La vidéosurveillance a pour objectif principal de protéger les personnes et les biens en détectant tout comportement anormal. Ceci ne serait possible sans la détection de mouvement dans l’image. Ce processus complexe se base le plus souvent sur une opération de soustraction de l’arrière-plan statique d’une scène sur l’image. Mais il se trouve qu’en vidéosurveillance, des caméras sont souvent en mouvement, engendrant ainsi, un changement significatif de l’arrière-plan; la soustraction de l’arrière-plan devient alors problématique. Nous proposons dans ce travail, une méthode de détection de mouvement et particulièrement de chutes qui s’affranchit de la soustraction de l’arrière-plan et exploite la rotation de la caméra dans la détection du mouvement en utilisant le calcul homographique. Nos résultats sur des données synthétiques et réelles démontrent la faisabilité de cette approche. / The main objective of video surveillance is to protect persons and property by detecting any abnormal behavior. This is not possible without detecting motion in the image. This process is often based on the concept of subtraction of the scene background. However in video tracking, the cameras are themselves often in motion, causing a significant change of the background. So, background subtraction techniques become problematic. We propose in this work a motion detection approach, with the example application of fall detection. This approach is free of background subtraction for a rotating surveillance camera. The method uses the camera rotation to detect motion by using homographic calculation. Our results on synthetic and real video sequences demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.

Este trabalho aborda o problema de casamento entre duas imagens. Casamento de imagens pode ser do tipo casamento de modelos (template matching) ou casamento de pontos-chaves (keypoint matching). Estes algoritmos localizam uma região da primeira imagem numa segunda imagem. Nosso grupo desenvolveu dois algoritmos de casamento de modelos invariante por rotação, escala e translação denominados Ciratefi (Circula, radial and template matchings filter) e Forapro (Fourier coefficients of radial and circular projection). As características positivas destes algoritmos são a invariância a mudanças de brilho/contraste e robustez a padrões repetitivos. Na primeira parte desta tese, tornamos Ciratefi invariante a transformações afins, obtendo Aciratefi (Affine-ciratefi). Construímos um banco de imagens para comparar este algoritmo com Asift (Affine-scale invariant feature transform) e Aforapro (Affine-forapro). Asift é considerado atualmente o melhor algoritmo de casamento de imagens invariante afim, e Aforapro foi proposto em nossa dissertação de mestrado. Nossos resultados sugerem que Aciratefi supera Asift na presença combinada de padrões repetitivos, mudanças de brilho/contraste e mudanças de pontos de vista. Na segunda parte desta tese, construímos um algoritmo para filtrar casamentos de pontos-chaves, baseado num conceito que denominamos de coerência geométrica. Aplicamos esta filtragem no bem-conhecido algoritmo Sift (scale invariant feature transform), base do Asift. Avaliamos a nossa proposta no banco de imagens de Mikolajczyk. As taxas de erro obtidas são significativamente menores que as do Sift original. / This work deals with image matching. Image matchings can be modeled as template matching or keypoints matching. These algorithms search a region of the first image in a second image. Our group has developed two template matching algorithms invariant by rotation, scale and translation called Ciratefi (circular, radial and template matching filter) and Forapro (Fourier coefficients of radial and circular projection). The positive characteristics of Ciratefi and Forapro are: the invariance to brightness/contrast changes and robustness to repetitive patterns. In the first part of this work, we make Ciratefi invariant to affine transformations, getting Aciratefi (Affine-ciratefi). We have built a dataset to compare Aciratefi with Asift (Affine-scale invariant feature transform) and Aforapro (Affine-forapro). Asift is currently considered the best affine invariant image matching algorithm, and Aforapro was proposed in our master\'s thesis. Our results suggest that Aciratefi overcome Asift in the combined presence of repetitive patterns, brightness/contrast and viewpoints changes. In the second part of this work, we filter keypoints matchings based on a concept that we call geometric coherence. We apply this filtering in the well-known algorithm Sift (scale invariant feature transform), the basis of Asift. We evaluate our proposal in the Mikolajczyk images database. The error rates obtained are significantly lower than those of the original Sift.

