Image stitching aims at generating high-quality panoramas with the lowest computational cost. In this paper, we propose a parallax-tolerant image stitching method based on robust elastic warping, which could achieve accurate alignment and efficient processing simultaneously. Given a group of point matches between images, an analytical warping function is constructed to eliminate the parallax errors. Then the input images are warped according to the computed deformations over the meshed image plane. The seamless panorama is composed by directly re-projecting the warped images. As an important complement to the proposed method, a Bayesian model of feature refinement is proposed to adaptively remove the incorrect local matches. This ensures a more robust alignment than existing approaches. Moreover, our warp is highly compatible with different transformation types. A flexible strategy of combining it with the global similarity transformation is provided as an example. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated using several challenging cases.

Pose estimation and map reconstruction are basic requirements for robotic autonomous behavior. In this paper, we propose a point–plane-based method to simultaneously estimate the robot’s poses and reconstruct the current environment’s map using RGB-D cameras. First, we detect and track the point and plane features from color and depth images, and reliable constraints are obtained, even for low-texture scenes. Then, we construct cost functions from these features, and we utilize the plane’s minimal representation to minimize these functions for pose estimation and local map optimization. Furthermore, we extract the Manhattan World (MW) axes on the basis of the plane normals and vanishing directions of parallel lines for the MW scenes, and we add the MW constraint to the point–plane-based cost functions for more accurate pose estimation. The results of experiments on public RGB-D datasets demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of the proposed algorithm for pose estimation and map reconstruction, and we show its advantages compared with alternative methods.

Multiple kernel clustering (MKC) attracts considerable attention due to its competitive performance in unsupervised learning. However, we observe that most of the existing MKC approaches do not sufficiently consider the correlation between different clustering partitions. As a result, the existing methods would cause redundant and low diversity of selected clustering partitions which deteriorate clustering performance. To address these issues, we propose an effective and efficient multiple kernel k-means clustering method termed Consensus Multiple Kernel Clustering with Late Fusion Alignment and Matrix-Induced Regularization (CMKC-LFA-MR). Specifically, the correlations between different clustering partitions are calculated as a matrix-induced regularization to encourage the diversity of clustering results. Moreover, we propose to maximally align the consensus partition with the weighted base partitions. The proposed algorithm jointly optimizes the basic clustering partitions and the optimal consensus clustering result. To solve the resultant optimization problem, a three-step alternate algorithm is proposed with both theoretically and experimentally proved convergence. As demonstrated by the experiments on six benchmark datasets, our algorithm outperforms the existing state-of-the-art multi-kernel methods in clustering performance with less time complexity, which demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed algorithm.

In order to improve the detection capability of low-slow-small UAV targets in complex backgrounds, this paper introduces a novel method that combines spatio-temporal information, which includes (1) an improved YOLO detector for small UAV detection, (2) a motion target detection module, and (3) an integrated combination strategy for static and dynamic judgment. We firstly provided an improved YOLOv11 static detection method by combining SPD Conv, BiFPN and a detect header for high-resolution layers, and then designed a dynamic target-detection algorithm which helps the YOLO method capture minor movement features, finally introducing a fusing strategy of static detection and dynamic judgment. The experimental results on small UAV datasets, including various sky, mountain and building backgrounds, have shown that the proposed approach increases Precision, Recall, and mAP50 by 12.1%, 29.5%, and 29.6%, respectively, compared with the baseline YOLO11 detector. The proposed MSM-YOLO achieves Precision, Recall, and mAP50 of 94%, 92%, and 86.3%, enabling the effective detection of small UAV targets in complex scenarios. Moreover, the ablation experiments also proved the effectiveness of each module. The proposed method was further deployed in a redesigned RK3588 embedded system, achieving 100 fps after optimized process, and it has shown effectiveness and practicality in further air-to-air UAV detection applications.

Autofocus is necessary for high-throughput and real-time scanning in microscopic imaging. Traditional methods rely on complex hardware or iterative hill-climbing algorithms. Recent learning-based approaches have demonstrated remarkable efficacy in a one-shot setting, avoiding hardware modifications or iterative mechanical lens adjustments. However, in this paper, we highlight a significant challenge that the richness of image content can significantly affect autofocus performance. When the image content is sparse, previous autofocus methods, whether traditional climbing-hill or learning-based, tend to fail. To tackle this, we propose a content-importance-based solution, named SparseFocus, featuring a novel two-stage pipeline. The first stage measures the importance of regions within the image, while the second stage calculates the defocus distance from selected important regions. To validate our approach and benefit the research community, we collect a large-scale dataset comprising millions of labelled defocused images, encompassing both dense, sparse and extremely sparse scenarios. Experimental results show that SparseFocus surpasses existing methods, effectively handling all levels of content sparsity. Moreover, we integrate SparseFocus into our Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) system that performs well in real-world applications. The code and dataset will be made available upon the publication of this paper.