Abstract: This paper describes an exploratory study on group interaction with a robot-guide in an open large-scale busy environment. For an entire week a humanoid robot was deployed in the popular Cosmocaixa Science Museum in Barcelona and guided hundreds of people through the museum facilities. The main goal of this experience is to study in the wild the episodes of the robot guiding visitors to a requested destination focusing on the group behavior during displacement. The walking behavior follow-me and the face to face communication in a populated environment are analyzed in terms of guide- visitors interaction, grouping patterns and spatial formations. Results from observational data show that the space configurations spontaneously formed by the robot guide and visitors walking together did not always meet the robot communicative and navigational requirements for successful guidance. Therefore additional verbal and nonverbal prompts must be considered to regulate effectively the walking together and follow-me behaviors. Finally, we discuss lessons learned and recommendations for robot’s spatial behavior in dense crowded scenarios.

Abstract: This paper details the results and main findings of the
second iteration of the Multi-modal Aerial View Object
Classification (MAVOC) challenge. This year’s MAVOC
challenge is the second iteration. The primary goal of
both MAVOC challenges is to inspire research into methods for building recognition models that utilize both synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and electro-optical (EO) input
modalities. Teams are encouraged/challenged to develop
multi-modal approaches that incorporate complementary
information from both domains. While the 2021 challenge
showed a proof of concept that both modalities could be
used together, the 2022 challenge focuses on the detailed
multi-modal models. Using the same UNIfied COincident
Optical and Radar for recognitioN (UNICORN) dataset and
competition format that was used in 2021. Specifically, the
challenge focuses on two techniques, (1) SAR classification
and (2) SAR + EO classification. The bulk of this document is dedicated to discussing the top performing methods
and describing their performance on our blind test set. Notably, all of the top ten teams outperform our baseline. For
SAR classification, the top team showed a 129% improvement over our baseline and an 8% average improvement
from the 2021 winner. The top team for SAR + EO classification shows a 165% improvement with a 32% average
improvement over 2021.

Abstract: This paper explains how Natural Language (NL) processing by computers, through smart
programs as a way of Machine Learning (ML), can represent large sets of quantitative data as written
statements. The study recognized the need to improve the implemented web platform using a
dashboard in which we collected a set of extensive data to measure assessment factors of using
children´s educational games. In this case, applying NL is a strategy to give assessments, build, and
display more precise written statements to enhance the understanding of children´s gaming behavior.
We propose the development of a new tool to assess the use of written explanations rather than a
statistical representation of feedback information for the comprehension of parents and teachers with
a lack of primary level knowledge in statistics. Applying fuzzy logic theory, we present verbatim
explanations of children´s behavior playing educational videogames as NL interpretation instead of
statistical representations. An educational series of digital game applications for mobile devices,
identified as MIDI (Spanish acronym of “Interactive Didactic Multimedia for Children”) linked to a
dashboard in the cloud, is evaluated using the dashboard metrics. MIDI games tested in local primary
schools helps to evaluate the results of using the proposed tool. The guiding results allow analyzing
the degrees of playability and usability factors obtained from the data produced when children play a
MIDI game. The results obtained are presented in a comprehensive guiding evaluation report
applying NL for parents and teachers. These guiding evaluations are useful to enhance children's
learning understanding related to the school curricula applied to ludic digital games.

Abstract: This paper presents a domain adaptation strategy to efficiently train network architectures for estimating the relative camera pose in multi-view scenarios. The network architectures are fed by a pair of simultaneously acquired
images, hence in order to improve the accuracy of the solutions, and due to the lack of large datasets with pairs of
overlapped images, a domain adaptation strategy is proposed. The domain adaptation strategy consists on transferring the knowledge learned from synthetic images to real-world scenarios. For this, the networks are firstly
trained using pairs of synthetic images, which are captured at the same time by a pair of cameras in a virtual environment; and then, the learned weights of the networks are transferred to the real-world case, where the networks are retrained with a few real images. Different virtual 3D scenarios are generated to evaluate the
relationship between the accuracy on the result and the similarity between virtual and real scenarios—similarity
on both geometry of the objects contained in the scene as well as relative pose between camera and objects in the
scene. Experimental results and comparisons are provided showing that the accuracy of all the evaluated networks for estimating the camera pose improves when the proposed domain adaptation strategy is used,
highlighting the importance on the similarity between virtual-real scenarios.

Abstract: This paper presents a method for on-line human action recognition on video sequences. An analysis based on Mahalanobis distance is performed to identify the “idle” state, which defines the beginning and end of the person movement, for posterior patterns extraction based on Relative Wavelet Energy from sequences of invariant moments.