title: Unsupervised visual learning of three-dimensional objects using a modular network architecture.
abstract: This paper presents a modular network architecture that learns to cluster multiple views of multiple three-dimensional (3D) objects. The proposed network model is based on a mixture of non-linear autoencoders, which compete to encode multiple views of each 3D object. The main advantage of using a mixture of autoencoders is that it can capture multiple non-linear sub-spaces, rather than multiple centers for describing complex shapes of the view distributions. The unsupervised training algorithm is formulated within a maximum-likelihood estimation framework. The performance of the modular network model is evaluated through experiments using synthetic 3D wire-frame objects and gray-level images of real 3D objects. It is shown that the performance of the modular network model is superior to the performance of the conventional clustering algorithms, such as the K-means algorithm and the Gaussian mixture model.
authors.affiliation: ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, Japan
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ando
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fujita