Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

38 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2017

On the Design of LQR Kernels for Efficient Controller Learning

Marco, A., Hennig, P., Schaal, S., Trimpe, S.

Proceedings of the 56th IEEE Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pages: 5193-5200, IEEE, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 2017 (conference)

Abstract

Finding optimal feedback controllers for nonlinear dynamic systems from data is hard. Recently, Bayesian optimization (BO) has been proposed as a powerful framework for direct controller tuning from experimental trials. For selecting the next query point and finding the global optimum, BO relies on a probabilistic description of the latent objective function, typically a Gaussian process (GP). As is shown herein, GPs with a common kernel choice can, however, lead to poor learning outcomes on standard quadratic control problems. For a first-order system, we construct two kernels that specifically leverage the structure of the well-known Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), yet retain the flexibility of Bayesian nonparametric learning. Simulations of uncertain linear and nonlinear systems demonstrate that the LQR kernels yield superior learning performance.

am ics pn

arXiv PDF On the Design of LQR Kernels for Efficient Controller Learning - CDC presentation DOI Project Page [BibTex]

2017

am ics pn Marco, A., Hennig, P., Schaal, S., Trimpe, S. On the Design of LQR Kernels for Efficient Controller Learning Proceedings of the 56th IEEE Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pages: 5193-5200, IEEE, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 2017 (conference)

arXiv PDF On the Design of LQR Kernels for Efficient Controller Learning - CDC presentation DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Optimizing Long-term Predictions for Model-based Policy Search

Doerr, A., Daniel, C., Nguyen-Tuong, D., Marco, A., Schaal, S., Toussaint, M., Trimpe, S.

Proceedings of 1st Annual Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 78, pages: 227-238, (Editors: Sergey Levine and Vincent Vanhoucke and Ken Goldberg), 1st Annual Conference on Robot Learning, November 2017 (conference)

Abstract

We propose a novel long-term optimization criterion to improve the robustness of model-based reinforcement learning in real-world scenarios. Learning a dynamics model to derive a solution promises much greater data-efficiency and reusability compared to model-free alternatives. In practice, however, modelbased RL suffers from various imperfections such as noisy input and output data, delays and unmeasured (latent) states. To achieve higher resilience against such effects, we propose to optimize a generative long-term prediction model directly with respect to the likelihood of observed trajectories as opposed to the common approach of optimizing a dynamics model for one-step-ahead predictions. We evaluate the proposed method on several artificial and real-world benchmark problems and compare it to PILCO, a model-based RL framework, in experiments on a manipulation robot. The results show that the proposed method is competitive compared to state-of-the-art model learning methods. In contrast to these more involved models, our model can directly be employed for policy search and outperforms a baseline method in the robot experiment.

am ics

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

am ics Doerr, A., Daniel, C., Nguyen-Tuong, D., Marco, A., Schaal, S., Toussaint, M., Trimpe, S. Optimizing Long-term Predictions for Model-based Policy Search Proceedings of 1st Annual Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 78, pages: 227-238, (Editors: Sergey Levine and Vincent Vanhoucke and Ken Goldberg), 1st Annual Conference on Robot Learning, November 2017 (conference)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

A Generative Model of People in Clothing

Lassner, C., Pons-Moll, G., Gehler, P. V.

In Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), October 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We present the first image-based generative model of people in clothing in a full-body setting. We sidestep the commonly used complex graphics rendering pipeline and the need for high-quality 3D scans of dressed people. Instead, we learn generative models from a large image database. The main challenge is to cope with the high variance in human pose, shape and appearance. For this reason, pure image-based approaches have not been considered so far. We show that this challenge can be overcome by splitting the generating process in two parts. First, we learn to generate a semantic segmentation of the body and clothing. Second, we learn a conditional model on the resulting segments that creates realistic images. The full model is differentiable and can be conditioned on pose, shape or color. The result are samples of people in different clothing items and styles. The proposed model can generate entirely new people with realistic clothing. In several experiments we present encouraging results that suggest an entirely data-driven approach to people generation is possible.

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

ps Lassner, C., Pons-Moll, G., Gehler, P. V. A Generative Model of People in Clothing In Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), October 2017 (inproceedings)

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Semantic Video CNNs through Representation Warping

Gadde, R., Jampani, V., Gehler, P. V.

In Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), October 2017 (inproceedings) Accepted

Abstract

In this work, we propose a technique to convert CNN models for semantic segmentation of static images into CNNs for video data. We describe a warping method that can be used to augment existing architectures with very lit- tle extra computational cost. This module is called Net- Warp and we demonstrate its use for a range of network architectures. The main design principle is to use optical flow of adjacent frames for warping internal network repre- sentations across time. A key insight of this work is that fast optical flow methods can be combined with many different CNN architectures for improved performance and end-to- end training. Experiments validate that the proposed ap- proach incurs only little extra computational cost, while im- proving performance, when video streams are available. We achieve new state-of-the-art results on the standard CamVid and Cityscapes benchmark datasets and show reliable im- provements over different baseline networks. Our code and models are available at http://segmentation.is. tue.mpg.de

pdf Supplementary Project Page [BibTex]

ps Gadde, R., Jampani, V., Gehler, P. V. Semantic Video CNNs through Representation Warping In Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), October 2017 (inproceedings) Accepted

pdf Supplementary Project Page [BibTex]

Effects of animation retargeting on perceived action outcomes

Kenny, S., Mahmood, N., Honda, C., Black, M. J., Troje, N. F.

Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP’17), pages: 2:1-2:7, September 2017 (conference)

Abstract

The individual shape of the human body, including the geometry of its articulated structure and the distribution of weight over that structure, influences the kinematics of a person's movements. How sensitive is the visual system to inconsistencies between shape and motion introduced by retargeting motion from one person onto the shape of another? We used optical motion capture to record five pairs of male performers with large differences in body weight, while they pushed, lifted, and threw objects. Based on a set of 67 markers, we estimated both the kinematics of the actions as well as the performer's individual body shape. To obtain consistent and inconsistent stimuli, we created animated avatars by combining the shape and motion estimates from either a single performer or from different performers. In a virtual reality environment, observers rated the perceived weight or thrown distance of the objects. They were also asked to explicitly discriminate between consistent and hybrid stimuli. Observers were unable to accomplish the latter, but hybridization of shape and motion influenced their judgements of action outcome in systematic ways. Inconsistencies between shape and motion were assimilated into an altered perception of the action outcome.

pdf DOI [BibTex]

ps Kenny, S., Mahmood, N., Honda, C., Black, M. J., Troje, N. F. Effects of animation retargeting on perceived action outcomes Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP’17), pages: 2:1-2:7, September 2017 (conference)

pdf DOI [BibTex]

Coupling Adaptive Batch Sizes with Learning Rates

Balles, L., Romero, J., Hennig, P.

In Proceedings Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI) 2017, pages: 410-419, (Editors: Gal Elidan and Kristian Kersting), Association for Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (AUAI), Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), August 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Mini-batch stochastic gradient descent and variants thereof have become standard for large-scale empirical risk minimization like the training of neural networks. These methods are usually used with a constant batch size chosen by simple empirical inspection. The batch size significantly influences the behavior of the stochastic optimization algorithm, though, since it determines the variance of the gradient estimates. This variance also changes over the optimization process; when using a constant batch size, stability and convergence is thus often enforced by means of a (manually tuned) decreasing learning rate schedule. We propose a practical method for dynamic batch size adaptation. It estimates the variance of the stochastic gradients and adapts the batch size to decrease the variance proportionally to the value of the objective function, removing the need for the aforementioned learning rate decrease. In contrast to recent related work, our algorithm couples the batch size to the learning rate, directly reflecting the known relationship between the two. On three image classification benchmarks, our batch size adaptation yields faster optimization convergence, while simultaneously simplifying learning rate tuning. A TensorFlow implementation is available.

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Code link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

ps pn Balles, L., Romero, J., Hennig, P. Coupling Adaptive Batch Sizes with Learning Rates In Proceedings Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI) 2017, pages: 410-419, (Editors: Gal Elidan and Kristian Kersting), Association for Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (AUAI), Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), August 2017 (inproceedings)

Code link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Joint Graph Decomposition and Node Labeling by Local Search

Levinkov, E., Uhrig, J., Tang, S., Omran, M., Insafutdinov, E., Kirillov, A., Rother, C., Brox, T., Schiele, B., Andres, B.

In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1904-1912, IEEE, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

PDF Supplementary DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Levinkov, E., Uhrig, J., Tang, S., Omran, M., Insafutdinov, E., Kirillov, A., Rother, C., Brox, T., Schiele, B., Andres, B. Joint Graph Decomposition and Node Labeling by Local Search In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1904-1912, IEEE, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

PDF Supplementary DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Dynamic FAUST: Registering Human Bodies in Motion

Bogo, F., Romero, J., Pons-Moll, G., Black, M. J.

In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

While the ready availability of 3D scan data has influenced research throughout computer vision, less attention has focused on 4D data; that is 3D scans of moving nonrigid objects, captured over time. To be useful for vision research, such 4D scans need to be registered, or aligned, to a common topology. Consequently, extending mesh registration methods to 4D is important. Unfortunately, no ground-truth datasets are available for quantitative evaluation and comparison of 4D registration methods. To address this we create a novel dataset of high-resolution 4D scans of human subjects in motion, captured at 60 fps. We propose a new mesh registration method that uses both 3D geometry and texture information to register all scans in a sequence to a common reference topology. The approach exploits consistency in texture over both short and long time intervals and deals with temporal offsets between shape and texture capture. We show how using geometry alone results in significant errors in alignment when the motions are fast and non-rigid. We evaluate the accuracy of our registration and provide a dataset of 40,000 raw and aligned meshes. Dynamic FAUST extends the popular FAUST dataset to dynamic 4D data, and is available for research purposes at http://dfaust.is.tue.mpg.de.

pdf video Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Bogo, F., Romero, J., Pons-Moll, G., Black, M. J. Dynamic FAUST: Registering Human Bodies in Motion In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pdf video Project Page Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Learning from Synthetic Humans

Varol, G., Romero, J., Martin, X., Mahmood, N., Black, M. J., Laptev, I., Schmid, C.

Abstract

Estimating human pose, shape, and motion from images and videos are fundamental challenges with many applications. Recent advances in 2D human pose estimation use large amounts of manually-labeled training data for learning convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Such data is time consuming to acquire and difficult to extend. Moreover, manual labeling of 3D pose, depth and motion is impractical. In this work we present SURREAL (Synthetic hUmans foR REAL tasks): a new large-scale dataset with synthetically-generated but realistic images of people rendered from 3D sequences of human motion capture data. We generate more than 6 million frames together with ground truth pose, depth maps, and segmentation masks. We show that CNNs trained on our synthetic dataset allow for accurate human depth estimation and human part segmentation in real RGB images. Our results and the new dataset open up new possibilities for advancing person analysis using cheap and large-scale synthetic data.

arXiv project data Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Varol, G., Romero, J., Martin, X., Mahmood, N., Black, M. J., Laptev, I., Schmid, C. Learning from Synthetic Humans In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

arXiv project data Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

On human motion prediction using recurrent neural networks

Martinez, J., Black, M. J., Romero, J.

