A representation of objects by their parts is the dominant strategy for representing complex 3D objects in many disciplines. In computer vision and robotics, superquadrics are among the most widespread part models. Superquadrics are a family of parametric models that cover a wide variety of smoothly changing 3D symmetric shapes, which are controlled with a small number of parameters and which can be augmented with the addition of global and local deformations. The book covers, in depth, the geometric properties of superquadrics. The main contribution of the book is an original approach to the recovery and segmentation of superquadrics from range images. Several applications of superquadrics in computer vision and robotics are thoroughly discussed and, in particular, the use of superquadrics for range image registration is demonstrated. Audience: The book is intended for readers of all levels who are familiar with and interested in computer vision issues.

This book contains a selection of higher quality and reviewed papers of the 14th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, EPIA 2009, held in Aveiro, Portugal, in October 2009.

The 55 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 163 submissions.

The papers are organized in topical sections on artificial intelligence in transportation and urban mobility (AITUM), artificial life and evolutionary algorithms (ALEA), computational methods in bioinformatics and systems biology (CMBSB), computational logic with applications (COLA), emotional and affective computing (EAC), general artificial intelligence (GAI), intelligent robotics (IROBOT), knowledge discovery and business intelligence (KDBI), muli-agent systems (MASTA) social simulation and modelling (SSM), text mining and application (TEMA) as well as web and network intelligence (WNI).

The concept of ridges has appeared numerous times in the image processing liter ature. Sometimes the term is used in an intuitive sense. Other times a concrete definition is provided. In almost all cases the concept is used for very specific ap plications. When analyzing images or data sets, it is very natural for a scientist to measure critical behavior by considering maxima or minima of the data. These critical points are relatively easy to compute. Numerical packages always provide support for root finding or optimization, whether it be through bisection, Newton's method, conjugate gradient method, or other standard methods. It has not been natural for scientists to consider critical behavior in a higher-order sense. The con cept of ridge as a manifold of critical points is a natural extension of the concept of local maximum as an isolated critical point. However, almost no attention has been given to formalizing the concept. There is a need for a formal development. There is a need for understanding the computation issues that arise in the imple mentations. The purpose of this book is to address both needs by providing a formal mathematical foundation and a computational framework for ridges. The intended audience for this book includes anyone interested in exploring the use fulness of ridges in data analysis."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of HCI and Usability for e-Inclusion, held as the 5th Symposium of the Workgroup Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering of the Austrian Computer Society, USAB 2009, in Linz, Austria, in November 2009.

The 12 revised full papers and 26 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on gender and cognitive performance, usefulness, usability, accessibility, emotion, confidence and elderly, usability testing, evaluation, measurement, education, learning and e-inclusion, design for adaptive content processing, grounded theory, activity theory and situated action, smart home, health and ambient assistent living, user centred design and usability practice, interaction, assistive technologies and virtual environments, communication, interfaces and haptic technology as well as new technologies and challenges for people with disabilities.

This book constitutes the research papers presented at the Joint 2101 & 2102 International Conference on Biometric ID Management and Multimodal Communication.

BioID_MultiComm'09 is a joint International Conference organized cooperatively by COST Actions 2101 and 2102. COST 2101 Action is focused on "Biometrics for Identity Documents and Smart Cards (BIDS)," while COST 2102 Action is entitled "Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Non-verbal Communication."

The aim of COST 2101 is to investigate novel technologies for unsupervised multimodal biometric authentication systems using a new generation of biometrics-enabled identity documents and smart cards.

COST 2102 is devoted to develop an advanced acoustical, perceptual and psychological analysis of verbal and non-verbal communication signals originating in spontaneous face-to-face interaction, in order to identify algorithms and automatic procedures capable of recognizing human emotional states.

