This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference, Spatial Cognition 2018, held in Tubingen, Germany, in September 2018. The 22 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 44 submissions. They focus on the following topics: navigating in space; talking about space; agents, actions, and space; and individuals in space.

The SpringerBrief covers fundamentals of digital image processing including image concept, image file formats, creating user interfaces and many practical examples of processing images using C++ and Java. These practical examples include among other creating image histograms, performing lossless image compression, detecting change in colors, similarity-based image retrieval and others. All practical examples are accompanied with an explanation how to create programs and the obtained results. This SpringerBrief can be very useful for the undergraduate courses on image processing, providing students with the basic tools in image analysis and processing. Practitioners and researchers working in this field will also find this research useful.

Physics-based animation is commonplace in animated feature films and even special effects for live-action movies. Think about a recent movie and there will be some sort of special effects such as explosions or virtual worlds. Cloth simulation is no different and is ubiquitous because most virtual characters (hopefully!) wear some sort of clothing. The focus of this book is physics-based cloth simulation. We start by providing background information and discuss a range of applications. This book provides explanations of multiple cloth simulation techniques. More specifically, we start with the most simple explicitly integrated mass-spring model and gradually work our way up to more complex and commonly used implicitly integrated continuum techniques in state-of-the-art implementations. We give an intuitive explanation of the techniques and give additional information on how to efficiently implement them on a computer. This book discusses explicit and implicit integration schemes for cloth simulation modeled with mass-spring systems. In addition to this simple model, we explain the more advanced continuum-inspired cloth model introduced in the seminal work of Baraff and Witkin [1998]. This method is commonly used in industry. We also explain recent work by Liu et al. [2013] that provides a technique to obtain fast simulations. In addition to these simulation approaches, we discuss how cloth simulations can be art directed for stylized animations based on the work of Wojan et al. [2016]. Controllability is an essential component of a feature animation film production pipeline. We conclude by pointing the reader to more advanced techniques.

The 2-volume set LNCS 10850 and 10851 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2018, held in Otranto, Italy, in June 2018. The 67 full papers and 26 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: virtual reality; augmented and mixed reality; computer graphics; human-computer interaction; applications of VR/AR in medicine; and applications of VR/AR in cultural heritage; and applications of VR/AR in industry.

The 2-volume set LNCS 10850 and 10851 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2018, held in Otranto, Italy, in June 2018. The 67 full papers and 26 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: virtual reality; augmented and mixed reality; computer graphics; human-computer interaction; applications of VR/AR in medicine; and applications of VR/AR in cultural heritage; and applications of VR/AR in industry.

The book focuses on original approaches intended to support the development of biologically inspired cognitive architectures. It bridges together different disciplines, from classical artificial intelligence to linguistics, from neuro- and social sciences to design and creativity, among others. The chapters, based on contributions presented at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the BICA Society, held in on August 23-24, 2018, in Prague, Czech Republic, discuss emerging methods, theories and ideas towards the realization of general-purpose humanlike artificial intelligence or fostering a better understanding of the ways the human mind works. All in all, the book provides engineers, mathematicians, psychologists, computer scientists and other experts with a timely snapshot of recent research and a source of inspiration for future developments in the broadly intended areas of artificial intelligence and biological inspiration.

This book covers dynamic simulation of deformable objects, which is one of the most challenging tasks in computer graphics and visualization. It focuses on the simulation of deformable models with anisotropic materials, one of the less common approaches in the existing research. Both physically-based and geometrically-based approaches are examined. The authors start with transversely isotropic materials for the simulation of deformable objects with fibrous structures. Next, they introduce a fiber-field incorporated corotational finite element model (CLFEM) that works directly with a constitutive model of transversely isotropic material. A smooth fiber-field is used to establish the local frames for each element. To introduce deformation simulation for orthotropic materials, an orthotropic deformation controlling frame-field is conceptualized and a frame construction tool is developed for users to define the desired material properties. The orthotropic frame-field is coupled with the CLFEM model to complete an orthotropic deformable model. Finally, the authors present an integrated real-time system for animation of skeletal characters with anisotropic tissues. To solve the problems of volume distortion and high computational costs, a strain-based PBD framework for skeletal animation is explained; natural secondary motion of soft tissues is another benefit. The book is written for those researchers who would like to develop their own algorithms. The key mathematical and computational concepts are presented together with illustrations and working examples. It can also be used as a reference book for graduate students and senior undergraduates in the areas of computer graphics, computer animation, and virtual reality. Academics, researchers, and professionals will find this to be an exceptional resource.