Abstract

Human motion modelling is a classical problem at the intersection of graphics and computer vision, with applications spanning human-computer interaction, motion synthesis, and motion prediction for virtual and augmented reality. Following the success of deep learning methods in several computer vision tasks, recent work has focused on using deep recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to model human motion, with the goal of learning time-dependent representations that perform tasks such as short-term motion prediction and long-term human motion synthesis. We examine recent work, with a focus on the evaluation methodologies commonly used in the literature, and show that, surprisingly, state-of-the-art performance can be achieved by a simple baseline that does not attempt to model motion at all. We investigate this result, and analyze recent RNN methods by looking at the architectures, loss functions, and training procedures used in state-of-the-art approaches. We propose three changes to the standard RNN models typically used for human motion, which result in a simple and scalable RNN architecture that obtains state-of-the-art performance on human motion prediction.

arXiv Project Page [BibTex]

ps Martinez, J., Black, M. J., Romero, J. On human motion prediction using recurrent neural networks In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

arXiv Project Page [BibTex]

Slow Flow: Exploiting High-Speed Cameras for Accurate and Diverse Optical Flow Reference Data

Janai, J., Güney, F., Wulff, J., Black, M., Geiger, A.

In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, pages: 1406-1416, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Existing optical flow datasets are limited in size and variability due to the difficulty of capturing dense ground truth. In this paper, we tackle this problem by tracking pixels through densely sampled space-time volumes recorded with a high-speed video camera. Our model exploits the linearity of small motions and reasons about occlusions from multiple frames. Using our technique, we are able to establish accurate reference flow fields outside the laboratory in natural environments. Besides, we show how our predictions can be used to augment the input images with realistic motion blur. We demonstrate the quality of the produced flow fields on synthetic and real-world datasets. Finally, we collect a novel challenging optical flow dataset by applying our technique on data from a high-speed camera and analyze the performance of the state-of-the-art in optical flow under various levels of motion blur.

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pdf suppmat Project page Video DOI Project Page [BibTex]

avg ps Janai, J., Güney, F., Wulff, J., Black, M., Geiger, A. Slow Flow: Exploiting High-Speed Cameras for Accurate and Diverse Optical Flow Reference Data In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, pages: 1406-1416, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat Project page Video DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Optical Flow in Mostly Rigid Scenes

Wulff, J., Sevilla-Lara, L., Black, M. J.

In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, pages: 6911-6920, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

The optical flow of natural scenes is a combination of the motion of the observer and the independent motion of objects. Existing algorithms typically focus on either recovering motion and structure under the assumption of a purely static world or optical flow for general unconstrained scenes. We combine these approaches in an optical flow algorithm that estimates an explicit segmentation of moving objects from appearance and physical constraints. In static regions we take advantage of strong constraints to jointly estimate the camera motion and the 3D structure of the scene over multiple frames. This allows us to also regularize the structure instead of the motion. Our formulation uses a Plane+Parallax framework, which works even under small baselines, and reduces the motion estimation to a one-dimensional search problem, resulting in more accurate estimation. In moving regions the flow is treated as unconstrained, and computed with an existing optical flow method. The resulting Mostly-Rigid Flow (MR-Flow) method achieves state-of-the-art results on both the MPISintel and KITTI-2015 benchmarks.

pdf SupMat video code Project Page [BibTex]

ps Wulff, J., Sevilla-Lara, L., Black, M. J. Optical Flow in Mostly Rigid Scenes In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, pages: 6911-6920, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pdf SupMat video code Project Page [BibTex]

OctNet: Learning Deep 3D Representations at High Resolutions

Riegler, G., Ulusoy, O., Geiger, A.

Abstract

We present OctNet, a representation for deep learning with sparse 3D data. In contrast to existing models, our representation enables 3D convolutional networks which are both deep and high resolution. Towards this goal, we exploit the sparsity in the input data to hierarchically partition the space using a set of unbalanced octrees where each leaf node stores a pooled feature representation. This allows to focus memory allocation and computation to the relevant dense regions and enables deeper networks without compromising resolution. We demonstrate the utility of our OctNet representation by analyzing the impact of resolution on several 3D tasks including 3D object classification, orientation estimation and point cloud labeling.

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pdf suppmat Project Page Video Project Page [BibTex]

avg ps Riegler, G., Ulusoy, O., Geiger, A. OctNet: Learning Deep 3D Representations at High Resolutions In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat Project Page Video Project Page [BibTex]

Reflectance Adaptive Filtering Improves Intrinsic Image Estimation

Nestmeyer, T., Gehler, P. V.

In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1771-1780, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pre-print DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ps Nestmeyer, T., Gehler, P. V. Reflectance Adaptive Filtering Improves Intrinsic Image Estimation In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 1771-1780, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pre-print DOI Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Detailed, accurate, human shape estimation from clothed 3D scan sequences

Zhang, C., Pujades, S., Black, M., Pons-Moll, G.