Appendix 164 3. A 3. A. 1 Approximate Estimation of Fundamental Matrix from General Matrix 164 3. A. 2 Estimation of Affine Transformation 165 4 RECOVERY OF EPIPOLAR GEOMETRY FROM LINE SEGMENTS OR LINES 167 Line Segments or Straight Lines 168 4. 1 4. 2 Solving Motion Using Line Segments Between Two Views 173 4. 2. 1 Overlap of Two Corresponding Line Segments 173 Estimating Motion by Maximizing Overlap 175 4. 2. 2 Implementation Details 4. 2. 3 176 Reconstructing 3D Line Segments 4. 2. 4 179 4. 2. 5 Experimental Results 180 4. 2. 6 Discussions 192 4. 3 Determining Epipolar Geometry of Three Views 194 4. 3. 1 Trifocal Constraints for Point Matches 194 4. 3. 2 Trifocal Constraints for Line Correspondences 199 4. 3. 3 Linear Estimation of K, L, and M Using Points and Lines 200 4. 3. 4 Determining Camera Projection Matrices 201 4. 3. 5 Image Transfer 203 4. 4 Summary 204 5 REDEFINING STEREO, MOTION AND OBJECT RECOGNITION VIA EPIPOLAR GEOMETRY 205 5. 1 Conventional Approaches to Stereo, Motion and Object Recognition 205 5. 1. 1 Stereo 205 5. 1. 2 Motion 206 5. 1. 3 Object Recognition 207 5. 2 Correspondence in Stereo, Motion and Object Recognition as 1D Search 209 5. 2. 1 Stereo Matching 209 xi Contents 5. 2. 2 Motion Correspondence and Segmentation 209 5. 2. 3 3D Object Recognition and Localization 210 Disparity and Spatial Disparity Space 210 5.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems, ACIVS 2009, held in Bordeaux, France in September/October 2009.

The 43 revised full papers and 25 posters presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 115 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on technovision, fundamental mathematical techniques, image processing, coding and filtering, image and video analysis, computer vision, tracking, color, multispectral and special-purpose imaging, medical imaging, and biometrics.

The recent development of intelligent surveillance systems has captured the interest of both academic research labs and industry. Automated Multi-Camera Surveillance addresses monitoring of people and vehicles, and detection of threatening objects and events in a variety of scenarios. In this book, techniques for development of an automated multi-camera surveillance system are discussed and proposed. The state-of-the-art in the automated surveillance systems is reviewed as well. Detailed explanation of sub-components of surveillance systems are provided, and enhancements to each of these components are proposed. The authors identify important challenges that such a system must address, and propose solutions. Development of a specific surveillance system called "KNIGHT" is described, along with the authors' experience using it. This book enables the reader to understand the mathematical models and algorithms underlying automated surveillance as well as the benefits and limitations of using such methods.

Despite the fact that images constitute the main objects in computer vision and image analysis, there is remarkably little concern about their actual definition. In this book a complete account of image structure is proposed in terms of rigorously defined machine concepts, using basic tools from algebra, analysis, and differential geometry. Machine technicalities such as discretisation and quantisation details are de-emphasised, and robustness with respect to noise is manifest. From the foreword by Jan Koenderink: It is my hope that the book will find a wide audience, including physicists - who still are largely unaware of the general importance and power of scale space theory, mathematicians - who will find in it a principled and formally tight exposition of a topic awaiting further development, and computer scientists - who will find here a unified and conceptually well founded framework for many apparently unrelated and largely historically motivated methods they already know and love. The book is suited for self-study and graduate courses, the carefully formulated exercises are designed to get to grips with the subject matter and prepare the reader for original research.'

Assembled in this volume is a collection of some of the state-of-the-art methods that are using computer vision and machine learning techniques as applied in robotic applications. Currently there is a gap between research conducted in the computer vision and robotics communities. This volume discusses contrasting viewpoints of computer vision vs. robotics, and provides current and future challenges discussed from a research perspective.

