Haibin Yan

Bio: Haibin Yan is an academic researcher from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. The author has contributed to research in topics: Discriminative model & Metric (mathematics). The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 33 publications receiving 882 citations. Previous affiliations of Haibin Yan include National University of Singapore.

Discriminative Multimetric Learning for Kinship Verification

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new discriminative multimetric learning method for kinship verification via facial image analysis. Given each face image, we first extract multiple features using different face descriptors to characterize face images from different aspects because different feature descriptors can provide complementary information. Then, we jointly learn multiple distance metrics with these extracted multiple features under which the probability of a pair of face image with a kinship relation having a smaller distance than that of the pair without a kinship relation is maximized, and the correlation of different features of the same face sample is maximized, simultaneously, so that complementary and discriminative information is exploited for verification. Experimental results on four face kinship data sets show the effectiveness of our proposed method over the existing single-metric and multimetric learning methods.

Prototype-Based Discriminative Feature Learning for Kinship Verification

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new prototype-based discriminative feature learning (PDFL) method for kinship verification. Unlike most previous kinship verification methods which employ low-level hand-crafted descriptors such as local binary pattern and Gabor features for face representation, this paper aims to learn discriminative mid-level features to better characterize the kin relation of face images for kinship verification. To achieve this, we construct a set of face samples with unlabeled kin relation from the labeled face in the wild dataset as the reference set. Then, each sample in the training face kinship dataset is represented as a mid-level feature vector, where each entry is the corresponding decision value from one support vector machine hyperplane. Subsequently, we formulate an optimization function by minimizing the intraclass samples (with a kin relation) and maximizing the neighboring interclass samples (without a kin relation) with the mid-level features. To better use multiple low-level features for mid-level feature learning, we further propose a multiview PDFL method to learn multiple mid-level features to improve the verification performance. Experimental results on four publicly available kinship datasets show the superior performance of the proposed methods over both the state-of-the-art kinship verification methods and human ability in our kinship verification task.

A Survey on Perception Methods for Human–Robot Interaction in Social Robots

Abstract: For human–robot interaction (HRI), perception is one of the most important capabilities. This paper reviews several widely used perception methods of HRI in social robots. Specifically, we investigate general perception tasks crucial for HRI, such as where the objects are located in the rooms, what objects are in the scene, and how they interact with humans. We first enumerate representative social robots and summarize the most three important perception methods from these robots: feature extraction, dimensionality reduction, and semantic understanding. For feature extraction, four widely used signals including visual-based, audio-based, tactile-based and rang sensors-based are reviewed, and they are compared based on their advantages and disadvantages. For dimensionality reduction, representative methods including principle component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and locality preserving projections (LPP) are reviewed. For semantic understanding, conventional techniques for several typical applications such as object recognition, object tracking, object segmentation, and speaker localization are discussed, and their characteristics and limitations are also analyzed. Moreover, several popular data sets used in social robotics and published semantic understanding results are analyzed and compared in light of our analysis of HRI perception methods. Lastly, we suggest important future work to analyze fundamental questions on perception methods in HRI.

Ordinal Regression Methods: Survey and Experimental Study

Abstract: Ordinal regression problems are those machine learning problems where the objective is to classify patterns using a categorical scale which shows a natural order between the labels. Many real-world applications present this labelling structure and that has increased the number of methods and algorithms developed over the last years in this field. Although ordinal regression can be faced using standard nominal classification techniques, there are several algorithms which can specifically benefit from the ordering information. Therefore, this paper is aimed at reviewing the state of the art on these techniques and proposing a taxonomy based on how the models are constructed to take the order into account. Furthermore, a thorough experimental study is proposed to check if the use of the order information improves the performance of the models obtained, considering some of the approaches within the taxonomy. The results confirm that ordering information benefits ordinal models improving their accuracy and the closeness of the predictions to actual targets in the ordinal scale.

Prototype-Based Discriminative Feature Learning for Kinship Verification

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new prototype-based discriminative feature learning (PDFL) method for kinship verification. Unlike most previous kinship verification methods which employ low-level hand-crafted descriptors such as local binary pattern and Gabor features for face representation, this paper aims to learn discriminative mid-level features to better characterize the kin relation of face images for kinship verification. To achieve this, we construct a set of face samples with unlabeled kin relation from the labeled face in the wild dataset as the reference set. Then, each sample in the training face kinship dataset is represented as a mid-level feature vector, where each entry is the corresponding decision value from one support vector machine hyperplane. Subsequently, we formulate an optimization function by minimizing the intraclass samples (with a kin relation) and maximizing the neighboring interclass samples (without a kin relation) with the mid-level features. To better use multiple low-level features for mid-level feature learning, we further propose a multiview PDFL method to learn multiple mid-level features to improve the verification performance. Experimental results on four publicly available kinship datasets show the superior performance of the proposed methods over both the state-of-the-art kinship verification methods and human ability in our kinship verification task.