In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017, Spotlight (inproceedings)

Abstract

We address the problem of estimating human body shape from 3D scans over time. Reliable estimation of 3D body shape is necessary for many applications including virtual try-on, health monitoring, and avatar creation for virtual reality. Scanning bodies in minimal clothing, however, presents a practical barrier to these applications. We address this problem by estimating body shape under clothing from a sequence of 3D scans. Previous methods that have exploited statistical models of body shape produce overly smooth shapes lacking personalized details. In this paper we contribute a new approach to recover not only an approximate shape of the person, but also their detailed shape. Our approach allows the estimated shape to deviate from a parametric model to fit the 3D scans. We demonstrate the method using high quality 4D data as well as sequences of visual hulls extracted from multi-view images. We also make available a new high quality 4D dataset that enables quantitative evaluation. Our method outperforms the previous state of the art, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

arxiv_preprint video dataset pdf supplemental DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Zhang, C., Pujades, S., Black, M., Pons-Moll, G. Detailed, accurate, human shape estimation from clothed 3D scan sequences In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017, Spotlight (inproceedings)

arxiv_preprint video dataset pdf supplemental DOI Project Page [BibTex]

3D Menagerie: Modeling the 3D Shape and Pose of Animals

Zuffi, S., Kanazawa, A., Jacobs, D., Black, M. J.

In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, pages: 5524-5532, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

There has been significant work on learning realistic, articulated, 3D models of the human body. In contrast, there are few such models of animals, despite many applications. The main challenge is that animals are much less cooperative than humans. The best human body models are learned from thousands of 3D scans of people in specific poses, which is infeasible with live animals. Consequently, we learn our model from a small set of 3D scans of toy figurines in arbitrary poses. We employ a novel part-based shape model to compute an initial registration to the scans. We then normalize their pose, learn a statistical shape model, and refine the registrations and the model together. In this way, we accurately align animal scans from different quadruped families with very different shapes and poses. With the registration to a common template we learn a shape space representing animals including lions, cats, dogs, horses, cows and hippos. Animal shapes can be sampled from the model, posed, animated, and fit to data. We demonstrate generalization by fitting it to images of real animals including species not seen in training.

pdf video Project Page [BibTex]

ps Zuffi, S., Kanazawa, A., Jacobs, D., Black, M. J. 3D Menagerie: Modeling the 3D Shape and Pose of Animals In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, pages: 5524-5532, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pdf video Project Page [BibTex]

Optical Flow Estimation using a Spatial Pyramid Network

Ranjan, A., Black, M.

Abstract

We learn to compute optical flow by combining a classical spatial-pyramid formulation with deep learning. This estimates large motions in a coarse-to-fine approach by warping one image of a pair at each pyramid level by the current flow estimate and computing an update to the flow. Instead of the standard minimization of an objective function at each pyramid level, we train one deep network per level to compute the flow update. Unlike the recent FlowNet approach, the networks do not need to deal with large motions; these are dealt with by the pyramid. This has several advantages. First, our Spatial Pyramid Network (SPyNet) is much simpler and 96% smaller than FlowNet in terms of model parameters. This makes it more efficient and appropriate for embedded applications. Second, since the flow at each pyramid level is small (< 1 pixel), a convolutional approach applied to pairs of warped images is appropriate. Third, unlike FlowNet, the learned convolution filters appear similar to classical spatio-temporal filters, giving insight into the method and how to improve it. Our results are more accurate than FlowNet on most standard benchmarks, suggesting a new direction of combining classical flow methods with deep learning.

pdf SupMat project/code [BibTex]

ps Ranjan, A., Black, M. Optical Flow Estimation using a Spatial Pyramid Network In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pdf SupMat project/code [BibTex]

Multiple People Tracking by Lifted Multicut and Person Re-identification

Tang, S., Andriluka, M., Andres, B., Schiele, B.

In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3701-3710, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Tang, S., Andriluka, M., Andres, B., Schiele, B. Multiple People Tracking by Lifted Multicut and Person Re-identification In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 3701-3710, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Video Propagation Networks

Jampani, V., Gadde, R., Gehler, P. V.

pdf supplementary arXiv project page code Project Page [BibTex]

ps Jampani, V., Gadde, R., Gehler, P. V. Video Propagation Networks In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

pdf supplementary arXiv project page code Project Page [BibTex]

Generating Descriptions with Grounded and Co-Referenced People

Rohrbach, A., Rohrbach, M., Tang, S., Oh, S. J., Schiele, B.

In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 4196-4206, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

PDF DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Rohrbach, A., Rohrbach, M., Tang, S., Oh, S. J., Schiele, B. Generating Descriptions with Grounded and Co-Referenced People In 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 4196-4206, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

PDF DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Semantic Multi-view Stereo: Jointly Estimating Objects and Voxels

Ulusoy, A. O., Black, M. J., Geiger, A.

Abstract

Dense 3D reconstruction from RGB images is a highly ill-posed problem due to occlusions, textureless or reflective surfaces, as well as other challenges. We propose object-level shape priors to address these ambiguities. Towards this goal, we formulate a probabilistic model that integrates multi-view image evidence with 3D shape information from multiple objects. Inference in this model yields a dense 3D reconstruction of the scene as well as the existence and precise 3D pose of the objects in it. Our approach is able to recover fine details not captured in the input shapes while defaulting to the input models in occluded regions where image evidence is weak. Due to its probabilistic nature, the approach is able to cope with the approximate geometry of the 3D models as well as input shapes that are not present in the scene. We evaluate the approach quantitatively on several challenging indoor and outdoor datasets.

