research

University of Washington (UW) and Cornell University researchers are developing PhotoCity, a system to create 3D renderings of buildings and cities from unstructured collections of 2D digital photos. To improve the quality of the 3D renderings, the researchers plan to use a social game for users to add images where needed. More information is available in a New York Times article.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD have developed an augmented-reality system for use as a virtual museum guide. Visitors can hold their touch screen consoles in front of an art piece and the relevant customized information would appear on the screens. Software has been written to recognize images captured by a camera on the console.

Researchers at the Missouri University of Science & Technology and the University of Missouri-Columbia have built a remote-controlled robot to help create 3D maps of the environment. The robot is equipped with an infrared camera and LIDAR to detect structural details in the insides of buildings and cave passages, for use in disaster relief and other applications. More information is available in the press release.

Badri Roysam and Andrew Cohen at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have developed a computer vision system that can predict with 99% accuracy whether stem cells will divide into self-renewing cells or terminal cells. The predictions, which are based on measuring cell movements, are made in real-time, so that the fate of the cells is known before they divide. The system can also predict characteristics of the specialized cells that result.

New images showing the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto have been released. The images were created from photographs taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope over a period of a year. According to the HubbleSite News article, a superresolution technique is used on "multiple, slightly offset pictures" of a few pixels wide to "synthesize a higher-resolution view". The process is achieved over four years with 20 computers operating concurrently.

Researchers at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the University of Oxford have developed a single-sensor method to capture high resolution image and high-speed video. Their method divides the sensor pixels into groups that are allowed to be viewed either as a larger still image or as a high-speed video sequence in rapid succession. More details are available in a press release.

Professor Mark Nixon of the University of Southampton is leading a research project on gait analysis. A tunnel with four cameras on each side records the 3D motion of a person walking through the tunnel. On future traverals of the tunnel, a person's gait can be compared with the recorded representation. The tunnel's background consists of colored squares to aid the analysis. More information is available in a janes.com article.

Researchers from the University of Bridgeport are developing computer vision algorithms and cameras to process images captured in projectile drones that are about the size of a soda can. The $2.4 million project is funded by the U.S. Army for combat and surveillance applications. More information is available in a press release.

Researchers at Tel-Aviv University (Israel) and Zhejiang University (P.R.China) have developed algorithms to calculate an image’s aesthetics based on photographers’ rules on composition (object placement, color, and shape). Results from their work are presented at the Eurographics 2010 conference in Norrköping, Sweden, in May, in a paper titled, "Optimizing Photo Composition" (Ligang G. Liu, Renjie J. Chen, Lior Wolf, and Daniel Cohen-Or).

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged an X-shaped pattern and trailing debris that scientists believe is a head-on collision between two asteroids. While collisions between objects are common in the asteroid belt, this would be the first time an asteroid-asteroid collision is photographed. More information is available in press release.