News

The International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV) is considered one of the top journals in Computer Vision. It details the science and engineering of this rapidly growing field. Regular articles present major technical advances of broad general interest. Survey articles offer critical reviews of the state of the art and/or tutorial presentations of pertinent topics.

We are proud to announce that our paper “SceneFlowFields++: Multi-frame Matching, Visibility Prediction, and Robust Interpolation for Scene Flow Estimation” has been published in the IJCV (for more information click here). It is an extension of our earlier WACV paper “SceneFlowFields: Dense Interpolation of Sparse Scene Flow Correspondences“.

At the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA 2019) – the world’s leading trade fair for consumer electronics and home appliances – at the beginning of September in Berlin, researchers from the TU Kaiserslautern (TUK) and the DFKI research area Augmented Reality presented a sensor system that reduces incorrect posture at the workplace. Sensors are used which are attached to different parts of the body such as the arms, spine and legs and which determine the movement sequences. Software evaluates the data and calculates movement parameters such as joint angles on the arm and knee or the degree of flexion or twisting of the spine. The system immediately detects if a movement is carried out incorrectly or if an incorrect posture is adopted. Via a Smartwatch, the system gives the user direct feedback so that he can correct movement or posture. The sensors could be integrated into work clothing and shoes. The run at the IFA was great and the project prototype was assessed very positively throughout. The press was also represented in large numbers.  Please find the links to the articles below.

Video coverage in German:
SWR Landesschau Aktuell Rheinlandpfalz: Video from 06.09.2019, starting 7:45h

Media coverage in German:
Rheinpfalz: Sensoren in der Arbeitskleidung
Ärztezeitung: Digital Health darf bei der IFA nicht fehlen
Elektroniknet: Neue Sensortechnik verspricht bessere Haltung am Arbeitsplatz
Esanum: Haltungsschäden mit Sensortechnik vermeiden
Industie.de: Sensoren für eine bessere Körperhaltung
Medica: Bessere Haltung am Arbeitsplatz dank neuer Sensortechnik
Maschinenwerkzeug.de: IFA 2019: Bessere Haltung am Arbeitsplatz dank neuer Sensortechnik
Mobile-zeitgeist.de: IFA 2019: Eine bessere Haltung am Arbeitsplatz dank neuer Sensortechnik
Nachrichten-kl.de: IFA 2019: Eine bessere Haltung am Arbeitsplatz dank neuer Sensortechnik
Nachrichten.idw-online.de: IFA 2019: Eine bessere Haltung am Arbeitsplatz dank neuer Sensortechnik
Smarterworld: Sensoren gegen Haltungsschäden
Uni-kl.de: Neue Sensortechnik: Bessere Haltung am Arbeitsplatz

Media coverage in English:
Alphagalileo: IFA 2019: Intelligent sensor technology for a better posture at the workplace
Dailymail.co: Sit up straight! Smartwatch that sounds an alarm every time you slump at your desk is being developed by scientists to combat bad posture
Expressdigest: Smartwatch sounds an alarm every time you slump to correct posture
eandt.theiet: Wearables could deter slouching at work, researchers suggest
Elektroniknet: New sensor technology promises better posture at the workplace
France.timesofnews: Smartwatch sounds an alarm every time you slump to correct posture
Longroom: Smartwatch sounds an alarm every time you slump to correct posture
Nachrichten.idw-online.de: IFA 2019: Intelligent sensor technology for a better posture at the workplace
uni-kl.de: IFA 2019: Intelligent sensor technology for a better posture at the workplace
wsbuss: Smartwatch sounds an alarm every time you slump to correct posture
Newsoneplace: Smartwatch sounds an alarm every time you slump to correct posture

Our team is presenting the paper

Augmented Reality in Physics education: Motion understanding using an Augmented Airtable
Nareg Minaskan Karabid, Jason Raphael Rambach, Alain Pagani, Didier Stricker

at the 16th EuroVR International Conference 2019 in Tallinn, Estonia on October, 23rd-25th.

The paper presents the part of the group’s work within the research project BeGreifen. 

Our team is presenting two papers at the ISMAR 2019 conference in Beijing, China. ISMAR (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) is the leading international conference in AR/VR/MR technologies. The two papers on the topics of Object Pose Estimation and SLAM are:

A Shape Completion Component for Monocular Non-Rigid SLAM
Yongzhi Su, Vladislav Golyanik, Nareg Minaskan Karabid, Sk Aziz Ali, Didier Stricker

Deep Multi-State Object Pose Estimation for Augmented Reality Assembly Yongzhi Su, Jason Raphael Rambach, Nareg Minaskan Karabid, Paul Lesur, Alain Pagani, Didier Stricker

Dr. Alain Pagani, and Mohamed Selim (Augmented Vision department) and Ludgar Van Elst (Smart Data and Services department) participated in the Kick-off meeting of the EU project HyperCOG on September 24th, 2019, that was held at IK4-LORTEK in Spain.