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YouTube pdf suppmat Project Page [BibTex]

avg ps Ulusoy, A. O., Black, M. J., Geiger, A. Semantic Multi-view Stereo: Jointly Estimating Objects and Voxels In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

YouTube pdf suppmat Project Page [BibTex]

Deep representation learning for human motion prediction and classification

Bütepage, J., Black, M., Kragic, D., Kjellström, H.

Abstract

Generative models of 3D human motion are often restricted to a small number of activities and can therefore not generalize well to novel movements or applications. In this work we propose a deep learning framework for human motion capture data that learns a generic representation from a large corpus of motion capture data and generalizes well to new, unseen, motions. Using an encoding-decoding network that learns to predict future 3D poses from the most recent past, we extract a feature representation of human motion. Most work on deep learning for sequence prediction focuses on video and speech. Since skeletal data has a different structure, we present and evaluate different network architectures that make different assumptions about time dependencies and limb correlations. To quantify the learned features, we use the output of different layers for action classification and visualize the receptive fields of the network units. Our method outperforms the recent state of the art in skeletal motion prediction even though these use action specific training data. Our results show that deep feedforward networks, trained from a generic mocap database, can successfully be used for feature extraction from human motion data and that this representation can be used as a foundation for classification and prediction.

arXiv Project Page [BibTex]

ps Bütepage, J., Black, M., Kragic, D., Kjellström, H. Deep representation learning for human motion prediction and classification In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

arXiv Project Page [BibTex]

Unite the People: Closing the Loop Between 3D and 2D Human Representations

Lassner, C., Romero, J., Kiefel, M., Bogo, F., Black, M. J., Gehler, P. V.

Abstract

3D models provide a common ground for different representations of human bodies. In turn, robust 2D estimation has proven to be a powerful tool to obtain 3D fits “in-the-wild”. However, depending on the level of detail, it can be hard to impossible to acquire labeled data for training 2D estimators on large scale. We propose a hybrid approach to this problem: with an extended version of the recently introduced SMPLify method, we obtain high quality 3D body model fits for multiple human pose datasets. Human annotators solely sort good and bad fits. This procedure leads to an initial dataset, UP-3D, with rich annotations. With a comprehensive set of experiments, we show how this data can be used to train discriminative models that produce results with an unprecedented level of detail: our models predict 31 segments and 91 landmark locations on the body. Using the 91 landmark pose estimator, we present state-of-the art results for 3D human pose and shape estimation using an order of magnitude less training data and without assumptions about gender or pose in the fitting procedure. We show that UP-3D can be enhanced with these improved fits to grow in quantity and quality, which makes the system deployable on large scale. The data, code and models are available for research purposes.

arXiv project/code/data Project Page [BibTex]

ps Lassner, C., Romero, J., Kiefel, M., Bogo, F., Black, M. J., Gehler, P. V. Unite the People: Closing the Loop Between 3D and 2D Human Representations In Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017 (inproceedings)

arXiv project/code/data Project Page [BibTex]

Model-Based Policy Search for Automatic Tuning of Multivariate PID Controllers

Doerr, A., Nguyen-Tuong, D., Marco, A., Schaal, S., Trimpe, S.

In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages: 5295-5301, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2017 (inproceedings)

am ics

PDF arXiv DOI Project Page [BibTex]

am ics Doerr, A., Nguyen-Tuong, D., Marco, A., Schaal, S., Trimpe, S. Model-Based Policy Search for Automatic Tuning of Multivariate PID Controllers In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages: 5295-5301, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2017 (inproceedings)

PDF arXiv DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Virtual vs. Real: Trading Off Simulations and Physical Experiments in Reinforcement Learning with Bayesian Optimization

Marco, A., Berkenkamp, F., Hennig, P., Schoellig, A. P., Krause, A., Schaal, S., Trimpe, S.

In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages: 1557-1563, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2017 (inproceedings)

am ics pn

PDF arXiv ICRA 2017 Spotlight presentation Virtual vs. Real - Video explanation DOI Project Page [BibTex]

am ics pn Marco, A., Berkenkamp, F., Hennig, P., Schoellig, A. P., Krause, A., Schaal, S., Trimpe, S. Virtual vs. Real: Trading Off Simulations and Physical Experiments in Reinforcement Learning with Bayesian Optimization In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages: 1557-1563, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2017 (inproceedings)

PDF arXiv ICRA 2017 Spotlight presentation Virtual vs. Real - Video explanation DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Towards Accurate Marker-less Human Shape and Pose Estimation over Time

Huang, Y., Bogo, F., Lassner, C., Kanazawa, A., Gehler, P. V., Romero, J., Akhter, I., Black, M. J.

In International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV), pages: 421-430, 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Existing markerless motion capture methods often assume known backgrounds, static cameras, and sequence specific motion priors, limiting their application scenarios. Here we present a fully automatic method that, given multiview videos, estimates 3D human pose and body shape. We take the recently proposed SMPLify method [12] as the base method and extend it in several ways. First we fit a 3D human body model to 2D features detected in multi-view images. Second, we use a CNN method to segment the person in each image and fit the 3D body model to the contours, further improving accuracy. Third we utilize a generic and robust DCT temporal prior to handle the left and right side swapping issue sometimes introduced by the 2D pose estimator. Validation on standard benchmarks shows our results are comparable to the state of the art and also provide a realistic 3D shape avatar. We also demonstrate accurate results on HumanEva and on challenging monocular sequences of dancing from YouTube.

