AdaBoost & Genetic

algorithms: application to
pedestrian detection
Yotam Abramson
Ecole des Mines de Paris
9/12/05

Korea-France SafeMove Workshop

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Machine learning for visual object

detection
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Application
Pedestrian impact predictor

Calculates the probability of an impact between

our car and a pedestrian.

If the probability is higher then a given

threshold, an alert to the driver is issued or an
action is taken (pedestrian airbag, braking…)
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Machine learning for visual object

detection
Learning algorithms for object-detection
were shown to be better than any hand-
crafted ones.

Main works in the field:

 Papageorgiou & Poggio – SVM,wavelets.
 Viola & Jones – AdaBoost and simple
features.
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Machine learning - background

Support Vector Machine (SVM) – Vapnik
1990

Neural network
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Machine learning (Cont.)

AdaBoost (Freund & Schapire 1995):
 A popular learning algorithm.
 Easy to understand.
 Received a lot of attention in the machine
learning and statistics communities.

The notion of boosting (AdaBoost =

adaptive boosting).
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AdaBoost at a Glance
Assume that we have a simple object
classifier, that receives a rectangle in the
image and decides if it’s the object.
 For example:
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AdaBoost at a Glance (Cont.)

A classifier like the one shown is called a

weak classifier. And indeed it is weak..
AdaBoost selects (=learns) a set of
classifiers and builds a “voting system”.

Yes Yes Yes No Yes

Weak1 Weak2 Weak3 Weak4

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AdaBoost at a Glance (Cont.)

Voting is not “democratic”… there is a

weight for each weak-classifier.

No Yes Yes NO Yes

Weak1 Weak2 Weak3 Weak4

0.2 0.2 0.7 0.2

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AdaBoost at a Glance (Cont.)

The output of AdaBoost is a called a

strong classifier.

AdaBoost was used for face, cars and

pedestrian detection by viola and Jones
(2000).
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Weak Classifiers

Viola & Jones

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Weak classifiers
We have developed new
kinds of weak classifiers.

Our features are different

because they test
individual pixels.

They deal better with the

variation in illumination.
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Illumination independent features

(cont.)
Our features are highly
efficient (3-4 image
access operations)

2 times faster than

Viola&Jones

20% of the memory

Better detection rates for

pedestrians
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Learning
process
using
genetic
algorithm
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Seville

SEmi-
automatic
VIsuaL
Learning
(With Dr. Yoav
Freund,
Columbia
University)
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Seville

We start by
collecting 10
negative and
positive
examples.
We run the
learning, and
classify.
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Seville
We now have
100 examples.
We run
learning, and
the results
improve.
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Seville
We test another
sequence. We
collect in the
same way
more
examples. We
re-run the
learning and
continue.
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Seville
We test another
sequence. We
collect in the
same way more
examples. We
re-run the
learning and
continue.
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Seville
Throughout the
phases, we
use 2/3 of the
set as training
set, and 1/3 as
validation set.
We make
AdaBoost
rounds until
the point of
overfitting.
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European project
CAMELLIA

European union CAMELLIA

Renault, Philips, Philips

semiconductor, Uni.
Hannover, Uni. Las-palmas

“Smart camera”
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Results
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Results
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Impact prediction
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Prediction results
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Prediction results
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CAMELLIA was used

also for other applications
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Conclusions
We have presented a system for detection
of pedestrians.
The system is based on AdaBoost and
Genetic algorithms.
The system was tested and gives good
results on real data.
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Thank you for your attention