The authors here provide a detailed treatment of the design of robust adaptive controllers for nonlinear systems with uncertainties. They employ a new tool based on the ideas of system immersion and manifold invariance. New algorithms are delivered for the construction of robust asymptotically-stabilizing and adaptive control laws for nonlinear systems. The methods proposed lead to modular schemes that are easier to tune than their counterparts obtained from Lyapunov redesign.

Since the dawn of the new millennium, robotics has undergone a major transf- mation in scope and dimensions. This expansion has been brought about by the maturityofthe?eldandtheadvancesinitsrelatedtechnologies.Fromapred- inantly industrial focus, robotics has been rapidly expanding into the challenges of the human world. The new generation of robots is expected to safely and dependably cohabit with humans in homes, workplaces, and communities, p- viding support in services, entertainment, education, healthcare, manufacturing, and assistance. Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge robotics has produced is revealing a much wider rangeof applications reaching across diverse research areas and scienti?c disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neu- sciences, virtual prototyping, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others. In return, the challenges of the new emerging areas are proving an ab- dant source of stimulation and insights for the ?eld of robotics. It is indeed at the intersection of disciplines that the most striking advances happen. The goal of the series of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR)isto bring, in a timely fashion, the latest advances and developments in robotics on thebasisoftheirsigni?canceandquality.Itisourhopethatthewiderdissemi- tion of research developments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing ?e

The 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI Inter- tional 2009, was held in San Diego, California, USA, July 19-24, 2009, jointly with the Symposium on Human Interface (Japan) 2009, the 8th International Conference on Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics, the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, the Third International Conf- ence on Virtual and Mixed Reality, the Third International Conference on Internati- alization, Design and Global Development, the Third International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, the 5th International Conference on Augmented Cognition, the Second International Conference on Digital Human Mod- ing, and the First International Conference on Human Centered Design. A total of 4,348 individuals from academia, research institutes, industry and gove- mental agencies from 73 countries submitted contributions, and 1,397 papers that were judged to be of high scientific quality were included in the program. These papers - dress the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of the design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas.

Ambient Intelligence is a vision of the future where the world will be surrounded by electronic environments sensitive and responsive to people, wherein devices work in concert to support people in carrying out their everyday life activities, in an easy and natural way.

This edited volume is based on the workshop Multimedia Techniques for Ambient Intelligence (MTDAI08), held in Mogliano Veneto, Italy in March 2008. Contributed by world renowned leaders in the field from academia and industry, this volume is dedicated to research on technologies used to improve the intelligence capability of multimedia devices for imaging, image processing and computer vision. Focuses on recent developments in digital signal processing, including evolutions in audiovisual signal processing, analysis, coding and authentication, and retrieval techniques.

Designed for researchers and professionals, this book is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science and electrical engineering.

Motion-Free Super-Resolution is a compilation of very recent work on various methods of generating super-resolution (SR) images from a set of low-resolution images. The current literature on this topic deals primarily with the use of motion cues for the purpose of generating SR images. These cues have, it is shown, their advantages and disadvantages. In contrast, this book shows that cues other than motion can also be used for the same purpose, and addresses both the merits and demerits of these new techniques.

Motion-Free Super-Resolution supersedes much of the lead author 's previous edited volume, "Super-Resolution Imaging," and includes an up-to-date account of the latest research efforts in this fast-moving field. This sequel also features a style of presentation closer to that of a textbook, with an emphasis on teaching and explanation rather than scholarly presentation.

