Hedvig Kjellström

KTH Royal Institute of Technology | KTH · Division of Robotics Perception and Learning

Computer vision is a subcategory of artificial intelligence focused on extraction of information from images and video. It provides a compelling new means for objective orthopaedic gait assessment in horses using accessible hardware, such as a smartphone, for markerless motion analysis. This study aimed to explore the lameness assessment capacity o...

The generalized linear mixed model for binary outcomes with the probit link function is used in many fields but has a computationally challenging likelihood when there are many random effects. We extend a previously used importance sampler, making it much faster in the context of estimating heritability and related effects from family data by addin...

Advances in animal motion tracking and pose recognition have been a game changer in the study of animal behavior. Recently, an increasing number of works go ‘deeper’ than tracking, and address automated recognition of animals’ internal states such as emotions and pain with the aim of improving animal welfare, making this a timely moment for a syste...

Replay methods have shown to be successful in mitigating catastrophic forgetting in continual learning scenarios despite having limited access to historical data. However, storing historical data is cheap in many real-world applications, yet replaying all historical data would be prohibited due to processing time constraints. In such settings, we p...

Advances in animal motion tracking and pose recognition have been a game changer in the study of animal behavior. Recently, an increasing number of works go 'deeper' than tracking, and address automated recognition of animals' internal states such as emotions and pain with the aim of improving animal welfare, making this a timely moment for a syste...

Orthopedic disorders are common among horses, often leading to euthanasia, which often could have been avoided with earlier detection. These conditions often create varying degrees of subtle long-term pain. It is challenging to train a visual pain recognition method with video data depicting such pain, since the resulting pain behavior also is subt...

Approaches based on Functional Causal Models (FCMs) have been proposed to determine causal direction between two variables, by properly restricting model classes; however, their performance is sensitive to the model assumptions, which makes it difficult for practitioners to use. In this paper, we provide a novel dynamical-system view of FCMs and pr...

Timely detection of horse pain is important for equine welfare. Horses express pain through their facial and body behavior, but may hide signs of pain from unfamiliar human observers. In addition, collecting visual data with detailed annotation of horse behavior and pain state is both cumbersome and not scalable. Consequently, a pragmatic equine pa...

Most action recognition models today are highly parameterized, and evaluated on datasets with predominantly spatially distinct classes. Previous results for single images have shown that 2D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) tend to be biased toward texture rather than shape for various computer vision tasks (Geirhos et al., 2019), reducing gener...

Digitalisation is an increasingly important driver of urban development. The ‘New Urban Science’ is one particular approach to urban digitalisation that promises new ways of knowing and managing cities more effectively. Proponents of the New Urban Science emphasise urban data analytics and modelling as a means to develop novel insights on how citie...

Multi-task learning requires accurate identification of the correlations between tasks. In real-world time-series, tasks are rarely perfectly temporally aligned; traditional multi-task models do not account for this and subsequent errors in correlation estimation will result in poor predictive performance and uncertainty quantification. We introduc...

We study approximation methods for a large class of mixed models with a probit link function that includes mixed versions of the binomial model, the multinomial model, and generalized survival models. The class of models is special because the marginal likelihood can be expressed as Gaussian weighted integrals or as multivariate Gaussian cumulative...

Causal discovery, i.e., inferring underlying cause-effect relationships from observations of a scene or system, is an inherent mechanism in human cognition, but has been shown to be highly challenging to automate. The majority of approaches in the literature aiming for this task consider constrained scenarios with fully observed variables or data f...

We propose a new framework for gesture generation, aiming to allow data-driven approaches to produce more semantically rich gestures. Our approach first predicts whether to gesture, followed by a prediction of the gesture properties. Those properties are then used as conditioning for a modern probabilistic gesture-generation model capable of high-q...

Timely detection of horse pain is important for equine welfare. Horses express pain through their facial and body behavior, but may hide signs of pain from unfamiliar human observers. In addition, collecting visual data with detailed annotation of horse behavior and pain state is both cumbersome and not scalable. Consequently, a pragmatic equine pa...