Code pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Huang, Y., Bogo, F., Lassner, C., Kanazawa, A., Gehler, P. V., Romero, J., Akhter, I., Black, M. J. Towards Accurate Marker-less Human Shape and Pose Estimation over Time In International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV), pages: 421-430, 2017 (inproceedings)

Code pdf DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Pattern Generation for Walking on Slippery Terrains

Khadiv, M., Moosavian, S. A. A., Herzog, A., Righetti, L.

In 2017 5th International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICROM), Iran, August 2017 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In this paper, we extend state of the art Model Predictive Control (MPC) approaches to generate safe bipedal walking on slippery surfaces. In this setting, we formulate walking as a trade off between realizing a desired walking velocity and preserving robust foot-ground contact. Exploiting this for- mulation inside MPC, we show that safe walking on various flat terrains can be achieved by compromising three main attributes, i. e. walking velocity tracking, the Zero Moment Point (ZMP) modulation, and the Required Coefficient of Friction (RCoF) regulation. Simulation results show that increasing the walking velocity increases the possibility of slippage, while reducing the slippage possibility conflicts with reducing the tip-over possibility of the contact and vice versa.

link (url) [BibTex]

mg Khadiv, M., Moosavian, S. A. A., Herzog, A., Righetti, L. Pattern Generation for Walking on Slippery Terrains In 2017 5th International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICROM), Iran, August 2017 (inproceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

2011

Home 3D body scans from noisy image and range data

Weiss, A., Hirshberg, D., Black, M.

In Int. Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 1951-1958, IEEE, Barcelona, November 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

The 3D shape of the human body is useful for applications in fitness, games and apparel. Accurate body scanners, however, are expensive, limiting the availability of 3D body models. We present a method for human shape reconstruction from noisy monocular image and range data using a single inexpensive commodity sensor. The approach combines low-resolution image silhouettes with coarse range data to estimate a parametric model of the body. Accurate 3D shape estimates are obtained by combining multiple monocular views of a person moving in front of the sensor. To cope with varying body pose, we use a SCAPE body model which factors 3D body shape and pose variations. This enables the estimation of a single consistent shape while allowing pose to vary. Additionally, we describe a novel method to minimize the distance between the projected 3D body contour and the image silhouette that uses analytic derivatives of the objective function. We propose a simple method to estimate standard body measurements from the recovered SCAPE model and show that the accuracy of our method is competitive with commercial body scanning systems costing orders of magnitude more.

pdf YouTube poster Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

2011

ps Weiss, A., Hirshberg, D., Black, M. Home 3D body scans from noisy image and range data In Int. Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV), pages: 1951-1958, IEEE, Barcelona, November 2011 (inproceedings)

pdf YouTube poster Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Evaluating the Automated Alignment of 3D Human Body Scans

Hirshberg, D. A., Loper, M., Rachlin, E., Tsoli, A., Weiss, A., Corner, B., Black, M. J.

In 2nd International Conference on 3D Body Scanning Technologies, pages: 76-86, (Editors: D’Apuzzo, Nicola), Hometrica Consulting, Lugano, Switzerland, October 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

The statistical analysis of large corpora of human body scans requires that these scans be in alignment, either for a small set of key landmarks or densely for all the vertices in the scan. Existing techniques tend to rely on hand-placed landmarks or algorithms that extract landmarks from scans. The former is time consuming and subjective while the latter is error prone. Here we show that a model-based approach can align meshes automatically, producing alignment accuracy similar to that of previous methods that rely on many landmarks. Specifically, we align a low-resolution, artist-created template body mesh to many high-resolution laser scans. Our alignment procedure employs a robust iterative closest point method with a regularization that promotes smooth and locally rigid deformation of the template mesh. We evaluate our approach on 50 female body models from the CAESAR dataset that vary significantly in body shape. To make the method fully automatic, we define simple feature detectors for the head and ankles, which provide initial landmark locations. We find that, if body poses are fairly similar, as in CAESAR, the fully automated method provides dense alignments that enable statistical analysis and anthropometric measurement.

pdf slides DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ps Hirshberg, D. A., Loper, M., Rachlin, E., Tsoli, A., Weiss, A., Corner, B., Black, M. J. Evaluating the Automated Alignment of 3D Human Body Scans In 2nd International Conference on 3D Body Scanning Technologies, pages: 76-86, (Editors: D’Apuzzo, Nicola), Hometrica Consulting, Lugano, Switzerland, October 2011 (inproceedings)

pdf slides DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Recovering Intrinsic Images with a Global Sparsity Prior on Reflectance

Gehler, P., Rother, C., Kiefel, M., Zhang, L., Schölkopf, B.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 24, pages: 765-773, (Editors: Shawe-Taylor, John and Zemel, Richard S. and Bartlett, Peter L. and Pereira, Fernando C. N. and Weinberger, Kilian Q.), Curran Associates, Inc., Red Hook, NY, USA, Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We address the challenging task of decoupling material properties from lighting properties given a single image. In the last two decades virtually all works have concentrated on exploiting edge information to address this problem. We take a different route by introducing a new prior on reflectance, that models reflectance values as being drawn from a sparse set of basis colors. This results in a Random Field model with global, latent variables (basis colors) and pixel-accurate output reflectance values. We show that without edge information high-quality results can be achieved, that are on par with methods exploiting this source of information. Finally, we are able to improve on state-of-the-art results by integrating edge information into our model. We believe that our new approach is an excellent starting point for future developments in this field.