Este trabalho aborda o problema de casamento entre duas imagens. Casamento de imagens pode ser do tipo casamento de modelos (template matching) ou casamento de pontos-chaves (keypoint matching). Estes algoritmos localizam uma região da primeira imagem numa segunda imagem. Nosso grupo desenvolveu dois algoritmos de casamento de modelos invariante por rotação, escala e translação denominados Ciratefi (Circula, radial and template matchings filter) e Forapro (Fourier coefficients of radial and circular projection). As características positivas destes algoritmos são a invariância a mudanças de brilho/contraste e robustez a padrões repetitivos. Na primeira parte desta tese, tornamos Ciratefi invariante a transformações afins, obtendo Aciratefi (Affine-ciratefi). Construímos um banco de imagens para comparar este algoritmo com Asift (Affine-scale invariant feature transform) e Aforapro (Affine-forapro). Asift é considerado atualmente o melhor algoritmo de casamento de imagens invariante afim, e Aforapro foi proposto em nossa dissertação de mestrado. Nossos resultados sugerem que Aciratefi supera Asift na presença combinada de padrões repetitivos, mudanças de brilho/contraste e mudanças de pontos de vista. Na segunda parte desta tese, construímos um algoritmo para filtrar casamentos de pontos-chaves, baseado num conceito que denominamos de coerência geométrica. Aplicamos esta filtragem no bem-conhecido algoritmo Sift (scale invariant feature transform), base do Asift. Avaliamos a nossa proposta no banco de imagens de Mikolajczyk. As taxas de erro obtidas são significativamente menores que as do Sift original. / This work deals with image matching. Image matchings can be modeled as template matching or keypoints matching. These algorithms search a region of the first image in a second image. Our group has developed two template matching algorithms invariant by rotation, scale and translation called Ciratefi (circular, radial and template matching filter) and Forapro (Fourier coefficients of radial and circular projection). The positive characteristics of Ciratefi and Forapro are: the invariance to brightness/contrast changes and robustness to repetitive patterns. In the first part of this work, we make Ciratefi invariant to affine transformations, getting Aciratefi (Affine-ciratefi). We have built a dataset to compare Aciratefi with Asift (Affine-scale invariant feature transform) and Aforapro (Affine-forapro). Asift is currently considered the best affine invariant image matching algorithm, and Aforapro was proposed in our master\'s thesis. Our results suggest that Aciratefi overcome Asift in the combined presence of repetitive patterns, brightness/contrast and viewpoints changes. In the second part of this work, we filter keypoints matchings based on a concept that we call geometric coherence. We apply this filtering in the well-known algorithm Sift (scale invariant feature transform), the basis of Asift. We evaluate our proposal in the Mikolajczyk images database. The error rates obtained are significantly lower than those of the original Sift.

La classification de séries temporelles a suscité beaucoup d’intérêt au cours des dernières années en raison de ces nombreuses applications. Nous commençons par proposer la méthode Dense Bag-of-Temporal-SIFT-Words (D-BoTSW) qui utilise des descripteurs locaux basés sur la méthode SIFT, adaptés pour les données en une dimension et extraits à intervalles réguliers. Des expériences approfondies montrent que notre méthode D-BoTSW surpassent de façon significative presque tous les classificateurs de référence comparés. Ensuite, nous proposons un nouvel algorithmebasé sur l’algorithme Learning Time Series Shapelets (LTS) que nous appelons Adversarially- Built Shapelets (ABS). Cette méthode est basée sur l’introduction d’exemples adversaires dans le processus d’apprentissage de LTS et elle permet de générer des shapelets plus robustes. Des expériences montrent une amélioration significative de la performance entre l’algorithme de base et notre proposition. En raison du manque de jeux de données labelisés, formatés et disponibles enligne, nous utilisons deux jeux de données appelés TiSeLaC et Brazilian-Amazon. / Time Series Classification (TSC) has received an important amount of interest over the past years due to many real-life applications. In this PhD, we create new algorithms for TSC, with a particular emphasis on Remote Sensing (RS) time series data. We first propose the Dense Bag-of-Temporal-SIFT-Words (D-BoTSW) method that uses dense local features based on SIFT features for 1D data. Extensive experiments exhibit that D-BoTSW significantly outperforms nearly all compared standalone baseline classifiers. Then, we propose an enhancement of the Learning Time Series Shapelets (LTS) algorithm called Adversarially-Built Shapelets (ABS) based on the introduction of adversarial time series during the learning process. Adversarial time series provide an additional regularization benefit for the shapelets and experiments show a performance improvementbetween the baseline and our proposed framework. Due to the lack of available RS time series datasets,we also present and experiment on two remote sensing time series datasets called TiSeLaCand Brazilian-Amazon

