In this paper, we propose to analyze the trajectories of the human arm to predict social intention (personal or social intention). The trajectories of different 3D markers acquired by Mocap system, are defined in shape spaces of open curves. The results obtained in the experiments on a new dataset show an average recognition of about 68% for the proposed method, which is comparable with the average score produced by human evaluation. The experimental results show also that the classification rate could be used to improve social communication between human and virtual agents. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper which uses computer vision techniques to analyze the effect of social intention on motor action for improving the social communication between human and avatar.

Flexible endoscopes are used in many diagnostic exams, like gastroscopies or colonoscopies, as well as for small surgical procedures. Recently, they have also been used for endoscopic surgical procedures through natural orifices [natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES)] and for single-port-access abdominal surgery (SPA). Indeed, flexible endoscopes allow access of operating areas that are not easily reachable with only one small external or internal incision. However, their manipulation is complex, especially for surgical interventions. This study proposes to motorize the flexible endoscope and to partly robotize its movements in order to help the physicians during such interventions. The paper explains how the robotized endoscope can be used to automatically track an area of interest despite breathing motion. The system uses visual servoing and repetitive control strategies and allows stabilization of the endoscopic view. All required parameters are automatically estimated. In vivo experiments show the validity of the proposed solution for the improvement of the manipulation of flexible endoscopes.

Estimating insertion points of surgical instruments for minimally invasive surgery is a necessary step to be able to control surgical instruments using endoscopic images. In this paper, we propose an analysis of possible methods which use image information only. Mathematical properties are detailed together with statistical properties obtained by simulations. Then a specific method is chosen to estimate the insertion point for bi-modal surgery (laparoscopy and flexible endoscopy). In vitro experiments show the accuracy of the approach and how it is possible to track the motion of the insertion point in the case of physiological motions.

Flexible endoscopes are used in many surgical procedures and diagnostic exams. They have also been used recently for new surgical procedures using natural orifices called NOTES. While these procedures are really promising for the patients, they are really awkward for the surgeons. In order to assist the surgeon, physiological motion cancellation has been successfully applied on a robotized endoscope in L. Ott, et al., (May 19-23, 2008), by using a prototype repetitive controller (PRC) and a repetitive generalized predictive controller (R-GPC). Both controllers showed to be powerful tools to cancel periodic disturbances but with poor transient response to non-periodic disturbances. Contrary to the R-GPC, the PRC is unsuitable for handling non-periodic reference changes. We propose in this paper, as a first improvement, a model-based control scheme using the PRC which allows to decouple the reference tracking from the periodic output disturbance rejection. The response to nonperiodic disturbance is also improved by this technique but a repetition appears caused by the repetitive controller. As a second improvement, a switching control scheme is proposed to avoid the repetition.

Flexible endoscopes are used in many surgical procedures and diagnostic exams, like in gastroscopy or coloscopy. They have also been used recently for new surgical procedures using natural orifices called NOTES. While these procedures are very promising for the patients, they are quite awkward for the surgeons. The flexible endoscope allows the access to operating areas which are not easily reachable, with small or no incisions; but the manipulation of the system is complex. In order to help the practicians during NOTES or classical interventions with flexible endoscopes, we propose to motorize the system so as to partially robotize the movements. This paper presents the problems in the use of the flexible endoscope and explains how the system can be used to stabilize the endoscope on an area of interest despite physiological motions and therefore to improve the manipulation of the system.

This paper presents a method for the automatic generation of animation movie trailers. First, the movie is divided into shots, by detecting the video transitions (cuts, fades and dissolves) and an animation movie specific color effect named short color change or SCC (i.e. explosions, thunders). The movie action content is further highlighted by analyzing the movie at two different granularity levels. First, an inter-shot analysis is performed by measuring the video transition temporal distribution. As repetitive shot changes are related to action, we define as an action shot, a movie segment containing a high shot change ratio. On the other hand, an inter-frame analysis is performed: for each shot within an action shot, an histogram of cumulative inter-frame distances is computed to serve as a measure of the frame spatial activity. Repetitive color changes are also related to action. Since movie trailers only show some of the most attractive movie scenes, the proposed trailer is a moving-image abstract computed on the retained action shots. It provides the user with a compact and efficient representation of the movie action content. The proposed approach was tested on several animation movies.