Next Generation Semantic and Spatial Joint Perception——Neural Metric-Semantic Understanding

Efficient perception of the real world is a long-standing effort of computer vision.Mod⁃ern visual computing techniques have succeeded in attaching semantic labels to thousands of daily objects and reconstructing dense depth maps of complex scenes.However,simultaneous se⁃mantic and spatial joint perception,so-called dense 3D semantic mapping,estimating the 3D ge⁃ometry of a scene and attaching semantic labels to the geometry,remains a challenging problem that,if solved,would make structured vision understanding and editing more widely accessible.Concurrently,progress in computer vision and machine learning has motivated us to pursue the capability of understanding and digitally reconstructing the surrounding world.Neural metric-se⁃mantic understanding is a new and rapidly emerging field that combines differentiable machine learning techniques with physical knowledge from computer vision,e.g.,the integration of visualinertial simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM),mesh reconstruction,and semantic un⁃derstanding.In this paper,we attempt to summarize the recent trends and applications of neural metric-semantic understanding.Starting with an overview of the underlying computer vision and machine learning concepts,we discuss critical aspects of such perception approaches.Specifical⁃ly,our emphasis is on fully leveraging the joint semantic and 3D information.Later on,many im⁃portant applications of the perception capability such as novel view synthesis and semantic aug⁃mented reality(AR)contents manipulation are also presented.Finally,we conclude with a dis⁃cussion of the technical implications of the technology under a 5G edge computing scenario.

Spatial simulation using abstraction of virtual geographic environments

In this paper,we address two challenging issues underlying spatial simulation using software agents immersed in virtual geographic environments(VGE).First,the way to describe virtual VGE models using accurate spatial decomposition approaches structured using graph theory techniques.Second,the use of graph abstraction techniques to support realistic and advanced navigation and path planning capabilities for software agents considering the VGE’s characteristics.In order to illustrate our contributions to the growing field of spatial simulations,we present and discuss a case study involving an urban VGE model populated with agents who autonomously and differently interact with multiple abstractions of the same physical environment.