1 Migratory songbirds carry an inherited capacity to migrate several thousand kilometers each year crossing continental landmasses and barriers between distant breeding sites and wintering areas. How individual songbirds manage with extreme precision to find their way is still largely unknown. The functional characteristics of biological compasses used by songbird migrants has mainly been investigated by recording the birds directed migratory activity in circular cages, so-called Emlen funnels. This method is 50 years old and has not received major updates over the past decades. The aim of this work was to compare the results from newly developed digital methods with the established manual methods to evaluate songbird migratory activity and orientation in circular cages. 2 We performed orientation experiments using the European robin (Erithacus rubecula) using modified Emlen funnels equipped with thermal paper and simultaneously recorded the songbird movements from above. We evaluated and compared the results obtained with five different methods. Two methods have been commonly used in songbirds orientation experiments; the other three methods were developed for this study and were based either on evaluation of the thermal paper using automated image analysis, or on the analysis of videos recorded during the experiment. 3 The methods used to evaluate scratches produced by the claws of birds on the thermal papers presented some differences compared with the video analyses. These differences were caused mainly by differences in scatter, as any movement of the bird along the sloping walls of the funnel was recorded on the thermal paper, whereas video evaluations allowed us to detect single takeoff attempts by the birds and to consider only this behavior in the orientation analyses. Using computer vision, we were also able to identify and separately evaluate different behaviors that were impossible to record by the thermal paper. 4 The traditional Emlen funnel is still the most used method to investigate compass orientation in songbirds under controlled conditions. However, new numerical image analysis techniques provide a much higher level of detail of songbirds migratory behavior and will provide an increasing number of possibilities to evaluate and quantify specific behaviors as new algorithms will be developed.

Online learning of vision-based robot control requires appropriate activation strategies during operation. In this chapter we present such a learning approach with applications to two areas of vision-based robot control. In the first setting, selfevaluation is possible for the learning system and the system autonomously switches to learning mode for producing the necessary training data by exploration. The other application is in a setting where external information is required for determining the correctness of an action. Therefore, an operator provides training data when required, leading to an automatic mode switch to online learning from demonstration. In experiments for the first setting, the system is able to autonomously learn the inverse kinematics of a robotic arm. We propose improvements producing more informative training data compared to random exploration. This reduces training time and limits learning to regions where the learnt mapping is used. The learnt region is extended autonomously on demand. In experiments for the second setting, we present an autonomous driving system learning a mapping from visual input to control signals, which is trained by manually steering the robot. After the initial training period, the system seamlessly continues autonomously. Manual control can be taken back at any time for providing additional training.

Recent years have shown great progress in driving assistance systems, approaching autonomous driving step by step. Many approaches rely on lane markers however, which limits the system to larger paved roads and poses problems during winter. In this work we explore an alternative approach to visual road following based on online learning. The system learns the current visual appearance of the road while the vehicle is operated by a human. When driving onto a new type of road, the human driver will drive for a minute while the system learns. After training, the human driver can let go of the controls. The present work proposes a novel approach to online perception-action learning for the specific problem of road following, which makes interchangeably use of supervised learning (by demonstration), instantaneous reinforcement learning, and unsupervised learning (self-reinforcement learning). The proposed method, symbiotic online learning of associations and regression (SOLAR), extends previous work on qHebb-learning in three ways: priors are introduced to enforce mode selection and to drive learning towards particular goals, the qHebb-learning methods is complemented with a reinforcement variant, and a self-assessment method based on predictive coding is proposed. The SOLAR algorithm is compared to qHebb-learning and deep learning for the task of road following, implemented on a model RC-car. The system demonstrates an ability to learn to follow paved and gravel roads outdoors. Further, the system is evaluated in a controlled indoor environment which provides quantifiable results. The experiments show that the SOLAR algorithm results in autonomous capabilities that go beyond those of existing methods with respect to speed, accuracy, and functionality. 

The Visual Object Tracking challenge 2014, VOT2014, aims at comparing short-term single-object visual trackers that do not apply pre-learned models of object appearance. Results of 38 trackers are presented. The number of tested trackers makes VOT 2014 the largest benchmark on short-term tracking to date. For each participating tracker, a short description is provided in the appendix. Features of the VOT2014 challenge that go beyond its VOT2013 predecessor are introduced: (i) a new VOT2014 dataset with full annotation of targets by rotated bounding boxes and per-frame attribute, (ii) extensions of the VOT2013 evaluation methodology, (iii) a new unit for tracking speed assessment less dependent on the hardware and (iv) the VOT2014 evaluation toolkit that significantly speeds up execution of experiments. The dataset, the evaluation kit as well as the results are publicly available at the challenge website (http://​votchallenge.​net).

There are three major issues for visual object trackers: modelrepresentation, search and model update. In this paper we address thelast two issues for a specic model representation, grid based distributionmodels by means of channel-based distribution elds. Particularly weaddress the comparison part of searching. Previous work in the areahas used standard methods for comparison and update, not exploitingall the possibilities of the representation. In this work we propose twocomparison schemes and one update scheme adapted to the distributionmodel. The proposed schemes signicantly improve the accuracy androbustness on the Visual Object Tracking (VOT) 2014 Challenge dataset.