ThisbookattemptstocapturesomeoftheexcitementofaninspiringDagstuhl SeminarinJanuary2007. Theauthorsreportonrecentresearchresultsaswell as opining on future directions for the analysis and visualization of tensor ?elds. Topics range from applications of the analysis of tensor ?elds to purer researchintotheirmathematical andanalytical properties. Oneofthegoalsof thisseminarwastobringtogetherresearchersfromalongthatpure-to-applied disciplinary axis with the hope of fostering new collaborations and research. This book, we hope, will continue to further that goal in a broader context. Providence, Rhode Island, USA David H. Laidlaw Saarbruc ] ken, Saarland, Germany Joachim Weickert August 2008 Contents Part I Models for Di?usion MRI Modelling, Fitting and Sampling in Di?usion MRI Daniel C. Alexander. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Tensors, Polynomials and Models for Directional Data P. G. Batchelor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 A Mixture of Wisharts (MOW) Model for Multi?ber Reconstruction ] Bing Jian, Baba C. Vemuri, and Evren Ozarslan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 The Algebra of Fourth-Order Tensors with Application to Di?usion MRI Maher Moakher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Part II Higher-Level Analysis of Di?usion Images Structure-Speci?c StatisticalMappingofWhiteMatterTracts Paul A. Yushkevich, Hui Zhang, Tony J. Simon, and James C. Gee. . . . 83 Analysis of Distance/Similarity Measures for Di?usion Tensor Imaging T. H. J. M. Peeters, P. R. Rodrigues, A. Vilanova, and B. M. ter Haar Romeny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 XContents Part III Tensor Field Visualization Tensor Glyph Warping: Visualizing Metric Tensor Fields using Riemannian Exponential Maps Anders Brun and Hans Knutsson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Interactive Volume Rendering of Di?usion Tensor Data Mario Hlawitschka, Gunther H. Weber, Alfred Anwander, Owen T. Carmichael, Bernd Hamann, and Gerik Scheuermann. . . . . . . . 161 Dense Glyph Sampling for Visualization Louis Feng, Ingrid Hotz, Bernd Hamann, and Kenneth Joy. . . . . . . . . . . ."

One of the grand challenges for computational intelligence and biometrics is to understand how people process and recognize faces and to develop automated and reliable face recognition systems. Biometrics has become the major component in the complex decision making process associated with security applications. The many challenges addressed for face detection and authentication include cluttered environments, occlusion and disguise, temporal changes, and last but not least, robust training and open set testing.

Reliable Face Recognition Methods seeks to comprehensively address the face recognition problem while drawing inspiration and gaining new insights from complementary fields of endeavor such as neurosciences, statistics, signal and image processing, computer vision, and machine learning and data mining. The book examines the evolution of research surrounding the field to date, explores new directions, and offers specific guidance on the most promising venues for future R&D.

With its well-focused approach and clarity of presentation, this new text/reference is an excellent resource for computer scientists and engineers, researchers, and professionals who need to learn about face recognition. In addition, the book is ideally suited to students studying biometrics, pattern recognition, and human-computer interaction.

Similarity-based learning methods have a great potential as an intuitive and ?exible toolbox for mining, visualization,and inspection of largedata sets. They combine simple and human-understandable principles, such as distance-based classi?cation, prototypes, or Hebbian learning, with a large variety of di?erent, problem-adapted design choices, such as a data-optimum topology, similarity measure, or learning mode. In medicine, biology, and medical bioinformatics, more and more data arise from clinical measurements such as EEG or fMRI studies for monitoring brain activity, mass spectrometry data for the detection of proteins, peptides and composites, or microarray pro?les for the analysis of gene expressions. Typically, data are high-dimensional, noisy, and very hard to inspect using classic (e. g. , symbolic or linear) methods. At the same time, new technologies ranging from the possibility of a very high resolution of spectra to high-throughput screening for microarray data are rapidly developing and carry thepromiseofane?cient,cheap,andautomaticgatheringoftonsofhigh-quality data with large information potential. Thus, there is a need for appropriate - chine learning methods which help to automatically extract and interpret the relevant parts of this information and which, eventually, help to enable und- standingofbiologicalsystems,reliablediagnosisoffaults,andtherapyofdiseases such as cancer based on this information. Moreover, these application scenarios pose fundamental and qualitatively new challenges to the learning systems - cause of the speci?cs of the data and learning tasks. Since these characteristics are particularly pronounced within the medical domain, but not limited to it and of principled interest, this research topic opens the way toward important new directions of algorithmic design and accompanying theory.

