approaches are analyzed for two-dimensional (2D) to 3D coordinate mapping, using Bezier surface fitting and neural networks, respectively. The neural-network approach was found to be a more viable approach for surface-geometry measurement worth future exploration for its lower magnitude of 3D reconstruction error and consistency over different regions of the object space.

Tracking of human motion and object identification and recognition are important in many applications including motion capture for human-machine interaction systems. This research is part of a global project to enable a service robot to recognize new objects and perform different object-related tasks based on task guidance and demonstration provided by a general user. This research consists of the calibration and testing of two vision systems which are part of a robot-vision system. First, real-time tracking of a human hand is achieved using images acquired from three calibrated synchronized cameras. Hand pose is determined from the positions of physical markers and input to the robot system in real-time. Second, a multi-line laser camera range sensor is designed, calibrated, and mounted on a robot end-effector to provide three-dimensional (3D) geometry information about objects in the robot environment. The laser-camera sensor includes two cameras to provide stereo vision. For the 3D hand tracking, a novel score-based hand tracking scheme is presented employing dynamic multi-threshold marker detection, a stereo camera-pair utilization scheme, marker matching and labeling using epipolar geometry and hand pose axis analysis, to enable real-time hand tracking under occlusion and non-uniform lighting environments. For surface-geometry measurement using the multi-line laser range sensor, two different approaches are analyzed for two-dimensional (2D) to 3D coordinate mapping, using Bezier surface fitting and neural networks, respectively. The neural-network approach was found to be a more viable approach for surface-geometry measurement worth future exploration for its lower magnitude of 3D reconstruction error and consistency over different regions of the object space.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) have been the focus of significant research interest in both military and commercial areas since they have a variety of practical applications including reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, search and rescue, patrolling, real-time monitoring, and mapping, to name a few. To increase the autonomy and the capability of these UAV's and thus to reduce the workload of human operators, typical autonomous UAV's are usually equipped with both a navigation system and a tracking system. The navigation system provides high-rate ownship states (typically ownship inertial position, inertial velocity, and attitude) that are directly used in the autopilot system, and the tracking system provides low-rate target tracking states (typically target relative position and velocity with respect to the ownship). Target states in the global frame can be obtained by adding the ownship states and the target tracking states. The data estimated from this combination of the navigation system and the tracking system provide key information for the design of most UAV guidance laws, control command generation, trajectory generation, and path planning. As a baseline system that estimates ownship states, an integrated navigation system is designed by using an extended Kalman filter (EKF) with sequential measurement updates. In order to effectively fuse various sources of aiding sensor information, the sequential measurement update algorithm is introduced in the design of the integrated navigation system with the objective of being implemented in low-cost autonomous UAV's. Since estimated state accuracy using a low-cost, MEMS-based IMU degrades with time, several absolute (low update rate but bounded error in time) sensors, including the GPS receiver, the magnetometer, and the altimeter, can compensate for time-degrading errors. In this work, the sequential measurement update algorithm in smaller vectors and matrices is capable of providing a convenient framework for fusing the many sources of information in the design of integrated navigation systems. In this framework, several aiding sensor measurements with different size and update rates are easily fused with basic high-rate IMU processing. In order to provide a new mechanism that estimates ownship states, a new nonlinear filtering framework, called the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) with sequential measurement updates, is developed and applied to the design of a new integrated navigation system. The UKF is known to be more accurate and convenient to use with a slightly higher computational cost. This filter provides at least second-order accuracy by approximating Gaussian distributions rather than arbitrary nonlinear functions. This is compared to the first-order accuracy of the well-known EKF based on linearization. In addition, the step of computing the often troublesome Jacobian matrices, always required in the design of an integrated navigation system using the EKF, is eliminated. Furthermore, by employing the concept of sequential measurement updates in the UKF, we can add the advantages of sequential measurement update strategy such as easy compensation of sensor latency, easy fusion of multi-sensors, and easy addition and subtraction of new sensors while maintaining those of the standard UKF such as accurate estimation and removal of Jacobian matrices. Simulation results show better performance of the UKF-based navigation system than the EKF-based system since the UKF-based system is more robust to initial accelerometer and rate gyro biases and more accurate in terms of reducing transient peaks and steady-state errors in ownship state estimation. In order to estimate target tracking states or target kinematics, a new vision-based tracking system is designed by using a UKF in the scenario of three-dimensional air-to-air tracking. The tracking system can estimate not only the target tracking states but also several target characteristics including target size and acceleration. By introducing the UKF, the new vision-based tracking system presents good estimation performance by overcoming the highly nonlinear characteristics of the problem with a relatively simplified formulation. Moreover, the computational step of messy Jacobian matrices involved in the target acceleration dynamics and angular measurements is removed. A new particle filtering framework, called an extended marginalized particle filter (EMPF), is developed and applied to the design of a new vision-based tracking system. In this work, only three position components with vision measurements are solved in particle filtering part by applying Rao-Blackwellization or marginalization approach, and the other dynamics, including the target nonlinear acceleration model, with Gaussian noise are effectively handled by using the UKF. Since vision information can be better represented by probabilistic measurements and the EMPF framework can be easily extended to handle this type of measurements, better performance in estimating target tracking states will be achieved by directly incorporating non-Gaussian, probabilistic vision information as the measurement inputs to the vision-based tracking system in the EMPF framework.