La vidéosurveillance a pour objectif principal de protéger les personnes et les biens en détectant tout comportement anormal. Ceci ne serait possible sans la détection de mouvement dans l’image. Ce processus complexe se base le plus souvent sur une opération de soustraction de l’arrière-plan statique d’une scène sur l’image. Mais il se trouve qu’en vidéosurveillance, des caméras sont souvent en mouvement, engendrant ainsi, un changement significatif de l’arrière-plan; la soustraction de l’arrière-plan devient alors problématique. Nous proposons dans ce travail, une méthode de détection de mouvement et particulièrement de chutes qui s’affranchit de la soustraction de l’arrière-plan et exploite la rotation de la caméra dans la détection du mouvement en utilisant le calcul homographique. Nos résultats sur des données synthétiques et réelles démontrent la faisabilité de cette approche. / The main objective of video surveillance is to protect persons and property by detecting any abnormal behavior. This is not possible without detecting motion in the image. This process is often based on the concept of subtraction of the scene background. However in video tracking, the cameras are themselves often in motion, causing a significant change of the background. So, background subtraction techniques become problematic. We propose in this work a motion detection approach, with the example application of fall detection. This approach is free of background subtraction for a rotating surveillance camera. The method uses the camera rotation to detect motion by using homographic calculation. Our results on synthetic and real video sequences demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.

[pt] Esta dissertação introduz um estudo sobre os algoritmos de inteligência computacional para o controle autônomo dos robôs móveis, Nesta pesquisa, são desenvolvidos e implementados sistemas inteligentes de controle de um robô móvel construído no Laboratório de Robótica da PUC-Rio, baseado numa modificação do robô ER1. Os experimentos realizados consistem em duas etapas: a primeira etapa de simulação usando o software Player-Stage de simulação do robô em 2-D onde foram desenvolvidos os algoritmos de navegação usando as técnicas de inteligência computacional; e a segunda etapa a implementação dos algoritmos no robô real. As técnicas implementadas para a navegação do robô móvel estão baseadas em algoritmos de inteligência computacional como são redes neurais, lógica difusa e support vector machine (SVM) e para dar suporte visual ao robô móvel foi implementado uma técnica de visão computacional chamado Scale Invariant Future Transform (SIFT), estes algoritmos em conjunto fazem um sistema embebido para dotar de controle autônomo ao robô móvel. As simulações destes algoritmos conseguiram o objetivo, mas na implementação surgiram diferenças muito claras respeito à simulação pelo tempo que demora em processar o microprocessador. / [en] This theses introduces a study on the computational intelligence algorithms for autonomous control of mobile robots, In this research, intelligent systems are developed and implemented for a robot in the Robotics Laboratory of PUC-Rio, based on a modiÞcation of the robot ER1. The verification consist of two stages: the first stage includes simulation using Player-Stage software for simulation of the robot in 2-D with the developed of artiÞcial intelligence; an the second stage, including the implementation of the algorithms in the real robot. The techniques implemented for the navigation of the mobile robot are based on algorithms of computational intelligence as neural networks, fuzzy logic and support vector machine (SVM); and to give visual support to the mobile robot was implemented the visual algorithm called Scale Invariant Future Transform (SIFT), these algorithms in set makes an absorbed system to endow with independent control the mobile robot. The simulations of these algorithms had obtained the objective but in the implementation clear differences had appeared respect to the simulation, it just for the time that delays in processing the microprocessor.

