Video Enhancement and Dynamic Range Control of HDR Sequences for Automotive Applications

CMOS video cameras with high dynamic range (HDR) output are particularly suitable for driving assistance applications, where lighting conditions can strongly vary, going from direct sunlight to dark areas in tunnels. However, common visualization devices can only handle a low dynamic range, and thus a dynamic range reduction is needed. Many algorithms have been proposed in the literature to reduce the dynamic range of still pictures. Anyway, extending the available methods to video is not straightforward, due to the peculiar nature of video data. We propose an algorithm for both reducing the dynamic range of video sequences and enhancing its appearance, thus improving visual quality and reducing temporal artifacts. We also provide an optimized version of our algorithm for a viable hardware implementation on an FPGA. The feasibility of this implementation is demonstrated by means of a case study

Use of Java RMI on Mobile Devices for Peer to Peer Computing

In this paper, the use of Java RMI on mobile devices for peer-to-peer computing is presented. An overview of the commonly used distributed middleware systems are described by looking into remote procedure call (RPC) and object oriented middleware java remote method invocation (Java RMI). The differences between this middleware are equally detailed in this work. A review of some related literature was carried out and some of the features required for the proposed prototype were also extracted accordingly. This paper also provides an overview of peer-to-peer networking and some of the application areas linked to the platform implementation. Detailed design and implementation of the artifact for peer-to-peer network using Java 2 platform programming language were carried out. Finally, on the process of this research, three applications were developed and peered together to show that java RMI is a tool for peer-to-peer computing. Keywords: - Remote method invocation, Remote procedure call, Stub, Skeleton, Peer-to-Pee

Audio masking effect on inter-component skews in olfaction-enhanced multimedia presentations

Media-rich content plays a vital role in consumer applications today, as these applications try to find new and interesting ways to engage their users. Video, audio, and the more traditional forms of media content continue to dominate with respect to the use of media content to enhance the user experience. Tactile interactivity has also now become widely popular in modern computing applications, while our olfactory and gustatory senses continue to have a limited role. However, in recent times, there have been significant advancements regarding the use of olfactory media content (i.e., smell), and there are a variety of devices now available to enable its computer-controlled emission. This paper explores the impact of the audio stream on user perception of olfactory-enhanced video content in the presence of skews between the olfactory and video media. This research uses the results from two experimental studies of user-perceived quality of olfactory-enhanced multimedia, where audio was present and absent, respectively. Specifically, the paper shows that the user Quality of Experience (QoE) is generally higher in the absence of audio for nearly perfect synchronized olfactory-enhanced multimedia presentations (i.e., an olfactory media skew of between {−10,+10s}); however, for greater olfactory media skews (ranging between {−30s;−10s} and {+10s, +30s}) user QoE is higher when the audio stream is present. It can be concluded that the presence of the audio has the ability to mask larger synchronization skews between the other media components in olfaction-enhanced multimedia presentations

Machine vision: a survey

This paper surveys the field of machine vision from a computer science perspective. It is written to act as an introduction to the field and presents the reader with references to specific implementations. Machine vision is a complex and developing field that can be broken into the three stages: stereo correspondence, scene reconstruction, and object recognition. We present the techniques and general approaches to each of these stages and summarize the future direction of research

Procedural Generation and Rendering of Realistic, Navigable Forest Environments: An Open-Source Tool

Simulation of forest environments has applications from entertainment and art creation to commercial and scientific modelling. Due to the unique features and lighting in forests, a forest-specific simulator is desirable, however many current forest simulators are proprietary or highly tailored to a particular application. Here we review several areas of procedural generation and rendering specific to forest generation, and utilise this to create a generalised, open-source tool for generating and rendering interactive, realistic forest scenes. The system uses specialised L-systems to generate trees which are distributed using an ecosystem simulation algorithm. The resulting scene is rendered using a deferred rendering pipeline, a Blinn-Phong lighting model with real-time leaf transparency and post-processing lighting effects. The result is a system that achieves a balance between high natural realism and visual appeal, suitable for tasks including training computer vision algorithms for autonomous robots and visual media generation.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures. Submitted to Computer Graphics Forum (CGF). The application and supporting configuration files can be found at https://github.com/callumnewlands/ForestGenerato

Physically-based forehead animation including wrinkles

Physically-based animation techniques enable more realistic and accurate animation to be created. We present a fully physically-based approach for efficiently producing realistic-looking animations of facial movement, including animation of expressive wrinkles. This involves simulation of detailed voxel-based models using a graphics processing unit-based total Lagrangian explicit dynamic finite element solver with an anatomical muscle contraction model, and advanced boundary conditions that can model the sliding of soft tissue over the skull. The flexibility of our approach enables detailed animations of gross and fine-scale soft-tissue movement to be easily produced with different muscle structures and material parameters, for example, to animate different aged skins. Although we focus on the forehead, our approach can be used to animate any multi-layered soft body

Adaptive face modelling for reconstructing 3D face shapes from single 2D images

Example-based statistical face models using principle component analysis (PCA) have been widely deployed for three-dimensional (3D) face reconstruction and face recognition. The two common factors that are generally concerned with such models are the size of the training dataset and the selection of different examples in the training set. The representational power (RP) of an example-based model is its capability to depict a new 3D face for a given 2D face image. The RP of the model can be increased by correspondingly increasing the number of training samples. In this contribution, a novel approach is proposed to increase the RP of the 3D face reconstruction model by deforming a set of examples in the training dataset. A PCA-based 3D face model is adapted for each new near frontal input face image to reconstruct the 3D face shape. Further an extended Tikhonov regularisation method has been