Embodied conversational agents benefit from being able to accompany their speech with gestures. Although many data-driven approaches to gesture generation have been proposed in recent years, it is still unclear whether such systems can consistently generate gestures that convey meaning. We investigate which gesture properties (phase, category, and...

We propose a new framework for gesture generation, aiming to allow data-driven approaches to produce more semantically rich gestures. Our approach first predicts whether to gesture, followed by a prediction of the gesture properties. Those properties are then used as conditioning for a modern probabilistic gesture-generation model capable of high-q...

In this paper we present our preliminary work on model-based behavioral analysis of horse motion. Our approach is based on the SMAL model, a 3D articulated statistical model of animal shape. We define a novel SMAL model for horses based on a new template, skeleton and shape space learned from $37$ horse toys. We test the accuracy of our hSMAL model...

Automated recognition of human facial expressions of pain and emotions is to a certain degree a solved problem, using approaches based on computer vision and machine learning. However, the application of such methods to horses has proven difficult. Major barriers are the lack of sufficiently large, annotated databases for horses and difficulties in...

Orthopedic disorders are a common cause for euthanasia among horses, which often could have been avoided with earlier detection. These conditions often create varying degrees of subtle but long-term pain. It is challenging to train a visual pain recognition method with video data depicting such pain, since the resulting pain behavior also is subtle...

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) benefit from non-verbal behavior for natural and efficient interaction with users. Gesticulation – hand and arm movements accompanying speech – is an essential part of non-verbal behavior. Gesture generation models have been developed for several decades: starting with rule-based and ending with mainly data-dri...

Non-invasive automatic screening for Alzheimer’s disease has the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy while lowering healthcare costs. Previous research has shown that patterns in speech, language, gaze, and drawing can help detect early signs of cognitive decline. In this paper, we describe a highly multimodal system for unobtrusively capturin...

A number of techniques for interpretability have been presented for deep learning in computer vision, typically with the goal of understanding what the networks have based their classification on. However, interpretability for deep video architectures is still in its infancy and we do not yet have a clear concept of how to decode spatiotemporal fea...

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) benefit from non-verbal behavior for natural and efficient interaction with users. Gesticulation - hand and arm movements accompanying speech - is an essential part of non-verbal behavior. Gesture generation models have been developed for several decades: starting with rule-based and ending with mainly data-dri...

The recently developed Equine Facial Action Coding System (EquiFACS) provides a precise and exhaustive, but laborious, manual labelling method of facial action units of the horse. To automate parts of this process, we propose a Deep Learning-based method to detect EquiFACS units automatically from images. We use a cascade framework; we firstly trai...

This paper presents a novel framework for speech-driven gesture production, applicable to virtual agents to enhance human-computer interaction. Specifically, we extend recent deep-learning-based, data-driven methods for speech-driven gesture generation by incorporating representation learning. Our model takes speech as input and produces gestures a...

Missing values with mixed data types is a common problem in a large number of machine learning applications such as processing of surveys and in different medical applications. Recently, Gaussian copula models have been suggested as a means of performing imputation of missing values using a probabilistic framework. While the present Gaussian copula...

Computer modeling of human decision making is of large importance for, e.g., sustainable transport, urban development, and online recommendation systems. In this paper we present a model for predicting the behavior of an individual during a binary game under different amounts of risk, gain, and time pressure. The model is based on Quantum Decision...

Autonomous agents, such as driverless cars, require large amounts of labeled visual data for their training. A viable approach for acquiring such data is training a generative model with collected real data, and then augmenting the collected real dataset with synthetic images from the model, generated with control of the scene layout and ground tru...

Autonomous agents, such as driverless cars, require large amounts of labeled visual data for their training. A viable approach for acquiring such data is training a generative model with collected real data, and then augmenting the collected real dataset with synthetic images from the model, generated with control of the scene layout and ground tru...