Multimodal Behavioral Analysis in the Wild: Advances and Challenges presents the state-of- the-art in behavioral signal processing using different data modalities, with a special focus on identifying the strengths and limitations of current technologies. The book focuses on audio and video modalities, while also emphasizing emerging modalities, such as accelerometer or proximity data. It covers tasks at different levels of complexity, from low level (speaker detection, sensorimotor links, source separation), through middle level (conversational group detection, addresser and addressee identification), and high level (personality and emotion recognition), providing insights on how to exploit inter-level and intra-level links. This is a valuable resource on the state-of-the- art and future research challenges of multi-modal behavioral analysis in the wild. It is suitable for researchers and graduate students in the fields of computer vision, audio processing, pattern recognition, machine learning and social signal processing.

This book explains efficient solutions for segmenting the intensity levels of different types of multilevel images. The authors present hybrid soft computing techniques, which have advantages over conventional soft computing solutions as they incorporate data heterogeneity into the clustering/segmentation procedures. This is a useful introduction and reference for researchers and graduate students of computer science and electronics engineering, particularly in the domains of image processing and computational intelligence.

This book proposes soft computing techniques for segmenting real-life images in applications such as image processing, image mining, video surveillance, and intelligent transportation systems. The book suggests hybrids deriving from three main approaches: fuzzy systems, primarily used for handling real-life problems that involve uncertainty; artificial neural networks, usually applied for machine cognition, learning, and recognition; and evolutionary computation, mainly used for search, exploration, efficient exploitation of contextual information, and optimization. The contributed chapters discuss both the strengths and the weaknesses of the approaches, and the book will be valuable for researchers and graduate students in the domains of image processing and computational intelligence.

This comprehensive and richly illustrated volume provides up-to-date material on Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA). SSA is a well-known methodology for the analysis and forecasting of time series. Since quite recently, SSA is also being used to analyze digital images and other objects that are not necessarily of planar or rectangular form and may contain gaps. SSA is multi-purpose and naturally combines both model-free and parametric techniques, which makes it a very special and attractive methodology for solving a wide range of problems arising in diverse areas, most notably those associated with time series and digital images. An effective, comfortable and accessible implementation of SSA is provided by the R-package Rssa, which is available from CRAN and reviewed in this book. Written by prominent statisticians who have extensive experience with SSA, the book (a) presents the up-to-date SSA methodology, including multidimensional extensions, in language accessible to a large circle of users, (b) combines different versions of SSA into a single tool, (c) shows the diverse tasks that SSA can be used for, (d) formally describes the main SSA methods and algorithms, and (e) provides tutorials on the Rssa package and the use of SSA. The book offers a valuable resource for a very wide readership, including professional statisticians, specialists in signal and image processing, as well as specialists in numerous applied disciplines interested in using statistical methods for time series analysis, forecasting, signal and image processing. The book is written on a level accessible to a broad audience and includes a wealth of examples; hence it can also be used as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on time series analysis and signal processing.

This book proposes a semi-discrete version of the theory of Petitot and Citti-Sarti, leading to a left-invariant structure over the group SE(2,N), restricted to a finite number of rotations. This apparently very simple group is in fact quite atypical: it is maximally almost periodic, which leads to much simpler harmonic analysis compared to SE(2). Based upon this semi-discrete model, the authors improve on previous image-reconstruction algorithms and develop a pattern-recognition theory that also leads to very efficient algorithms in practice.

This volume comprises a selection of works presented at the Numerical and Evolutionary Optimization (NEO) workshop held in September 2015 in Tijuana, Mexico. The development of powerful search and optimization techniques is of great importance in today's world that requires researchers and practitioners to tackle a growing number of challenging real-world problems. In particular, there are two well-established and widely known fields that are commonly applied in this area: (i) traditional numerical optimization techniques and (ii) comparatively recent bio-inspired heuristics. Both paradigms have their unique strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to solve some challenging problems while still failing in others. The goal of the NEO workshop series is to bring together people from these and related fields to discuss, compare and merge their complimentary perspectives in order to develop fast and reliable hybrid methods that maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the underlying paradigms. Through this effort, we believe that the NEO can promote the development of new techniques that are applicable to a broader class of problems. Moreover, NEO fosters the understanding and adequate treatment of real-world problems particularly in emerging fields that affect us all such as health care, smart cities, big data, among many others. The extended papers the NEO 2015 that comprise this book make a contribution to this goal.