Cette thèse CIFRE est effectuée dans un contexte industriel et présente un framework complet pour la détection, le suivi mono-caméra et de la ré-identification de personnes dans le contexte multi-caméras. Les performances élevés et le traitement en temps réel sont les deux contraintes critiques ayant guidé ce travail. La détection de personnes vise à localiser/délimiter les gens dans les séquences vidéo. Le détecteur proposé est basé sur une cascade de classifieurs de type LogitBoost appliqué sur des descripteurs de covariances. Une approche existante a fortement été optimisée, la rendant applicable en temps réel et fournissant de meilleures performances. La méthode d'optimisation est généralisable à d'autres types de détecteurs d'objets. Le suivi mono-caméra vise à fournir un ensemble d'images de chaque personne observée par chaque caméra afin d'extraire sa signature visuelle, ainsi qu'à fournir certaines informations du monde réel pour l'amélioration de la ré-identification. Ceci est réalisé par le suivi de points SIFT à l'aide d'une filtre à particules, ainsi qu'une méthode d'association de données qui infère le suivi des objets et qui gère la majorité des cas de figures possible, notamment les occultations. Enfin, la ré-identification de personnes est réalisée avec une approche basée sur l'apparence globale en améliorant grandement une approche existante, obtenant de meilleures performances tout en étabt applicable en temps réel. Une partie "conscience du contexte" est introduite afin de gérer le changement d'orientation des personnes, améliorant les performances dans le cas d'applications réelles. / This thesis is performed in industrial context and presents a whole framework for people detection and tracking in a camera network. It addresses the main process steps: people detection, people tracking in mono-camera context, and people re-identification in multi-camera context. High performances and real-time processing are considered as strong constraints. People detection aims to localise and delimits people in video sequences. The proposed people detection is performed using a cascade of classifiers trained using LogitBoost algorithm on region covariance descriptors. A state of the art approach is strongly optimized to process in real time and to provide better detection performances. The optimization scheme is generalizable to many other kind of detectors where all possible weak classifiers cannot be reasonably tested. People tracking in mono-camera context aims to provide a set of reliable images of every observed person by each camera, to extract his visual signature, and it provides some useful real world information for re-identification purpose. It is achieved by tracking SIFT features using a specific particle filter in addition to a data association framework which infer object tracking from SIFT points one, and which deals with most of possible cases, especially occlusions. Finally, people re-identification is performed using an appearance based approach by improving a state of the art approach, providing better performances while keeping the real-time processing advantage. A context-aware part is introduced to robustify the visual signature against people orientations, ensuring better re-identification performances in real application case.

This thesis focuses on bare hand gesture recognition by proposing a new architecture to solve the problem of real-time vision-based hand detection, tracking, and gesture recognition for interaction with an application via hand gestures. The first stage of our system allows detecting and tracking a bare hand in a cluttered background using face subtraction, skin detection and contour comparison. The second stage allows recognizing hand gestures using bag-of-features and multi-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms. Finally, a grammar has been developed to generate gesture commands for application control. Our hand gesture recognition system consists of two steps: offline training and online testing. In the training stage, after extracting the keypoints for every training image using the Scale Invariance Feature Transform (SIFT), a vector quantization technique will map keypoints from every training image into a unified dimensional histogram vector (bag-of-words) after K-means clustering. This histogram is treated as an input vector for a multi-class SVM to build the classifier. In the testing stage, for every frame captured from a webcam, the hand is detected using my algorithm. Then, the keypoints are extracted for every small image that contains the detected hand posture and fed into the cluster model to map them into a bag-of-words vector, which is fed into the multi-class SVM classifier to recognize the hand gesture. Another hand gesture recognition system was proposed using Principle Components Analysis (PCA). The most eigenvectors and weights of training images are determined. In the testing stage, the hand posture is detected for every frame using my algorithm. Then, the small image that contains the detected hand is projected onto the most eigenvectors of training images to form its test weights. Finally, the minimum Euclidean distance is determined among the test weights and the training weights of each training image to recognize the hand gesture. Two application of gesture-based interaction with a 3D gaming virtual environment were implemented. The exertion videogame makes use of a stationary bicycle as one of the main inputs for game playing. The user can control and direct left-right movement and shooting actions in the game by a set of hand gesture commands, while in the second game, the user can control and direct a helicopter over the city by a set of hand gesture commands.