ei ps

website + code pdf poster Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

ei ps Gehler, P., Rother, C., Kiefel, M., Zhang, L., Schölkopf, B. Recovering Intrinsic Images with a Global Sparsity Prior on Reflectance In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 24, pages: 765-773, (Editors: Shawe-Taylor, John and Zemel, Richard S. and Bartlett, Peter L. and Pereira, Fernando C. N. and Weinberger, Kilian Q.), Curran Associates, Inc., Red Hook, NY, USA, Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2011 (inproceedings)

website + code pdf poster Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Combining wireless neural recording and video capture for the analysis of natural gait

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

In Proc. 5th Int. IEEE EMBS Conf. on Neural Engineering, pages: 613-616, IEEE, 2011 (inproceedings)

pdf Project Page [BibTex]

ps Foster, J., Freifeld, O., Nuyujukian, P., Ryu, S., Black, M. J., Shenoy, K. Combining wireless neural recording and video capture for the analysis of natural gait In Proc. 5th Int. IEEE EMBS Conf. on Neural Engineering, pages: 613-616, IEEE, 2011 (inproceedings)

pdf Project Page [BibTex]

Learning Force Control Policies for Compliant Manipulation

Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Pastor, P., Schaal, S.

In 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 4639-4644, IEEE, San Francisco, USA, sep 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Developing robots capable of fine manipulation skills is of major importance in order to build truly assistive robots. These robots need to be compliant in their actuation and control in order to operate safely in human environments. Manipulation tasks imply complex contact interactions with the external world, and involve reasoning about the forces and torques to be applied. Planning under contact conditions is usually impractical due to computational complexity, and a lack of precise dynamics models of the environment. We present an approach to acquiring manipulation skills on compliant robots through reinforcement learning. The initial position control policy for manipulation is initialized through kinesthetic demonstration. We augment this policy with a force/torque profile to be controlled in combination with the position trajectories. We use the Policy Improvement with Path Integrals (PI2) algorithm to learn these force/torque profiles by optimizing a cost function that measures task success. We demonstrate our approach on the Barrett WAM robot arm equipped with a 6-DOF force/torque sensor on two different manipulation tasks: opening a door with a lever door handle, and picking up a pen off the table. We show that the learnt force control policies allow successful, robust execution of the tasks.

am mg

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Pastor, P., Schaal, S. Learning Force Control Policies for Compliant Manipulation In 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 4639-4644, IEEE, San Francisco, USA, sep 2011 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Control of legged robots with optimal distribution of contact forces

Righetti, L., Buchli, J., Mistry, M., Schaal, S.

In 2011 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, pages: 318-324, IEEE, Bled, Slovenia, 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

The development of agile and safe humanoid robots require controllers that guarantee both high tracking performance and compliance with the environment. More specifically, the control of contact interaction is of crucial importance for robots that will actively interact with their environment. Model-based controllers such as inverse dynamics or operational space control are very appealing as they offer both high tracking performance and compliance. However, while widely used for fully actuated systems such as manipulators, they are not yet standard controllers for legged robots such as humanoids. Indeed such robots are fundamentally different from manipulators as they are underactuated due to their floating-base and subject to switching contact constraints. In this paper we present an inverse dynamics controller for legged robots that use torque redundancy to create an optimal distribution of contact constraints. The resulting controller is able to minimize, given a desired motion, any quadratic cost of the contact constraints at each instant of time. In particular we show how this can be used to minimize tangential forces during locomotion, therefore significantly improving the locomotion of legged robots on difficult terrains. In addition to the theoretical result, we present simulations of a humanoid and a quadruped robot, as well as experiments on a real quadruped robot that demonstrate the advantages of the controller.

am mg

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Righetti, L., Buchli, J., Mistry, M., Schaal, S. Control of legged robots with optimal distribution of contact forces In 2011 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, pages: 318-324, IEEE, Bled, Slovenia, 2011 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Learning Motion Primitive Goals for Robust Manipulation

Stulp, F., Theodorou, E., Kalakrishnan, M., Pastor, P., Righetti, L., Schaal, S.

In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 325-331, IEEE, San Francisco, USA, sep 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Applying model-free reinforcement learning to manipulation remains challenging for several reasons. First, manipulation involves physical contact, which causes discontinuous cost functions. Second, in manipulation, the end-point of the movement must be chosen carefully, as it represents a grasp which must be adapted to the pose and shape of the object. Finally, there is uncertainty in the object pose, and even the most carefully planned movement may fail if the object is not at the expected position. To address these challenges we 1) present a simplified, computationally more efficient version of our model-free reinforcement learning algorithm PI2; 2) extend PI2 so that it simultaneously learns shape parameters and goal parameters of motion primitives; 3) use shape and goal learning to acquire motion primitives that are robust to object pose uncertainty. We evaluate these contributions on a manipulation platform consisting of a 7-DOF arm with a 4-DOF hand.

am mg

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Stulp, F., Theodorou, E., Kalakrishnan, M., Pastor, P., Righetti, L., Schaal, S. Learning Motion Primitive Goals for Robust Manipulation In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 325-331, IEEE, San Francisco, USA, sep 2011 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Inverse Dynamics Control of Floating-Base Robots with External Constraints: a Unified View

Righetti, L., Buchli, J., Mistry, M., Schaal, S.