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis presents the design and implementation of all the subsystems required to perform precision autonomous helicopter landings within a low-cost framework. To obtain high-accuracy state estimates during the landing phase a vision-based approach, with a downwards facing camera on the helicopter and a known landing target, was used. An e cient monocular-view pose estimation algorithm was developed to determine the helicopter's relative position and attitude during the landing phase. This algorithm was analysed and compared to existing algorithms in terms of sensitivity, robustness and runtime. An augmented kinematic state estimator was developed to combine measurements from low-cost GPS and inertial measurement units with the high accuracy measurements from the camera system. High-level guidance algorithms, capable of performing waypoint navigation and autonomous landings, were developed. A visual position and attitude measurement (VPAM) node was designed and built to perform the pose estimation and execute the associated algorithms. To increase the node's throughput, a compression scheme is used between the image sensor and the processor to reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed. This reduces processing requirements and allows the entire system to remain on-board with no reliance on radio links. The functionality of the VPAM node was con rmed through a number of practical tests. The node is able to provide measurements of su cient accuracy for the subsequent systems in the autonomous landing system. The functionality of the full system was con rmed in a software environment, as well as through testing using a visually augmented hardware-in-the-loop environment. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis beskryf die ontwikkeling van die substelsels wat vir akkurate outonome helikopter landings benodig word. 'n Onderliggende doel was om al die ontwikkeling binne 'n lae-koste raamwerk te voltooi. Hoe-akkuraatheid toestande word benodig om akkurate landings te verseker. Hierdie metings is verkry deur middel van 'n optiese stelsel, bestaande uit 'n kamera gemonteer op die helikopter en 'n bekende landingsteiken, te ontwikkel. 'n Doeltreffende mono-visie posisie-en-orientasie algoritme is ontwikkel om die helikopter se posisie en orientasie, relatief tot die landingsteiken, te bepaal. Hierdie algoritme is deeglik ondersoek en vergelyk met bestaande algoritmes in terme van sensitiwiteit, robuustheid en uitvoertyd. 'n Optimale kinematiese toestandswaarnemer, wat metings van GPS en inersiele sensore kombineer met die metings van die optiese stelsel, is ontwikkel en deur simulasie bevestig. Hoe-vlak leidingsalgoritmes is ontwikkel wat die helikopter in staat stel om punt-tot-punt navigasie en die landingsprosedure uit te voer. 'n Visuele posisie-en-orientasie meetnodus is ontwikkel om die mono-visie posisie-en orientasie algoritmes uit te voer. Om die deurset te verhoog is 'n saampersingsalgoritme gebruik wat die hoeveelheid data wat verwerk moet word, te verminder. Dit het die benodigde verwerkingskrag verminder, wat verseker het dat alle verwerking op aanboord stelsels kan geskied. Die meetnodus en mono-visie algoritmes is deur middel van praktiese toetse bevestig en is in staat om metings van voldoende akkuraatheid aan die outonome landingstelsel te verskaf. Die werking van die volledige stelsel is, deur simulasies in 'n sagteware en hardeware-indie- lus omgewing, bevestig.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-02T21:42:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Almir Rangel1.pdf: 1640185 bytes, checksum: cc0b2a380aa9f47114afde386d251c3f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-03-31 / This study investigates the use of the Vision Based on Resources, with the aim of proposing a model for the management of people who meet the enforceability of the quality of provision of services to health. They are observed relationships of these services work in different ways, the systematization of knowledge about the elements contained in the management of people and verification of the need for Strategic and Operational Management of People for employees of the institutions of Public Health Hospital. It is empirical research and exploratory in nature, supported on multiple cases of public hospitals, interviewing and recording facts observed in the places searched, according to the Protocol