HyperCOG project “HYPERCONNECTED ARCHITECTURE FOR HIGH COGNITIVE PRODUCTION PLANTS” addresses the full digital transformation of the process industry and cognitive process production plants through an innovative Industrial Cyber-Physical System (ICPS). It is based on commercially available advanced technologies that will enable the development of a hyper-connected network of digital nodes. The nodes can catch outstanding streams of data in real-time, which together with the high computing capabilities available nowadays, provide sensing, knowledge and cognitive reasoning to the industrial business. The project will strive to demonstrate how data technologies embedded in a CPS platform applied in the process industry can streamline processes, achieve a step gain in efficiency, sustainability and resource utilization and act as a basis for the provision of new services.

In HyperCOG, 14 international partners have joined forces, bringing together the necessary competence in terms of expertise and resources to ensure the achievement of the project goals. In DFKI, the departments “Augmented Vision” and the department “Smart Data and Services” at DFKI Kaiserslautern are involved.

The Augmented Vision department is responsible for developing smart sensing technologies based on visual perception and visual interpretation for different use cases in active industrial plants. Moreover, in industrial plants, with a growing amount of sensors and data, the information load might increase and hinder the monitoring task. Augmented Vision department will carry out the work on AR to present contextualized information in a simple and direct way.

Project partners:
1. SmartFactory Kaiserslautern (GERMANY)
2. IK4-LORTEK (SPAIN)
3. Tecnalia Reseach and Innovation (SPAIN)
4. Estia – École Supérieure des Technologies Industrielles Avancées (FRANCE)
5. SIDENOR Aceros Especiales SL (SPAIN)
6. Çimsa Çimento Sanayi Ve Ticaret A.Ş. (TURKEY)
7. SOLVAY (FRANCE)
8. MSI – Mondragon Sistemas de Información (SPAIN)
9. U-PEC – Université Paris-Est Créteil (FRANCE)
10. CBS – Cybers Services Zrt (HUNGARY)
11. Ekodenge (TURKEY)
12. 2.0 LCA consultants (DENMARK)
13. Insights Publishers (UNITED KINGDOM).

Contact person: Dr. Alain Pagani, Mohamed Selim

Picture: The HyperCOG partners at the kick-off meeting.

On September 12^th, 2019, Dr. Alain Pagani was invited to give a talk on the subject “User monitoring, Human-machine collaboration and Artificial Intelligence” at the 10^th HE2Net Symposium.

The HE2Net Symposium, jointly organized by THALES and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cognitique (ENSC) is the annual conference of the Human Engineering and Expertise Network, an association of institutions and companies addressing the topic of human factors in engineering.

The 10^th HE2Net Symposium took place in Arcachon, France and was devoted to the topic of Human Factor of Artificial Intelligence. Experts of the Human Factors field and the Artificial Intelligence field could exchange views on questions related to the inclusion of AI methods in human-machine collaboration.

Dr. Alain Pagani presented recent advances on Artificial Intelligence at DFKI, including work on non-invasive human monitoring techniques developed at the Department Augmented Vision.

Photo: Sylvain Hourlier (THALES), co-organizer of the HE2Net Symposium and Alain Pagani (DFKI GmbH).

The following papers have been presented at the Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV) 2019 from 9th to 12th of June in Paris, France:

PWOC-3D: Deep Occlusion-Aware End-to-End Scene Flow Estimation Rohan Saxena, René Schuster, Oliver Wasenmüller, Didier Stricker

DeLiO: Decoupled LiDAR Odometry
Queens Maria Thomas, Oliver Wasenmüller, Didier Stricker

The 2019 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV’19) is a premier annual technical forum sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS). It brings together researchers and practitioners from universities, industry, and government agencies worldwide to share and discuss the latest advances in theory and technology related to intelligent vehicles. Papers concerning all aspects of intelligent vehicles as well as proposals for workshops and specials sessions are invited for IV’19. For more Information click here.

Our team members have presented the following paper at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference 2019 which took place from 16th to 20th of June 2019 in Long Beach, California, USA and is the “premier” conference in this field (Computer Vision).

SDC – Stacked Dilated Convolution: A Unified Descriptor Network for Dense Matching Tasks
René Schuster, Oliver Wasenmüller, Christian Unger, Didier Stricker

Content: To introduce a new design element for Deep Neural Networks (SDC – Stacked Dilated Convolutions) and beyond that to apply this element in a network for Dense Feature Description. With the new descriptor, we were able to improve matching for stereo disparity, optical flow, and scene flow on different data sets by up to 50%.

Our paper was accepted from 5160 submissions as one of 1294 (acceptance rate: 25.1 %) and was also one of the 288 oral papers (oral presentation in addition to the poster session), oral rate: 5.6 % of submissions, 22.3 % of accepted papers. The presentation can be seen here.

BIONIC is a European research project aiming to develop an unobtrusive, autonomous and privacy preserving platform for real-time risk alerting and continuous persuasive coaching, enabling the design of workplace interventions adapted to the needs and fitness levels of specific ageing workforce. Gamification strategies adapted to the needs and wishes of the elderly workers will ensure optimal engagement for prevention and self-management of musculoskeletal health in any working/living environment.

For more Information visit https://bionic-h2020.eu.

The results of our European project AlterEgo (https://av.dfki.de/projects/alterego/) have been published in the prestigious journal “Nature”. Please follow this link to read the complete article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35813-6