Semantic Robots is a strategic partnership between the Centre for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems, which MPI is a part of, and several industrial partners, all leaders in their respective fields. This is a 6-year research profile funded by The Knowledge Foundation for a total of 36MSEK, matched by equal contribution from the industry. The main objective of this effort is to further develop our key research areas through close cooperation with leading industrial players.
MPI is a principle investigator of one of three research directions in this project, with the main goal to create methods and tools for discovering semantic knowledge from aerial imagery. The project is comprised of three major parts: image segmentation and classification, discovering semantic knowledge and building ontologies based on classification results and open available data sources, and visualization.
On the first step, we develop algorithms for classification and segmentation of satellite orthoimagery using convolutional neural networks. From multi-band true-ortho satellite imagery covering the range from 400 to 1040nm, along with high detailed digital elevation models (DEM), we produce rapid classification of the area into five classes: vegetation, ground, water, road, building. Although not perfectly precise, the results of classification allows to build reasoning on the data and incorporate other data sources, such as Open Street Map (OSM). The reasoning will in tern allow to improve classification (for instance, to solve confusion in the difficult areas of the map, for example, in shadows).
Example of SemMap Viewer 2.0 with flood simulation and flood affected areas. Labels show the semantic data of points, when not flooded.
Publications:
2017
Marjan Alirezaie; Andrey Kiselev; Martin Längkvist; Franziska Klügl; Amy Loutfi
@article{s17112545,
title = {An Ontology-Based Reasoning Framework for Querying Satellite Images for Disaster Monitoring},
author = {Marjan Alirezaie and Andrey Kiselev and Martin Längkvist and Franziska Klügl and Amy Loutfi},
url = {http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/17/11/2545},
doi = {10.3390/s17112545},
issn = {1424-8220},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-11-05},
journal = {Sensors},
volume = {17},
number = {11},
abstract = {This paper presents a framework in which satellite images are classified and augmented with additional semantic information to enable queries about what can be found on the map at a particular location, but also about paths that can be taken. This is achieved by a reasoning framework based on qualitative spatial reasoning that is able to find answers to high level queries that may vary on the current situation. This framework called SemCityMap, provides the full pipeline from enriching the raw image data with rudimentary labels to the integration of a knowledge representation and reasoning methods to user interfaces for high level querying. To illustrate the utility of SemCityMap in a disaster scenario, we use an urban environment—central Stockholm—in combination with a flood simulation. We show that the system provides useful answers to high-level queries also with respect to the current flood status. Examples of such queries concern path planning for vehicles or retrieval of safe regions such as “find all regions close to schools and far from the flooded area”. The particular advantage of our approach lies in the fact that ontological information and reasoning is explicitly integrated so that queries can be formulated in a natural way using concepts on appropriate level of abstraction, including additional constraints.},
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This paper presents a framework in which satellite images are classified and augmented with additional semantic information to enable queries about what can be found on the map at a particular location, but also about paths that can be taken. This is achieved by a reasoning framework based on qualitative spatial reasoning that is able to find answers to high level queries that may vary on the current situation. This framework called SemCityMap, provides the full pipeline from enriching the raw image data with rudimentary labels to the integration of a knowledge representation and reasoning methods to user interfaces for high level querying. To illustrate the utility of SemCityMap in a disaster scenario, we use an urban environment—central Stockholm—in combination with a flood simulation. We show that the system provides useful answers to high-level queries also with respect to the current flood status. Examples of such queries concern path planning for vehicles or retrieval of safe regions such as “find all regions close to schools and far from the flooded area”. The particular advantage of our approach lies in the fact that ontological information and reasoning is explicitly integrated so that queries can be formulated in a natural way using concepts on appropriate level of abstraction, including additional constraints.
@inproceedings{AlirezaieEtAl:AnSWeR2017,
title = {Exploiting Context and Semantics for UAV Path-finding in an Urban Setting},
author = {Marjan Alirezaie and Andrey Kiselev and Franziska Klügl and Martin Längkvist and Amy Loutfi},
url = {http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1935/#paper-02},
issn = {1613-0073},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-05-29},
booktitle = {1st International Workshop on Application of Semantic Web technologies in Robotics (AnSWeR)},
number = {1935},
pages = {11--20},
address = {Portoroz, Slovenia},
series = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Marjan Alirezaie; Martin Längkvist; Andrey Kiselev; Amy Loutfi
Open GeoSpatial Data as a Source of Ground Truth for Automated Labelling of Satellite Images Inproceedings
In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Spatial Data on the Web (SDW 2016) co-located with The 9th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2016), pp. 5-8, 2016.
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/giscience/AlirezaieLKL16,
title = {Open GeoSpatial Data as a Source of Ground Truth for Automated Labelling of Satellite Images},
author = {Marjan Alirezaie and Martin Längkvist and Andrey Kiselev and Amy Loutfi},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-09-27},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Spatial Data on the Web (SDW 2016) co-located with The 9th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2016)},
pages = {5-8},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
@article{langkvist_classification_2016,
title = {Classification and Segmentation of Satellite Orthoimagery Using Convolutional Neural Networks},
author = { Martin Längkvist and Andrey Kiselev and Marjan Alirezaie and Amy Loutfi},
url = {http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/8/4/329},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
journal = {Remote Sensing},
volume = {8},
number = {4},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
@inproceedings{ijcaiinteractive2016,
title = {Interactive Learning with Convolutional Neural Networks for Image Labeling},
author = { Martin Längkvist and Marjan Alirezaie and Andrey Kiselev and Amy Loutfi},
url = {https://a3eb7066-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/ijcai2016iml/IJCAI2016-IML_paper_13.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cpyC3pP98kVZSR7MiJJLQiQ6ZZtKOfnZBZf98h-2eb2DWfpIKmbpoq4n9pGpl9yRIsITA4h_JO5vA5ELLzLUwHWj1LnFdmzDjQ1CtJV1H2D6uLkWfXT20AsRKzrTuChgjfRVhcLGYohVRG9nswQLpvShDTMKV5vvQLvcr6NH3vkHVys9M5CtHYCS1n5ZaoFu3DDz8cZk1Vl1FZC14FoUxgf-8R4Bi1Ilqrl6OKJe-ObXuDkjcs%3D&attredirects=0},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
booktitle = {IJCAI 2016 workshop on Interactive Machine Learning: Connecting Humans and Machines},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
In: Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference
on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, GIS 2016, Burlingame,
California, USA, October 31 - November 3, 2016, pp. 11:1–11:4, 2016.
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/gis/AlirezaieKL16,
title = {Knowing without telling: integrating sensing and mapping for creating an artificial companion},
author = {Marjan Alirezaie and
Franziska Kl{ü}gl and
Amy Loutfi},
url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2996913.2996961},
doi = {10.1145/2996913.2996961},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference
on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, GIS 2016, Burlingame,
California, USA, October 31 - November 3, 2016},
pages = {11:1--11:4},
crossref = {DBLP:conf/gis/2016},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