Earlier identification of an underlying AD pathology could increase chances that preventive or curative treatment will be more successful. Human limitations in sensory capacity, attention and parallel processing could mean that automatic and simultaneous registration from several information channels in combination with artificial intelligence proc...

An essential task for computer vision-based assistive technologies is to help visually impaired people to recognize objects in constrained environments, for instance, recognizing food items in grocery stores. In this paper, we introduce a novel dataset with natural images of groceries—fruits, vegetables, and packaged products—where all images have...

An essential task for computer vision-based assistive technologies is to help visually impaired people to recognize objects in constrained environments, for instance, recognizing food items in grocery stores. In this paper, we introduce a novel dataset with natural images of groceries—fruits, vegetables, and packaged products—where all images have...

During speech, people spontaneously gesticulate, which plays a key role in conveying information. Similarly, realistic co-speech gestures are crucial to enable natural and smooth interactions with social agents. Current end-to-end co-speech gesture generation systems use a single modality for representing speech: either audio or text. These systems...

Although many fairness criteria have been proposed for decision making, their long-term impact on the well-being of a population remains unclear. In this work, we study the dynamics of population qualification and algorithmic decisions under a partially observed Markov decision problem setting. By characterizing the equilibrium of such dynamics, we...

Many applications of classification methods not only require high accuracy but also reliable estimation of predictive uncertainty. However, while many current classification frameworks, in particular deep neural networks, achieve high accuracy, they tend to incorrectly estimate uncertainty. In this paper, we propose a method that adjusts the confid...

This paper presents a novel framework for speech-driven gesture production, applicable to virtual agents to enhance human-computer interaction. Specifically, we extend recent deep-learning-based, data-driven methods for speech-driven gesture generation by incorporating representation learning. Our model takes speech as input and produces gestures a...

We present a method for weakly-supervised action localization based on graph convolutions. In order to find and classify video time segments that correspond to relevant action classes, a system must be able to both identify discriminative time segments in each video, and identify the full extent of each action. Achieving this with weak video level...

A number of techniques for interpretability have been presented for deep learning in computer vision, typically with the goal of understanding what it is that the networks have actually learned underneath a given classification decision. However, when it comes to deep video architectures, interpretability is still in its infancy and we do not yet h...

In this paper, we introduce a method for segmenting time series data using tools from Bayesian nonparametrics. We consider the task of temporal segmentation of a set of time series data into representative stationary segments. We use Gaussian process (GP) priors to impose our knowledge about the characteristics of the underlying stationary segments...

During speech, people spontaneously gesticulate, which plays a key role in conveying information. Similarly, realistic co-speech gestures are crucial to enable natural and smooth interactions with social agents. Current data-driven co-speech gesture generation systems use a single modality for representing speech: either audio or text. These system...

Scene understanding is paramount in robotics, self-navigation, augmented reality, and many other fields. To fully accomplish this task, an autonomous agent has to infer the 3D structure of the sensed scene (to know where it looks at) and its content (to know what it sees). To tackle the two tasks, deep neural networks trained to infer semantic segm...

Scene understanding is paramount in robotics, self-navigation, augmented reality, and many other fields. To fully accomplish this task, an autonomous agent has to infer the 3D structure of the sensed scene (to know where it looks at) and its content (to know what it sees). To tackle the two tasks, deep neural networks trained to infer semantic segm...

In this paper, we present a user study on generated beat gestures for humanoid agents. It has been shown that Human-Robot Interaction can be improved by including communicative non-verbal behavior, such as arm gestures. Beat gestures are one of the four types of arm gestures, and are known to be used for emphasizing parts of speech. In our user stu...

This paper presents a novel framework for automatic speech-driven gesture generation, applicable to human-agent interaction including both virtual agents and robots. Specifically, we extend recent deep-learning-based, data-driven methods for speech-driven gesture generation by incorporating representation learning. Our model takes speech as input a...