In 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 1085-1090, IEEE, Shanghai, China, 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Inverse dynamics controllers and operational space controllers have proved to be very efficient for compliant control of fully actuated robots such as fixed base manipulators. However legged robots such as humanoids are inherently different as they are underactuated and subject to switching external contact constraints. Recently several methods have been proposed to create inverse dynamics controllers and operational space controllers for these robots. In an attempt to compare these different approaches, we develop a general framework for inverse dynamics control and show that these methods lead to very similar controllers. We are then able to greatly simplify recent whole-body controllers based on operational space approaches using kinematic projections, bringing them closer to efficient practical implementations. We also generalize these controllers such that they can be optimal under an arbitrary quadratic cost in the commands.

am mg

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Righetti, L., Buchli, J., Mistry, M., Schaal, S. Inverse Dynamics Control of Floating-Base Robots with External Constraints: a Unified View In 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 1085-1090, IEEE, Shanghai, China, 2011 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Shape and pose-invariant correspondences using probabilistic geodesic surface embedding

Tsoli, A., Black, M. J.

In 33rd Annual Symposium of the German Association for Pattern Recognition (DAGM), 6835, pages: 256-265, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Mester, Rudolf and Felsberg, Michael), Springer, 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Correspondence between non-rigid deformable 3D objects provides a foundation for object matching and retrieval, recognition, and 3D alignment. Establishing 3D correspondence is challenging when there are non-rigid deformations or articulations between instances of a class. We present a method for automatically finding such correspondences that deals with significant variations in pose, shape and resolution between pairs of objects.We represent objects as triangular meshes and consider normalized geodesic distances as representing their intrinsic characteristics. Geodesic distances are invariant to pose variations and nearly invariant to shape variations when properly normalized. The proposed method registers two objects by optimizing a joint probabilistic model over a subset of vertex pairs between the objects. The model enforces preservation of geodesic distances between corresponding vertex pairs and inference is performed using loopy belief propagation in a hierarchical scheme. Additionally our method prefers solutions in which local shape information is consistent at matching vertices. We quantitatively evaluate our method and show that is is more accurate than a state of the art method.

pdf talk Project Page [BibTex]

ps Tsoli, A., Black, M. J. Shape and pose-invariant correspondences using probabilistic geodesic surface embedding In 33rd Annual Symposium of the German Association for Pattern Recognition (DAGM), 6835, pages: 256-265, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Mester, Rudolf and Felsberg, Michael), Springer, 2011 (inproceedings)

pdf talk Project Page [BibTex]

Operational Space Control of Constrained and Underactuated Systems

Mistry, M., Righetti, L.

In Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems, Los Angeles, CA, USA, June 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

The operational space formulation (Khatib, 1987), applied to rigid-body manipulators, describes how to decouple task-space and null-space dynamics, and write control equations that correspond only to forces at the end-effector or, alternatively, only to motion within the null-space. We would like to apply this useful theory to modern humanoids and other legged systems, for manipulation or similar tasks, however these systems present additional challenges due to their underactuated floating bases and contact states that can dynamically change. In recent work, Sentis et al. derived controllers for such systems by implementing a task Jacobian projected into a space consistent with the supporting constraints and underactuation (the so called "support consistent reduced Jacobian"). Here, we take a new approach to derive operational space controllers for constrained underactuated systems, by first considering the operational space dynamics within "projected inverse-dynamics" (Aghili, 2005), and subsequently resolving underactuation through the addition of dynamically consistent control torques. Doing so results in a simplified control solution compared with previous results, and importantly yields several new insights into the underlying problem of operational space control in constrained environments: 1) Underactuated systems, such as humanoid robots, cannot in general completely decouple task and null-space dynamics. However, 2) there may exist an infinite number of control solutions to realize desired task-space dynamics, and 3) these solutions involve the addition of dynamically consistent null-space motion or constraint forces (or combinations of both). In light of these findings, we present several possible control solutions, with varying optimization criteria, and highlight some of their practical consequences.

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

mg Mistry, M., Righetti, L. Operational Space Control of Constrained and Underactuated Systems In Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems, Los Angeles, CA, USA, June 2011 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Online movement adaptation based on previous sensor experiences

Pastor, P., Righetti, L., Kalakrishnan, M., Schaal, S.

In 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 365-371, IEEE, San Francisco, USA, sep 2011 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Personal robots can only become widespread if they are capable of safely operating among humans. In uncertain and highly dynamic environments such as human households, robots need to be able to instantly adapt their behavior to unforseen events. In this paper, we propose a general framework to achieve very contact-reactive motions for robotic grasping and manipulation. Associating stereotypical movements to particular tasks enables our system to use previous sensor experiences as a predictive model for subsequent task executions. We use dynamical systems, named Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMPs), to learn goal-directed behaviors from demonstration. We exploit their dynamic properties by coupling them with the measured and predicted sensor traces. This feedback loop allows for online adaptation of the movement plan. Our system can create a rich set of possible motions that account for external perturbations and perception uncertainty to generate truly robust behaviors. As an example, we present an application to grasping with the WAM robot arm.

am mg

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Pastor, P., Righetti, L., Kalakrishnan, M., Schaal, S. Online movement adaptation based on previous sensor experiences In 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 365-371, IEEE, San Francisco, USA, sep 2011 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

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