The three-volume set CCIS 850, CCIS 851, and CCIS 852 contains the extended abstracts of the posters presented during the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI 2018, which took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, in July 2018. The total of 1171 papers and 160 posters included in the 30 HCII 2018 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 4346 submissions. The 207 papers presented in these three volumes are organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: interaction and information; images and visualizations; design, usability and user experience; psychological, cognitive and neurocognitive issues in HCI; social media and analytics. Part II: design for all, assistive and rehabilitation technologies; aging and HCI; virtual and augmented reality; emotions, anxiety, stress and well-being. Part III: learning and interaction; interacting with cultural heritage; HCI in commerce and business; interacting and driving; smart cities and smart environments. The chapter 'Information at Hand - Using Wearable Devices to Display Task Information in the Context of Industry 4.0' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

Image Segmentation Summarizes and improves new theory, methods, and applications of current image segmentation approaches, written by leaders in the field The process of image segmentation divides an image into different regions based on the characteristics of pixels, resulting in a simplified image that can be more efficiently analyzed. Image segmentation has wide applications in numerous fields ranging from industry detection and bio-medicine to intelligent transportation and architecture. Image Segmentation: Principles, Techniques, and Applications is an up-to-date collection of recent techniques and methods devoted to the field of computer vision. Covering fundamental concepts, new theories and approaches, and a variety of practical applications including medical imaging, remote sensing, fuzzy clustering, and watershed transform. In-depth chapters present innovative methods developed by the authors--such as convolutional neural networks, graph convolutional networks, deformable convolution, and model compression--to assist graduate students and researchers apply and improve image segmentation in their work. Describes basic principles of image segmentation and related mathematical methods such as clustering, neural networks, and mathematical morphology. Introduces new methods for achieving rapid and accurate image segmentation based on classic image processing and machine learning theory. Presents techniques for improved convolutional neural networks for scene segmentation, object recognition, and change detection, etc. Highlights the effect of image segmentation in various application scenarios such as traffic image analysis, medical image analysis, remote sensing applications, and material analysis, etc. Image Segmentation: Principles, Techniques, and Applications is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate courses such as image and video processing, computer vision, and digital signal processing, as well as researchers working in computer vision and image analysis looking to improve their techniques and methods.

The three-volume set CCIS 850, CCIS 851, and CCIS 852 contains the extended abstracts of the posters presented during the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI 2018, which took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, in July 2018. The total of 1171 papers and 160 posters included in the 30 HCII 2018 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 4346 submissions. The 207 papers presented in these three volumes are organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: interaction and information; images and visualizations; design, usability and user experience; psychological, cognitive and neurocognitive issues in HCI; social media and analytics. Part II: design for all, assistive and rehabilitation technologies; aging and HCI; virtual and augmented reality; emotions, anxiety, stress and well-being. Part III: learning and interaction; interacting with cultural heritage; HCI in commerce and business; interacting and driving; smart cities and smart environments.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the field of pattern mining with evolutionary algorithms. To do so, it covers formal definitions about patterns, patterns mining, type of patterns and the usefulness of patterns in the knowledge discovery process. As it is described within the book, the discovery process suffers from both high runtime and memory requirements, especially when high dimensional datasets are analyzed. To solve this issue, many pruning strategies have been developed. Nevertheless, with the growing interest in the storage of information, more and more datasets comprise such a dimensionality that the discovery of interesting patterns becomes a challenging process. In this regard, the use of evolutionary algorithms for mining pattern enables the computation capacity to be reduced, providing sufficiently good solutions. This book offers a survey on evolutionary computation with particular emphasis on genetic algorithms and genetic programming. Also included is an analysis of the set of quality measures most widely used in the field of pattern mining with evolutionary algorithms. This book serves as a review of the most important evolutionary algorithms for pattern mining. It considers the analysis of different algorithms for mining different type of patterns and relationships between patterns, such as frequent patterns, infrequent patterns, patterns defined in a continuous domain, or even positive and negative patterns. A completely new problem in the pattern mining field, mining of exceptional relationships between patterns, is discussed. In this problem the goal is to identify patterns which distribution is exceptionally different from the distribution in the complete set of data records. Finally, the book deals with the subgroup discovery task, a method to identify a subgroup of interesting patterns that is related to a dependent variable or target attribute. This subgroup of patterns satisfies two essential conditions: interpretability and interestingness.

This book introduces condition-based maintenance (CBM)/data-driven prognostics and health management (PHM) in detail, first explaining the PHM design approach from a systems engineering perspective, then summarizing and elaborating on the data-driven methodology for feature construction, as well as feature-based fault diagnosis and prognosis. The book includes a wealth of illustrations and tables to help explain the algorithms, as well as practical examples showing how to use this tool to solve situations for which analytic solutions are poorly suited. It equips readers to apply the concepts discussed in order to analyze and solve a variety of problems in PHM system design, feature construction, fault diagnosis and prognosis.

