Multilayer neural networks trained with the back-propagation algorithm constitute the best example of a successful gradient based learning technique. Given an appropriate network architecture, gradient-based learning algorithms can be used to synthesize a complex decision surface that can classify high-dimensional patterns, such as handwritten characters, with minimal preprocessing. This paper reviews various methods applied to handwritten character recognition and compares them on a standard handwritten digit recognition task. Convolutional neural networks, which are specifically designed to deal with the variability of 2D shapes, are shown to outperform all other techniques. Real-life document recognition systems are composed of multiple modules including field extraction, segmentation recognition, and language modeling. A new learning paradigm, called graph transformer networks (GTN), allows such multimodule systems to be trained globally using gradient-based methods so as to minimize an overall performance measure. Two systems for online handwriting recognition are described. Experiments demonstrate the advantage of global training, and the flexibility of graph transformer networks. A graph transformer network for reading a bank cheque is also described. It uses convolutional neural network character recognizers combined with global training techniques to provide record accuracy on business and personal cheques. It is deployed commercially and reads several million cheques per day.

Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition

We propose a deep convolutional neural network architecture codenamed Inception that achieves the new state of the art for classification and detection in the ImageNet Large-Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2014 (ILSVRC14). The main hallmark of this architecture is the improved utilization of the computing resources inside the network. By a carefully crafted design, we increased the depth and width of the network while keeping the computational budget constant. To optimize quality, the architectural decisions were based on the Hebbian principle and the intuition of multi-scale processing. One particular incarnation used in our submission for ILSVRC14 is called GoogLeNet, a 22 layers deep network, the quality of which is assessed in the context of classification and detection.

/pdf/going-deeper-with-convolutions-1yobw2o2ds.pdf

Going deeper with convolutions

There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

We study the question of feature sets for robust visual object recognition; adopting linear SVM based human detection as a test case. After reviewing existing edge and gradient based descriptors, we show experimentally that grids of histograms of oriented gradient (HOG) descriptors significantly outperform existing feature sets for human detection. We study the influence of each stage of the computation on performance, concluding that fine-scale gradients, fine orientation binning, relatively coarse spatial binning, and high-quality local contrast normalization in overlapping descriptor blocks are all important for good results. The new approach gives near-perfect separation on the original MIT pedestrian database, so we introduce a more challenging dataset containing over 1800 annotated human images with a large range of pose variations and backgrounds.

/pdf/histograms-of-oriented-gradients-for-human-detection-3nteinziuq.pdf

Histograms of oriented gradients for human detection

Object detection performance, as measured on the canonical PASCAL VOC dataset, has plateaued in the last few years. The best-performing methods are complex ensemble systems that typically combine multiple low-level image features with high-level context. In this paper, we propose a simple and scalable detection algorithm that improves mean average precision (mAP) by more than 30% relative to the previous best result on VOC 2012 -- achieving a mAP of 53.3%. Our approach combines two key insights: (1) one can apply high-capacity convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to bottom-up region proposals in order to localize and segment objects and (2) when labeled training data is scarce, supervised pre-training for an auxiliary task, followed by domain-specific fine-tuning, yields a significant performance boost. Since we combine region proposals with CNNs, we call our method R-CNN: Regions with CNN features. We also present experiments that provide insight into what the network learns, revealing a rich hierarchy of image features. Source code for the complete system is available at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~rbg/rcnn.

/pdf/rich-feature-hierarchies-for-accurate-object-detection-and-22fvjlggyg.pdf

Rich Feature Hierarchies for Accurate Object Detection and Semantic Segmentation

Using images to interface machines and humans offers an exciting new application domain for image understanding (IU). This article describes two such applications: digital libraries that bring visual data to the user, and virtualized reality that brings users to the visual data. The digital library calls on IU techniques such as scene segmentation and content analysis, and joins together natural language analysis and IU. Virtualized reality uses precise, dense, and video-rate stereo reconstruction techniques.

Immersion into visual media: new applications of image understanding

Material transfer robots first appeared in the mid-1960s for use in traditional industrial applications. By the 1980s, robots found use in more demanding industrial applications such as welding, assembly, and inspection, with the help of vision and other sensors. It is estimated that 46,000 industrial robots have been installed in the U.S. japan has six to eight times as many robots

New technologies and applications in robotics

This paper presents algorithms for identifying parameters of an N degrees-of-freedom robotic manipulator First, we outline the fundamental properties of the Newton-Euler formulation of robot dynamics from the view point of parameter identification We then show that the Newton-Euler model, which is nonlinear in the dynamic parameters, can be transformed into an equivalent modified model which is linear in dynamic parameters We develop both on-line and off-line parameter estimation procedures To illustrate our approach, we identify the dynamic parameters of the cylindrical robot, and the three degree-of-freedom positioning system of the CMU DirecbDrive Arm II The experimental implementation of our algorithm to estimate the dynamics parameters of the six degreesof-freedom CMU DD Arm II is also presented

An Algorithm to Estimate Manipulator Dynamics Parameters

Computational Science and Its Applications - ICCSA 2009

/pdf/methods-for-identifying-footfall-positions-for-a-legged-1lwx85y448.pdf

Takeo Kanade

Papers

Immersion into visual media: new applications of image understanding

New technologies and applications in robotics

An Algorithm to Estimate Manipulator Dynamics Parameters

Computational Science and Its Applications - ICCSA 2009

Methods for Identifying Footfall Positions for a Legged Robot