Nils T Siebel

My principal areas of research are Computer Vision, Optimisation and Sensor-based Robot Control. Recently, I have also done research on Software Maintenance and Re-Engineering as well as Software Processes.

In 1999 I finished my Diplom degree on Image-based Visual Servoing at the Centre for Technical Mathematics, University of Bremen, Germany. From 2000 to February 2003 I have done research on automatic tracking of people in camera images for multi-camera visual surveillance systems. The research was carried out in the Computational Vision Group of the Department of Computer Science, University of Reading (UK). The resulting PhD thesis is available below. Starting in 2002 I have also done research on software maintenance and software processes with members of our department's Applied Software Engineering group.

Please note: I have moved to Kiel, Germany, to continue my research on computer vision, robotics and software engineering. Please have a look at my new research home page for more up-to-date information. For the moment you can also still find information on my research activites and links to my publications up to some time in 2004 below.

Research area Visual Surveillance

My current research is on People Tracking in camera images for automatic visual surveillance systems. The research is being carried out within the European Framework V project ADVISOR in which we are developing an integrated visual surveillance and behaviour analysis system. The People Tracker used for the project is based on the Leeds People Tracker which was developed by Adam Baumberg.

The main research results are the following:

• I have introduced a new modular system for tracking people and other objects in video sequences. The main contribution is a powerful and scalable structure which has been achieved by a complete re-design and much refactoring of the original Leeds People Tracker, and the addition of new functionality, resulting in
  • high robustness of the tracker to image noise and occlusion through the use of redundant, different type trackers running in parallel, and the use of multiple tracking hypotheses (see ECCV 2002 paper below).
  • the ability to track multiple objects in an arbitrary number of cameras, writing out tracking results in XML format.
  • scalability and much improved maintainability of the people tracker (see ICSM 2002 paper below).
  • new documentation for maintaining the People Tracker, including a well-defined and documented software maintenance process (see JSME article for a case study on processes).
• Validation of the new tracking system to track people and vehicles (see PETS 2001 paper below for the validation of an earlier version of the tracker).
• Integration of the tracker as a subsystem of ADVISOR, interfacing with other subsystems through Ethernet.
• Examination of whether and to what extend colour filtering methods can help to improve motion detection and local edge search.
• The tracker has been ported from an SGI platform to a PC running GNU/Linux to make economic system integration feasible. Also, the source code now adheres to the ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E) C++ standard, as well as IEEE POSIX 1003.1c-1995 extensions for multi-threading, making it easily portable. While the code is being maintained under GNU/Linux, it also compiles under Windows 2000.

This dedicated People Tracking page provides details of the tracking algorithm.

Research area Software Engineering

Together with members of our department's Applied Software Engineering group we have examined the software processes in our own work on the People Tracker and the way these have influenced the maintainability of the code. The re-engineering phase was more closely examined in a case study (see ICSM 2002 paper below).

Research area Robot Control

My Diplom thesis presents "A Trust-Region-based Robot Controller for Image-based Visual Servoing in Six Degrees of Freedom":
Nils T Siebel: Bildbasierte Roboterregelung in sechs Freiheitsgraden unter Verwendung einer Trust-Region-Methode. Diplomarbeit, Universität Bremen, August 1999.

You will find more information on these pages: English version - German version.

Publications (refereed)

Please note: The files available here are provided for personal use in order to achieve timely dissemination of research results. You are kindly requested to check and observe the copyright of each file before using it. Re-publication of the files provided here requires the explicit written permission of the author.

