Automated Object Shape Modelling by Clustering of Web Images

The paper deals with the description of a framework to create shape models of an object using images fromthe web. Results obtained from different image search engines using simple keywords are filtered, and it is possible to select images viewing a single object owning a well-defined contour. In order to have a large set of valid images, the implemented system uses lexical web databases (e.g. WordNet) or free web encyclopedias (e.g. Wikipedia), to get more keywords correlated to the given object. The shapes extracted from selected images are represented by Fourier descriptors, and are grouped by K-means algorithm. Finally, the more representative shapes of main clusters are considered as prototypical contours of the object. Preliminary experimental results are illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.