The fatty acid amides, a structurally diverse endogenous congener of molecules active in cell signaling, may prove to have diverse activity due to their interface with a number of receptor systems, including, but not limited to cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2) and PPARγ. Select extracts of Echinacea spp. contain the fatty acid amides known as alkylamides. These extracts were a previously popular remedy relied on by U.S. physicians, one of the top sellers in the natural products industry and are currently a frequently physician prescribed remedy in Germany. In the series of experiments contained within, Galenic ethanolic extracts of Echinacea spp. root were used for the quantification, identification, degradation and bioactivity studies. On extraction, depending on the ratio of plant to solvent and fresh or dry, the data indicate that there is variability in the alkylamide classes extracted. For example the acetylene alkylamides appear to extract under different concentrations, as well as degrade faster than the olefinic alkylamides. In addition, the alkylamides are found to degrade significantly in both cut/sift and powdered forms of echinacea root. Human liver microsome oxidation of the major alkylamide dodeca-2E,4E,8Z,10Z-tetraenoic acid isobutylamide generate hydroxylated, caboxylated and epoxidized metabolites. The carboxylated metabolite has, thus far, shown different immune activity than the native tetraene isobutylamide. Bioactivity studies, based on cytokine modulation of the alkylamides have been assumed to be due to a classic CB2 response. However, the results of experiments contained herein suggest that IL-2 inhibition by the alkylamide undeca-2E-ene-8,10-diynoic acid isobutylamide, which does not bind to CB2, is due to PPARγ activation. These data, combined with data generated by other groups, suggest that the alkylamides of Echinacea spp. are polyvalent in effect, in that they modulate multiple biochemical pathways.

This thesis focuses on bare hand gesture recognition by proposing a new architecture to solve the problem of real-time vision-based hand detection, tracking, and gesture recognition for interaction with an application via hand gestures. The first stage of our system allows detecting and tracking a bare hand in a cluttered background using face subtraction, skin detection and contour comparison. The second stage allows recognizing hand gestures using bag-of-features and multi-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms. Finally, a grammar has been developed to generate gesture commands for application control. Our hand gesture recognition system consists of two steps: offline training and online testing. In the training stage, after extracting the keypoints for every training image using the Scale Invariance Feature Transform (SIFT), a vector quantization technique will map keypoints from every training image into a unified dimensional histogram vector (bag-of-words) after K-means clustering. This histogram is treated as an input vector for a multi-class SVM to build the classifier. In the testing stage, for every frame captured from a webcam, the hand is detected using my algorithm. Then, the keypoints are extracted for every small image that contains the detected hand posture and fed into the cluster model to map them into a bag-of-words vector, which is fed into the multi-class SVM classifier to recognize the hand gesture. Another hand gesture recognition system was proposed using Principle Components Analysis (PCA). The most eigenvectors and weights of training images are determined. In the testing stage, the hand posture is detected for every frame using my algorithm. Then, the small image that contains the detected hand is projected onto the most eigenvectors of training images to form its test weights. Finally, the minimum Euclidean distance is determined among the test weights and the training weights of each training image to recognize the hand gesture. Two application of gesture-based interaction with a 3D gaming virtual environment were implemented. The exertion videogame makes use of a stationary bicycle as one of the main inputs for game playing. The user can control and direct left-right movement and shooting actions in the game by a set of hand gesture commands, while in the second game, the user can control and direct a helicopter over the city by a set of hand gesture commands.