of Remarks. To achieve the main objective, used the basis of works of Marras (2001, 2003 and 2005): Labor Relations in Brazil: management and strategy; Human Resources Administration: from operational to strategic and Managing People in Business Innovative, respectively. In addition to the comments participants, it is used questionnaires and interviews with users and professionals in hospitals, with instruments adapted to the context of the institution and given treatment for statistical analysis of the results, which are presented in tables for better visualization of data and analysis. The Managing People in ISHP remain in the traditional model and away from any move that could make it strategically. The level of satisfaction of patients to the health professionals is great, but on the resources and infrastructure, is low. The health care professionals in almost all its work by vocation, spirit of humanization and by feel gratifying, but the level of dissatisfaction with the pay received is high.(AU) / Este trabalho investiga a utilização da Visão Baseada em Recursos, tendo por objetivo propor um modelo de gestão de pessoas que atenda a exigibilidade da qualidade de prestação de serviços à saúde. São observadas as relações de trabalho nesses serviços nas diversas modalidades, a sistematização do conhecimento sobre os elementos que figuram na gestão de pessoas e a verificação da necessidade de Gestão Operacional e Estratégica de Pessoas para trabalhadores das Instituições de Saúde Hospitalares Públicas. Trata-se de pesquisa de natureza empírico-exploratória, apoiada em múltiplos casos de hospitais públicos, entrevistando e registrando fatos observados nos locais pesquisados, aplicando-se o Protocolo de Observações. Para atingir o objetivo principal, são utilizados os fundamentos das obras de Marras (2001; 2003 e 2005): Relações Trabalhistas no Brasil: administração e estratégia; Administração de Recursos Humanos: do operacional ao estratégico; e Gestão de Pessoas em Empresas Inovadoras, respectivamente. Além das observações participantes, utilizaram-se entrevistas e questionários com os usuários e profissionais dos hospitais, com instrumentos adaptados para o contexto da instituição e dado tratamento estatístico para análise dos resultados, que se apresentam em tabelas para melhor visualização dos dados e análise. A Gestão de Pessoas nas ISHP permanecem no modelo tradicional e longe de qualquer movimento que possa torná-la estratégica. O nível de satisfação dos pacientes para com os profissionais de saúde é ótimo, mas quanto aos recursos e infra-estrutura, é baixo. Os profissionais de saúde na quase sua totalidade trabalham por vocação, espírito de humanização e por acharem gratificante, embora o nível de insatisfação com a remuneração recebida seja elevado.(AU)

Submitted by Fernando Souza (fernandoafsou@gmail.com) on 2017-08-10T11:47:56Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 11498612 bytes, checksum: 9182e9402b0905c4209bc405c726f8cc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-10T11:47:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 11498612 bytes, checksum: 9182e9402b0905c4209bc405c726f8cc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-17 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / With the advance in the research of mobile robots localization algorithms, the need for natural landmark identification and recognition has increased. The detection of natural landmarks is a challenging task because their appearance can be different in shape and design and, as well, they suffer influence of the environment illumination. As an example, a typical 2D object recognition algorithm may not be able to handle the large optical variety of doors and staircases in large corridors. On another direction, recent improvements in low-cost 3D sensors (of the type RGB-D) enable robots to perceive the environment as a 3D spatial structure. Thus, using this new technology, an algorithm for natural landmark identification and recognition based on images acquired from an RGB-D camera is proposed. Basically, during the identification phase that is a first step for working with landmarks, the algorithm exploits the basic structural knowledge about the landmarks by extracting their edges and creating a cloud of edge points. In the next, the recognition phase, the edges are used with a proposed on-the-fly unsupervised recognition algorithm in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in