Prof. Dr. Dariu M. Gavrila

Intelligent Perception Systems (part-time)
Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam
Faculty of Science, Room F0.41
University of Amsterdam
Kruislaan 403, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
email: <last-name>@science.uva.nl
phone: ++31 20 525 7461, fax: ++31 20 525 7490
Directions

As computing devices become more powerful, smaller and more widespread, what’s limiting their potential is their inability to perceive and interact with the environment they are embedded in.

Of all possible objects in the environment, arguably the single most important object class in the context of making computing devices usable in day-to-day life are humans.

I am interested in developing computer vision techniques for detecting, tracking and recognizing humans in images, and understanding their activities.

Visual detection and tracking of humans, 2005-2008, Univ. of Amsterdam, Netherlands

The ability to recognize humans and their activities by vision is key for a machine to interact intelligently and effortlessly with a human-inhabited environment. There are numerous important applications ranging from public safety, elderly care and intelligent vehicles to human motion capture/analysis. In this research we investigate generic techniques for person detection and tracking. Challenges are abound: what features to use (2D vs. 3D, model-based vs. model-free), how to efficiently (re)initialize the model, how to adapt a generic model to particular image data, how to deal with (self) occlusion and uncertainty, etc.

Ph.D. Student: Michael Hofmann

CASSANDRA: Aggression Detection by Fusion Video and Audio, 2005-2009, Univ. of Amsterdam, Netherlands

This project pursues human activity recognition in dynamic environments, in particular, automatic aggression detection. Because events associated with the buildup or enactment of aggression are difficult to detect by a single sensor modality (e.g. shouting versus hitting-someone), CASSANDRA combines audio- and video-sensing. The current project status is described here. See also Looking-at-People

Title

Background Reading

Looking at People

• The Visual Analysis of Human Movement
• The Looking-at-People Page

Intelligent Vehicles that See (and Act)

• From Door to Door - Principles and Applications of Computer Vision for Driver Assistant Systems
• The Intelligent Vehicles Page

Case Study: A Video-based Pedestrian Safety System

• Sensor-based Pedestrian Protection
• The Pedestrian Detection Page