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: In this work, we explore the use of images from different spectral bands to classify defects in melamine faced panels, which could appear through the production process. Through experimental evaluation, we evaluate the use of images from the visible (VS), near-infrared (NIR), and long wavelength infrared (LWIR), to classify the defects using a feature descriptor learning approach together with a support vector machine classifier. Two descriptors were evaluated, Extended Local Binary Patterns (E-LBP) and SURF using a Bag of Words (BoW) representation. The evaluation was carried on with an image set obtained during this work, which contained five different defect categories that currently occurs in the industry. Results show that using images from beyond
the visual spectrum helps to improve classification performance in contrast with a single visible spectrum solution.

Abstract: In open-ended domains, robots must continuously learn new object categories. When the training sets are created offline, it is not possible to ensure their representativeness with respect to the object categories and features the system will find when operating online. In the Bag of Words model, visual codebooks are usually constructed from training sets created offline. This might lead to non-discriminative visual words and, as a consequence, to poor recognition performance. This paper proposes a visual object recognition system which concurrently learns in an incremental and online fashion both the visual object category representations as well as the codebook words used to encode them. The codebook is defined using Gaussian Mixture Models which are updated using new object views. The approach contains similarities with the human visual object recognition system: evidence suggests that the development of recognition capabilities occurs on multiple levels and is sustained over large periods of time. Results show that the proposed system with concurrent learning of object categories and codebooks is capable of learning more categories, requiring less examples, and with similar accuracies, when compared to the classical Bag of Words approach using codebooks constructed offline.