recognizing doors and staircases. Two methods of recognition have been proposed and results show that a general technique of the two methods passes from the 96 of accuracy. Future approaches propose a mix of these two methods for better results of recognition, as well as inclusion of new objects such as drinking fountains, dumps and compare this modified approach with other approaches that require training, such as nearest K-neighbors, Bayes and neural networks . / Com o avanço na pesquisa de algoritmos de localização de robôs móveis, a necessidade de identificação e reconhecimento de pontos de referência naturais aumentou. A detecção de marcos naturais é uma tarefa desafiadora, porque a sua aparência pode ser diferente em forma e design e, também, eles sofrem influência da iluminação do ambiente. Como um exemplo, um algoritmo de reconhecimento de objeto 2D típico pode não ser capaz de lidar com a grande variedade óptica de portas e escadas em corredores grandes. Em outra direção, as melhorias recentes em sensores 3D de baixo custo (do tipo RGB-D) permitem aos robôs perceber o ambiente como uma estrutura espacial 3D. Assim, usando esta nova tecnologia, um algoritmo para identificação e reconhecimento de marco natural baseado em imagens adquiridas a partir de uma câmera RGB-D é proposto. Basicamente, durante a fase de identificação que é um primeiro passo para trabalhar com marcos, o algoritmo explora o conhecimento estrutural básico sobre os pontos de referência, extraindo suas bordas e criando uma nuvem de pontos de borda. No próxima, a fase de reconhecimento, as arestas são usadas com um algoritmo de reconhecimento não supervisionado proposto on-the-fly para demonstrar a eficácia da abordagem no reconhecimento de portas e escadarias. Dois métodos de Reconhecimento foram propostos e resultados mostram que a eficiência geral dos dois métodos passa dos 96% de Precisão de reconhecimento. Abordagens futuras propõem-se a fusão dos dois métodos para melhores resultados no reconhecimento, bem como inclusão de novos objetos como bebedouros, lixeiras e comparar essa abordagem modificada com outras abordagens que necessitam de treinamento, como K-Neighbouring mais próximo, Bayes e redes neurais.

The problematics of precise pointing and more specifically an attitude control is present sincethe first days of flight and Aerospace engineering. The precise attitude control is a matter ofnecessity for a great variety of applications. In the air, planes or unmanned aerial vehicles needto be able to orient precisely. In Space, a telescope or a satellite relies on the attitude control toreach the stars or survey the Earth. The attitude control can be based on various principles, pre-calculated variables, and measurements. It is common to use the gyroscope, Sun/Star/horizonsensors for attitude determination. While those technologies are well established in the indus-try, the rise in a computational power and efficiency in recent years enabled processing of aninfinitely more rich source of information - the vision. In this Thesis, a visual system is used forthe attitude determination and is blended together with a control algorithm to form a VisionBased Attitude Control system.A demonstrator is designed, build and programmed for the purpose of Vision Based AttitudeControl. It is based on the principle of Visual servoing, a method that links image measure-ments to the attitude control, in a form of a set of joint velocities. The intermittent steps arethe image acquisition and processing, feature detection, feature tracking and the computationof joint velocities in a closed loop control scheme. The system is then evaluated in a barrage ofpartial experiments.The results show, that the used detection algorithms, Shi&amp;Tomasi and Harris, performequally well in feature detection and are able to provide a high amount of features for tracking.The pyramidal implementation of the Lucas&amp;Kanade tracking algorithm proves to be a capablemethod for a reliable feature tracking, invariant to rotation and scale change. To further evaluatethe Visual servoing a complete demonstrator is tested. The demonstrator shows the capabilityof Visual Servoing for the purpose of Vision Based Attitude Control. An improvement in thehardware and implementation is recommended and planned to push the system beyond thedemonstrator stage into an applicable system.

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