Articulated hand pose and shape estimation is an important problem for vision-based applications such as augmented reality and animation. In contrast to the existing methods which optimize only for joint positions, we propose a fully supervised deep network which learns to jointly estimate a full 3D hand mesh representation and pose from a single depth image. To this end, a CNN architecture is employed to estimate parametric representations i.e. hand pose, bone scales and complex shape parameters. Then, a novel hand pose and shape layer, embedded inside our deep framework, produces 3D joint positions and hand mesh. Lack of sufficient training data with varying hand shapes limits the generalized performance of learning based methods. Also, manually annotating real data is suboptimal. Therefore, we present SynHand5M: a million-scale synthetic dataset with accurate joint annotations, segmentation masks and mesh files of depth maps. Among model based learning (hybrid) methods, we show improved results on our dataset and two of the public benchmarks i.e. NYU and ICVL. Also, by employing a joint training strategy with real and synthetic data, we recover 3D hand mesh and pose from real images in 3.7ms.

Machine learning is one of the most important and successful techniques in contemporary computer science. It involves the statistical inference of models (such as classifiers) from data. It is often conceived in a very impersonal way, with algorithms working autonomously on passively collected data. However, this viewpoint hides considerable human work of tuning the algorithms, gathering the data, and even deciding what should be modeled in the first place. Examining machine learning from a human-centered perspective includes explicitly recognising this human work, as well as reframing machine learning workflows based on situated human working practices, and exploring the coadaptation of humans and systems. A human-centered understanding of machine learning in human context can lead not only to more usable machine learning tools, but to new ways of framing learning computationally. This workshop will bring together researchers to discuss these issues and suggest future research questions aimed at creating a human-centered approach to machine learning.

In this paper, we present an application for character-based guided tours on mobile devices. The application is based on the Dramatour methodology for information presentation, which incorporates a dramatic attitude in character-based presentations. The application has been developed for a historical site and is based on a virtual character, "Carletto", a spider with an anthropomorphic aspect, who engages in a dramatized presentation of the site. Content items are delivered in a location-aware fashion, relying on a wireless network infrastructure, with visitors who can stroll freely. The selection of contents keeps track of user location and of the interaction history, in order to deliver the appropriate type and quantity of informative items, and to manage the given/new distinction in discourse. The communicative strategy of the character is designed to keep it believable along the interaction with the user, while enforcing dramatization effects. The design of the communicative strategy relies on

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

We present a study on the fusion of pixel data and patient metadata (age, gender, and body location) for improving the classification of skin lesion images. The experiments have been conducted with the ISIC 2019 skin lesion classification challenge data set. Taking two plain convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as a baseline, metadata are merged using either non-neural machine learning methods (tree-based and support vector machines) or shallow neural networks. Results show that shallow neural networks outperform other approaches in all overall evaluation measures. However, despite the increase in the classification accuracy (up to +19.1%), interestingly, the average per-class sensitivity decreases in three out of four cases for CNNs, thus suggesting that using metadata penalizes the prediction accuracy for lower represented classes. A study on the patient metadata shows that age is the most useful metadatum as a decision criterion, followed by body location and gender.