Pushmeet Kohli - Böcker

Classical computer science textbooks tell us that some problems are 'hard'. Yet many areas, from machine learning and computer vision to theorem proving and software verification, have defined their own set of tools for effectively solving complex problems. Tractability provides an overview of these different techniques, and of the fundamental concepts and properties used to tame intractability. This book will help you understand what to do when facing a hard computational problem. Can the problem be modelled by convex, or submodular functions? Will the instances arising in practice be of low treewidth, or exhibit another specific graph structure that makes them easy? Is it acceptable to use scalable, but approximate algorithms? A wide range of approaches is presented through self-contained chapters written by authoritative researchers on each topic. As a reference on a core problem in computer science, this book will appeal to theoreticians and practitioners alike.

examines the effective features that characterize static hand poses and introduces a unified framework to enforce both temporal and spatial constraints for hand parsing; proposes a new classifier architecture for real-time hand pose recognition and a novel hand segmentation and gesture recognition system.

This book presents an interdisciplinary selection of cutting-edge research on RGB-D based computer vision. Features: discusses the calibration of color and depth cameras, the reduction of noise on depth maps and methods for capturing human performance in 3D; reviews a selection of applications which use RGB-D information to reconstruct human figures, evaluate energy consumption and obtain accurate action classification; presents an approach for 3D object retrieval and for the reconstruction of gas flow from multiple Kinect cameras; describes an RGB-D computer vision system designed to assist the visually impaired and another for smart-environment sensing to assist elderly and disabled people; examines the effective features that characterize static hand poses and introduces a unified framework to enforce both temporal and spatial constraints for hand parsing; proposes a new classifier architecture for real-time hand pose recognition and a novel hand segmentation and gesture recognition system.