"Progress in Expressive Image Synthesis" (MEIS2015), was held in Fukuoka, Japan, September 25-27, 2015. The aim of the symposium was to provide a unique venue where various issues in computer graphics (CG) application fields could be discussed by mathematicians, CG researchers, and practitioners. Through the previous symposiums MEIS2013 and MEIS2014, mathematicians as well as CG researchers have recognized that CG is a specific and practical activity derived from mathematical theories. Issues found in CG broaden the field of mathematics and vice versa, and CG visualizes mathematical theories in an aesthetic manner. In this volume, the editors aim to provoke interdisciplinary research projects through the peer-reviewed papers and poster presentations at the this year's symposium. This book captures interactions among mathematicians, CG researchers, and practitioners sharing important, state-of-the-art issues in graphics and visual perception. The book is suitable for all CG researchers seeking open problem areas and especially for those entering the field who have not yet selected a research direction.

This book presents state-of-the-art computational attention models that have been successfully tested in diverse application areas and can build the foundation for artificial systems to efficiently explore, analyze, and understand natural scenes. It gives a comprehensive overview of the most recent computational attention models for processing visual and acoustic input. It covers the biological background of visual and auditory attention, as well as bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms and discusses various applications. In the first part new approaches for bottom-up visual and acoustic saliency models are presented and applied to the task of audio-visual scene exploration of a robot. In the second part the influence of top-down cues for attention modeling is investigated.

This book provides a concise and comprehensive overview of vehicular communication technologies. It classifies all relevant standards, protocols and applications, so as to enable the reader to gain a holistic approach towards the subject of vehicular communications. The primary methods are algorithmic processes and simulation results.First, an overview and classification of vehicular technologies is presented. Then, the book focuses on specific applications of V2V and V2I communications. Special attention is given to recent research and development results regarding R&D projects in the field, in cooperation with car manufacturing companies and universities at a global level.Designed to facilitate understanding of vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure technologies, this textbook is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of vehicular communications or mobile networks.

The interdisciplinary research and development work carried out in the last ten years which is presented in this book aimed at replacing the conventional airport control tower by a new "remote tower operation" work environment (RTO) which should enhance work efficiency and safety and reduce costs. This revolutionary human-system interface allows for remote aerodrome traffic control without a physical tower building and enables the establishment of remote airport traffic control centers (RTC) of which each may serve several airports from a central location.

This book showcases new and innovative approaches to biometric data capture and analysis, focusing especially on those that are characterized by non-intrusiveness, reliable prediction algorithms, and high user acceptance. It comprises the peer-reviewed papers from the international workshop on the subject that was held in Ancona, Italy, in October 2014 and featured sessions on ICT for health care, biometric data in automotive and home applications, embedded systems for biometric data analysis, biometric data analysis: EMG and ECG, and ICT for gait analysis. The background to the book is the challenge posed by the prevention and treatment of common, widespread chronic diseases in modern, aging societies. Capture of biometric data is a cornerstone for any analysis and treatment strategy. The latest advances in sensor technology allow accurate data measurement in a non-intrusive way, and in many cases it is necessary to provide online monitoring and real-time data capturing to support a patient's prevention plans or to allow medical professionals to access the patient's current status. This book will be of value to all with an interest in this expanding field.

This book contains extended, in-depth presentations of the plenary talks from the 16th French-German-Polish Conference on Optimization, held in Krakow, Poland in 2013. Each chapter in this book exhibits a comprehensive look at new theoretical and/or application-oriented results in mathematical modeling, optimization, and optimal control. Students and researchers involved in image processing, partial differential inclusions, shape optimization, or optimal control theory and its applications to medical and rehabilitation technology, will find this book valuable. The first chapter by Martin Burger provides an overview of recent developments related to Bregman distances, which is an important tool in inverse problems and image processing. The chapter by Piotr Kalita studies the operator version of a first order in time partial differential inclusion and its time discretization. In the chapter by Gunter Leugering, Jan Sokolowski and Antoni Zochowski, nonsmooth shape optimization problems for variational inequalities are considered. The next chapter, by Katja Mombaur is devoted to applications of optimal control and inverse optimal control in the field of medical and rehabilitation technology, in particular in human movement analysis, therapy and improvement by means of medical devices. The final chapter, by Nikolai Osmolovskii and Helmut Maurer provides a survey on no-gap second order optimality conditions in the calculus of variations and optimal control, and a discussion of their further development.

This book provides comprehensive, state-of-the art coverage of photorefractive organic compounds, a class of material with the ability to change their index of refraction upon illumination. The change is both dynamic and reversible. Dynamic because no external processing is required for the index modulation to be revealed, and reversible because the index change can be modified or suppressed by altering the illumination pattern. These properties make photorefractive materials very attractive candidates for many applications such as image restoration, correlation, beam conjugation, non-destructive testing, data storage, imaging through scattering media, holographic imaging and display. The field of photorefractive organic material is also closely related to organic photovoltaic and light emitting diode (OLED), which makes new discoveries in one field applicable to others.