Research area Visual Surveillance

• Conference article on "The ADVISOR Visual Surveillance System":
  Nils T Siebel, Stephen J Maybank: "The ADVISOR Visual Surveillance System". In Proceedings of the ECCV Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision, Prague, May 2004. To appear.
• My PhD thesis on the "Design and Implementation of People Tracking Algorithms for Visual Surveillance Applications":
  Nils T Siebel: "Design and Implementation of People Tracking Algorithms for Visual Surveillance Applications". PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, The University of Reading, Reading, UK, March 2003.
  Available for download as compressed PostScript (14 MB) and PDF (5 MB) for one-sided (simplex) printing as well as compressed PostScript (14 MB) and PDF (5 MB) for two-sided (duplex) printing.
• Conference article on the "Fusion of Multiple Tracking Algorithms for Robust People Tracking":
  Nils T Siebel, Steve Maybank: "Fusion of Multiple Tracking Algorithms for Robust People Tracking". In Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2002), København, Denmark, May 2002, volume IV, pages 373--387, Springer Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-540-43748-7.
  Available for download as compressed PostScript (6 MB) or PDF (4 MB). Also available: poster, scaled to A4 (landscape), as compressed PostScript (2 MB) and PNG image format (1 MB).
• Conference article on "Real-Time Tracking of Pedestrians and Vehicles":
  Nils T Siebel, Steve Maybank: "Real-Time Tracking of Pedestrians and Vehicles". In 2nd IEEE Workshop on Performance Evaluation of Tracking and Surveillance (PETS'2001), Hawaii, December 2001. CD-ROM proceedings, pages unnumbered.
  Available for download as compressed PostScript (10 MB) or PDF (6 MB).
• Book chapter "On the Use of Colour Filtering in an Integrated Real-Time People Tracking System":
  Nils T Siebel, Steve Maybank: "On the Use of Colour Filtering in an Integrated Real-Time People Tracking System". In Paolo Remagnino and Graeme A Jones and Nikos Paragios and Carlo S Regazzoni: Video Based Surveillance Systems: Computer Vision and Distributed Processing, chapter 13, pages 159--166, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, ISBN 0-7923-7632-3.
• Conference article on "The Application of Colour Filtering to Real-Time Person Tracking":
  Nils T Siebel, Steve Maybank: "The Application of Colour Filtering to Real-Time Person Tracking". In Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on Advanced Video-Based Surveillance Systems (AVBS'2001), Kingston upon Thames, UK, pages 227--234, September 2001.
  An updated version of this article is available for download as compressed PostScript (2 MB) or PDF (504 KB).

Research area Software Engineering

• Journal article on "Latitudinal and Longitudinal Process Diversity":
  Nils T Siebel, Stephen Cook, Manoranjan Satpathy, Daniel Rodríguez: "Latitudinal and Longitudinal Process Diversity". In Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution (JSME aka SMR), Volume 15, Issue 1, pages 9--25, January/February 2003, Online ISSN: 1532-0618, Print ISSN: 1532-060X, DOI: 10.1002/smr.264).
  Available for download as PDF (344 KB).
  External Reference: Zentralblatt review.
• Conference article on the "Maintenance of Object Oriented Systems through Re-engineering: A Case Study":
  Manoranjan Satpathy, Nils T Siebel, Daniel Rodríguez: "Maintenance of Object Oriented Systems through Re-engineering: A Case Study". In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM 2002), Montréal, pages 540--549, October 2002, ISBN 0-76951819-2, ISSN 1063-6773.
  Available for download as compressed PostScript (1 MB) or PDF (1.1 MB).

Research area Robot Control

• Conference article on "Robust Positioning of a Robot by Visual Servoing using a Trust-Region Method":
  Nils T Siebel, Oliver Lang, Fabian Wirth, Axel Gräser: "Robuste Positionierung eines Roboters mittels Visual Servoing unter Verwendung einer Trust-Region-Methode". In Forschungsbericht Nr. 99-1 der Deutschen Forschungsvereinigung für Meß-, Regelungs- und Systemtechnik (DFMRS) e.V. anlässlich der DFMRS Jahrestagung 1999 zum Thema Automatische Prozessführung, Prozessüberwachung und Montage, Bremen, pages 23--39, November 1999, ISSN 0944-694X.
  Available for download as compressed PostScript (904 KB, German) or PDF (296 KB, German).
• Conference article on the "Comparison of Different Image-based Controllers for the Realisation of Semi-autonomous Grasping Tasks":
  Oliver Lang, Ralf Vogel, Nils T Siebel, Axel Gräser: "Vergleich verschiedener bildbasierter Regler zur Realisierung teilautonomer Greifvorgänge". In 15. Fachgespräch Autonome Mobile Systeme (AMS'99), Technische Universität München, Springer-Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-540-66732-6.

Miscellaneous

My Erdös Number is fairly large.

Address, Jan 2000--Feb 2003

Nils T Siebel
Computational Vision Group
Department of Computer Science
The University of Reading
Whiteknights Campus
Reading RG6 6AY
England

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