While autonomously driving systems accumulate more and more sensors as well as highly specialized visual features and engineered solutions, the human visual system provides evidence that visual input and simple low level image features are sufficient for successful driving. In this paper we propose extensions (non-linear update and coherence weighting) to one of the simplest biologically inspired learning schemes (Hebbian learning). We show that this is sufficient for online learning of visual autonomous driving, where the system learns to directly map low level image features to control signals. After the initial training period, the system seamlessly continues autonomously. This extended Hebbian algorithm, qHebb, has constant bounds on time and memory complexity for training and evaluation, independent of the number of training samples presented to the system. Further, the proposed algorithm compares favorably to state of the art engineered batch learning algorithms.

An online method for rapidly learning the inverse kinematics of a redundant robotic arm is presented addressing the special requirements of active vision for visual inspection tasks. The system is initialized with a model covering a small area around the starting position, which is then incrementally extended by exploration. The number of motions during this process is minimized by only exploring configurations required for successful completion of the task at hand. The explored area is automatically extended online and on demand.To achieve this, state of the art methods for learning and numerical optimization are combined in a tight implementation where parts of the learned model, the Jacobians, are used during optimization, resulting in significant synergy effects. In a series of standard experiments, we show that the integrated method performs better than using both methods sequentially.

The labyrinth game is a simple yet challenging platform, not only for humans but also for control algorithms and systems. The game is easy to understand but still very hard to master. From a system point of view, the ball behavior is in general easy to model but close to the obstacles there are severe non-linearities. Additionally, the far from flat surface on which the ball rolls provides for changing dynamics depending on the ball position.

The general dynamics of the system can easily be handled by traditional automatic control methods. Taking the obstacles and uneven surface into account would require very detailed models of the system. A simple deterministic control algorithm is combined with a learning control method. The simple control method provides initial training data. As thelearning method is trained, the system can learn from the results of its own actions and the performance improves well beyond the performance of the initial controller.

A vision system and image analysis is used to estimate the ball position while a combination of a PID controller and a learning controller based on LWPR is used to learn to steer the ball through the maze.

Driver assistance systems in modern cars now show clear steps towards autonomous driving and improvements are presented in a steady pace. The total number of sensors has also decreased from the vehicles of the initial DARPA challenge, more resembling a pile of sensors with a car underneath. Still, anyone driving a tele-operated toy using a video link is a demonstration that a single camera provides enough information about the surronding world.  

Most lane assist systems are developed for highway use and depend on visible lane markers. However, lane markers may not be visible due to snow or wear, and there are roads without lane markers. With a slightly different approach, autonomous road following can be obtained on almost any kind of road. Using realtime online machine learning, a human driver can demonstrate driving on a road type unknown to the system and after some training, the system can seamlessly take over. The demonstrator system presented in this work has shown capability of learning to follow different types of roads as well as learning to follow a person. The system is based solely on vision, mapping camera images directly to control signals.  

Such systems need the ability to handle multiple-hypothesis outputs as there may be several plausible options in similar situations. If there is an obstacle in the middle of the road, the obstacle can be avoided by going on either side. However the average action, going straight ahead, is not a viable option. Similarly, at an intersection, the system should follow one road, not the average of all roads.  

To this end, an online machine learning framework is presented where inputs and outputs are represented using the channel representation. The learning system is structurally simple and computationally light, based on neuropsychological ideas presented by Donald Hebb over 60 years ago. Nonetheless the system has shown a cabability to learn advanced tasks. Furthermore, the structure of the system permits a statistical interpretation where a non-parametric representation of the joint distribution of input and output is generated. Prediction generates the conditional distribution of the output, given the input.  

The statistical interpretation motivates the introduction of priors. In cases with multiple options, such as at intersections, a prior can select one mode in the multimodal distribution of possible actions. In addition to the ability to learn from demonstration, a possibility for immediate reinforcement feedback is presented. This allows for a system where the teacher can choose the most appropriate way of training the system, at any time and at her own discretion.  

The theoretical contributions include a deeper analysis of the channel representation. A geometrical analysis illustrates the cause of decoding bias commonly present in neurologically inspired representations, and measures to counteract it. Confidence values are analyzed and interpreted as evidence and coherence. Further, the use of the truncated cosine basis function is motivated.  

Finally, a selection of applications is presented, such as autonomous road following by online learning and head pose estimation. A method founded on the same basic principles is used for visual tracking, where the probabilistic representation of target pixel values allows for changes in target appearance.

Most people are familiar with the BRIO labyrinth game and the challenge of guiding the ball through the maze. The goal of this project was to use this game to create a platform for evaluation of control algorithms. The platform was used to evaluate a few different controlling algorithms, both traditional automatic control algorithms as well as algorithms based on online incremental learning.

The game was fitted with servo actuators for tilting the maze. A camera together with computer vision algorithms were used to estimate the state of the game. The evaluated controlling algorithm had the task of calculating a proper control signal, given the estimated state of the game.

The evaluated learning systems used traditional control algorithms to provide initial training data. After initial training, the systems learned from their own actions and after a while they outperformed the controller used to provide initial training.