This volume contains the papers presented at the 7th IAPR-TC-15 Workshop onGraph-BasedRepresentationsinPatternRecognition- GbR2009.Thewo- shop was held in Venice, Italy between May 26-28, 2009. The previous wo- shops in the series were held in Lyon, France (1997), Haindorf, Austria (1999), Ischia, Italy (2001), York, UK (2003), Poitiers, France (2005), and Alicante, Spain (2007). The Technical Committee (TC15, http: //www.greyc.ensicaen.fr/iapr-tc15/) of the IAPR (International Association for Pattern Recognition) was founded in order to federate and to encourage research work at the intersection of pattern recognition and graph theory. Among its activities, the TC15 encourages the organization of special graph sessions in many computer vision conferences and organizes the biennial GbR Workshop. The scienti?c focus of these workshops coversresearchin pattern recognition and image analysis within the graph theory framework. This workshop series traditionally provide a forum for presenting and discussing research results and applications in the intersection of pattern recognition, image analysis and graph theory

Welcome to the Proceedings of ICCHP 2010! We were proud to welcome participants from more than 40 countries from all over the world to this year's ICCHP. Since the late 1980s, it has been ICCHP's mission to support and reflect development in the field of "Assistive Technologies," eAccessibility and eInclusion. With a focus on scientific quality, ICCHP has become an important reference in our field. The 2010 conference and this collection of papers once again fulfilled this mission. The International Programme Committee, comprising 106 experts from all over the world, selected 147 full and 44 short papers out of 328 abstracts submitted to ICCHP. This acceptance ratio of about half of the submissions demonstrates our strict pursuit of scientific quality both of the programme and in particular of the proceedings in your hands. An impressive number of experts agreed to organize "Special Thematic Sessions" (STS) for ICCHP 2010. These STS help to bring the meeting into sharper focus in several key areas. In turn, this deeper level of focus helps to collate a state of the art and mainstream technical, social, cultural and political developments.

This volume collects the papers accepted for presentation atMIRAGE 2009. TheMIRAGE conference is continuing to receive international recognition, with this year's presentations coming from 25 countries despite the large wor- wide ?nancial crisis. This time Asia submitted far fewer papers than previously and fewer than Europe. France provedto be the most active scienti?cally with a total of 16 submitted papers. Germany came second (10 submitted papers) and China third (8 papers). We received a total of 83 submissions and accepted 41 as oral presentations, over the three-day event. All papers were reviewed by three to four members of theProgramCommittee.The?nalselectionwasmadebytheConferenceChairs. At this point, we wish to thank the Program Committee and additional referees for their timely and high-quality reviews. We also thank the invited speakers Luc Van Gool, Frank Multon and Raquel Urtasun for kindly accepting to present very interesting talks. mirage 2009 was organizedbyinria Rocquencourt and took place atinria, Rocquencourt, close to Versailles. We believe that the conference proved to be a stimulating experience for all. March 2009 A. Gagalowicz W. Philips Organization Mirage 2009 was organized byinria and Ghent University.

The application of Computational Intelligence in emerging research areas such as Granular Computing, Mechatronics, and Bioinformatics shows its usefulness often emphasized by Prof Lotfi Zadeh, the inventor of fuzzy logic and many others. This book contains recent advances in Computational Intelligence methods for modeling, optimization and prediction and covers a large number of applications. The book presents new Computational Intelligence theory and methods for modeling and prediction. The range of the various applications is captured with 5 chapters in image processing, 2 chapters in audio processing, 3 chapters in commerce and finance, 2 chapters in communication networks and 6 chapters containing other applications.