Many applications for classification methods not only require high accuracy but also reliable estimation of predictive uncertainty. However, while many current classification frameworks, in particular deep neural network architectures, provide very good results in terms of accuracy, they tend to underestimate their predictive uncertainty. In this p...

Discovery of causal relations from observational data is essential for many disciplines of science and real-world applications. However, unlike traditional machine learning algorithms, whose developments have been greatly fostered by a large amount of available benchmark datasets, causal discovery algorithms are notoriously difficult to be systemat...

This study proposes, develops, and evaluates methods for modeling the eye-gaze direction and head orientation of a person in multiparty open-world dialogues, as a function of low-level communicative signals generated by his/hers interlocutors. These signals include speech activity, eye-gaze direction, and head orientation, all of which can be estim...

This paper presents a novel framework for automatic speech-driven gesture generation applicable to human-agent interaction, including both virtual agents and robots. Specifically, we extend recent deep-learning-based, data-driven methods for speech-driven gesture generation by incorporating representation learning. Our model takes speech features a...

This paper presents a novel framework for automatic speech-driven gesture generation applicable to human-agent interaction, including both virtual agents and robots. Specifically, we extend recent deep-learning-based, data-driven methods for speech-driven gesture generation by incorporating representation learning. Our model takes speech features a...

Movement-based interactions are gaining traction, requiring a better understanding of how such expressions are shaped by designers. Through an analysis of an artistic process aimed to deliver a commissioned opera where custom-built drones are performing on stage alongside human performers, we observed the importance of achieving an intercorporeal u...

This paper presents a novel framework for automatic speech-driven gesture generation, applicable to human-agent interaction including both virtual agents and robots. Specifically, we extend recent deep-learning-based, data-driven methods for speech-driven gesture generation by incorporating representation learning. Our model takes speech as input a...

A prerequisite to successfully alleviate pain in animals is to recognize it, which is a great challenge in non-verbal species. Furthermore, prey animals such as horses tend to hide their pain. In this study, we propose a deep recurrent two-stream architecture for the task of distinguishing pain from non-pain in videos of horses. Different models ar...

Image classification models built into visual support systems and other assistive devices need to provide accurate predictions about their environment. We focus on an application of assistive technology for people with visual impairments, for daily activities such as shopping or cooking. In this paper, we provide a new benchmark dataset for a chall...

We present the Mixed Likelihood Gaussian process latent variable model (GP-LVM), capable of modeling data with attributes of different types. The standard formulation of GP-LVM assumes that each observation is drawn from a Gaussian distribution, which makes the model unsuited for data with e.g. categorical or nominal attributes. Our model, for whic...

Human activity modeling operates on two levels: high-level action modeling, such as classification, prediction, detection and anticipation, and low-level motion trajectory prediction and synthesis. In this work, we propose a semi-supervised generative latent variable model that addresses both of these levels by modeling continuous observations as w...

Achilles Tendon Rupture (ATR) is one of the typical soft tissue injuries. Rehabilitation after such a musculoskeletal injury remains a prolonged process with a very variable outcome. Accurately predicting rehabilitation outcome is crucial for treatment decision support. However, it is challenging to train an automatic method for predicting ATR reha...

Missing data are ubiquitous in many domains such as healthcare. Depending on how they are missing, the (conditional) independence relations in the observed data may be different from those for the complete data generated by the underlying causal process and, as a consequence, simply applying existing causal discovery methods to the observed data ma...

Achilles Tendon Rupture (ATR) is one of the typical soft tissue injuries. Accurately predicting the rehabilitation outcome of ATR using noisy measurements with missing entries is crucial for treatment decision support. In this work, we design a probabilistic model that simultaneously predicts the missing measurements and the rehabilitation outcome...

Optical motion capture systems have become a widely used technology in various fields, such as augmented reality, robotics, movie production, etc. Such systems use a large number of cameras to triangulate the position of optical markers. The marker positions are estimated with high accuracy. However, especially when tracking articulated bodies, a f...