Attention has represented a core scienti?c topic in the design of AI-enabled systems in the last few decades. Today, in the ongoing debate, design, and c- putationalmodelingofarti?cialcognitivesystems, attentionhasgainedacentral position as a focus of research. For instance, attentional methods are considered in investigating the interfacing of sensory and cognitive information processing, for the organization of behaviors, and for the understanding of individual and social cognition in infant development. Whilevisualcognitionplaysacentralroleinhumanperception, ?ndingsfrom neuroscience and experimental psychology have provided strong evidence about the perception-action nature of cognition. The embodied nature of senso- motor intelligence requires a continuous and focused interplay between the c- trolofmotoractivitiesandtheinterpretationoffeedbackfromperceptualmod- ities. Decision making about the selection of information from the incoming sensory stream - in tune with contextual processing on a current task and an agent's global objectives - becomes a further challenging issue in attentional control. Attention must operate at interfaces between a bottom-up-driven world interpretationandtop-down-driveninformationselection, thusactingatthecore of arti?cial cognitive systems. These insights have already induced changes in AI-related disciplines, such as the design of behavior-based robot control and the computational modeling of animats. Today, the development of enabling technologiessuch as autonomous robotic systems, miniaturizedmobile-evenwearable-sensors, andambientintelligence systems involves the real-time analysis of enormous quantities of data. These data have to be processed in an intelligent way to provide "on time delivery" of the required relevant information. Knowledge has to be applied about what needs to be attended to, and when, and what to do in a meaningful sequence, in correspondence with visual feedback.

The International Gesture Workshops (GW) are interdisciplinary events for those researching gesture-based communication across the disciplines. The focus of these events is a shared interest in understanding gestures and sign language in their many facets, and using them for advancing human-machine interaction. Since 1996, International Gesture Workshops have been held roughly every second year, with fully reviewed proceedings published by Springer. The International Gesture Workshop GW 2009 was hosted by Bielefeld University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF - Zentrum fur interdisziplinare Forschung) during February 25-27, 2009. Like its predecessors, GW 2009 aimed to provide a platform for participants to share, discuss, and criticize recent and novel research with a multidisciplinary audience. More than 70 computer scientists, linguistics, psychologists, neuroscientists as well as dance and music scientists from 16 countries met to present and exchange their newest results under the umbrella theme "Gesture in Embodied Communication and Human-Computer Interaction. " Consistent with the steady growth of research activity in this area, a large number of high-quality submissions were received, which made GW 2009 an exciting and important event for anyone interested in gesture-related technological research relevant to human-computer interaction. In line with the practice of previous gesture workshops, presenters were invited to submit theirs papers for publication in a subsequent peer-reviewed publication of high quality. The present book is the outcome of this effort. Representing the research work from eight countries, it contains a selection of 28 thoroughly reviewed articles.

As future generation information technology (FGIT) becomes specialized and fr- mented, it is easy to lose sight that many topics in FGIT have common threads and, because of this, advances in one discipline may be transmitted to others. Presentation of recent results obtained in different disciplines encourages this interchange for the advancement of FGIT as a whole. Of particular interest are hybrid solutions that c- bine ideas taken from multiple disciplines in order to achieve something more signi- cant than the sum of the individual parts. Through such hybrid philosophy, a new principle can be discovered, which has the propensity to propagate throughout mul- faceted disciplines. FGIT 2009 was the first mega-conference that attempted to follow the above idea of hybridization in FGIT in a form of multiple events related to particular disciplines of IT, conducted by separate scientific committees, but coordinated in order to expose the most important contributions. It included the following international conferences: Advanced Software Engineering and Its Applications (ASEA), Bio-Science and Bio-Technology (BSBT), Control and Automation (CA), Database Theory and Application (DTA), D- aster Recovery and Business Continuity (DRBC; published independently), Future G- eration Communication and Networking (FGCN) that was combined with Advanced Communication and Networking (ACN), Grid and Distributed Computing (GDC), M- timedia, Computer Graphics and Broadcasting (MulGraB), Security Technology (SecTech), Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition (SIP), and- and e-Service, Science and Technology (UNESST).