7,866 research outputs found
Towards High-Frequency Tracking and Fast Edge-Aware Optimization
This dissertation advances the state of the art for AR/VR tracking systems by
increasing the tracking frequency by orders of magnitude and proposes an
efficient algorithm for the problem of edge-aware optimization.
AR/VR is a natural way of interacting with computers, where the physical and
digital worlds coexist. We are on the cusp of a radical change in how humans
perform and interact with computing. Humans are sensitive to small
misalignments between the real and the virtual world, and tracking at
kilo-Hertz frequencies becomes essential. Current vision-based systems fall
short, as their tracking frequency is implicitly limited by the frame-rate of
the camera. This thesis presents a prototype system which can track at orders
of magnitude higher than the state-of-the-art methods using multiple commodity
cameras. The proposed system exploits characteristics of the camera
traditionally considered as flaws, namely rolling shutter and radial
distortion. The experimental evaluation shows the effectiveness of the method
for various degrees of motion.
Furthermore, edge-aware optimization is an indispensable tool in the computer
vision arsenal for accurate filtering of depth-data and image-based rendering,
which is increasingly being used for content creation and geometry processing
for AR/VR. As applications increasingly demand higher resolution and speed,
there exists a need to develop methods that scale accordingly. This
dissertation proposes such an edge-aware optimization framework which is
efficient, accurate, and algorithmically scales well, all of which are much
desirable traits not found jointly in the state of the art. The experiments
show the effectiveness of the framework in a multitude of computer vision tasks
such as computational photography and stereo.Comment: PhD thesi
Detection and localization of specular surfaces using image motion cues
Cataloged from PDF version of article.Successful identification of specularities in an image can be crucial for an artificial vision system when extracting the semantic content of an image or while interacting with the environment. We developed an algorithm that relies on scale and rotation invariant feature extraction techniques and uses motion cues to detect and localize specular surfaces. Appearance change in feature vectors is used to quantify the appearance distortion on specular surfaces, which has previously been shown to be a powerful indicator for specularity (Doerschner et al. in Curr Biol, 2011). The algorithm combines epipolar deviations (Swaminathan et al. in Lect Notes Comput Sci 2350:508-523, 2002) and appearance distortion, and succeeds in localizing specular objects in computer-rendered and real scenes, across a wide range of camera motions and speeds, object sizes and shapes, and performs well under image noise and blur conditions. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Single-Photon Tracking for High-Speed Vision
Quanta Imager Sensors provide photon detections at high frame rates, with negligible read-out noise, making them ideal for high-speed optical tracking. At the basic level of bit-planes or binary maps of photon detections, objects may present limited detail. However, through motion estimation and spatial reassignment of photon detections, the objects can be reconstructed with minimal motion artefacts. We here present the first demonstration of high-speed two-dimensional (2D) tracking and reconstruction of rigid, planar objects with a Quanta Image Sensor, including a demonstration of depth-resolved tracking
Experimental Synthetic Aperture Radar with Dynamic Metasurfaces
We investigate the use of a dynamic metasurface as the transmitting antenna
for a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging system. The dynamic metasurface
consists of a one-dimensional microstrip waveguide with complementary electric
resonator (cELC) elements patterned into the upper conductor. Integrated into
each of the cELCs are two diodes that can be used to shift each cELC resonance
out of band with an applied voltage. The aperture is designed to operate at K
band frequencies (17.5 to 20.3 GHz), with a bandwidth of 2.8 GHz. We
experimentally demonstrate imaging with a fabricated metasurface aperture using
existing SAR modalities, showing image quality comparable to traditional
antennas. The agility of this aperture allows it to operate in spotlight and
stripmap SAR modes, as well as in a third modality inspired by computational
imaging strategies. We describe its operation in detail, demonstrate
high-quality imaging in both 2D and 3D, and examine various trade-offs
governing the integration of dynamic metasurfaces in future SAR imaging
platforms
An Augmented Lagrangian Approach to the Constrained Optimization Formulation of Imaging Inverse Problems
We propose a new fast algorithm for solving one of the standard approaches to
ill-posed linear inverse problems (IPLIP), where a (possibly non-smooth)
regularizer is minimized under the constraint that the solution explains the
observations sufficiently well. Although the regularizer and constraint are
usually convex, several particular features of these problems (huge
dimensionality, non-smoothness) preclude the use of off-the-shelf optimization
tools and have stimulated a considerable amount of research. In this paper, we
propose a new efficient algorithm to handle one class of constrained problems
(often known as basis pursuit denoising) tailored to image recovery
applications. The proposed algorithm, which belongs to the family of augmented
Lagrangian methods, can be used to deal with a variety of imaging IPLIP,
including deconvolution and reconstruction from compressive observations (such
as MRI), using either total-variation or wavelet-based (or, more generally,
frame-based) regularization. The proposed algorithm is an instance of the
so-called "alternating direction method of multipliers", for which convergence
sufficient conditions are known; we show that these conditions are satisfied by
the proposed algorithm. Experiments on a set of image restoration and
reconstruction benchmark problems show that the proposed algorithm is a strong
contender for the state-of-the-art.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure, 8 tables. Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on
Image Processin
Perception-aware Path Planning
In this paper, we give a double twist to the problem of planning under
uncertainty. State-of-the-art planners seek to minimize the localization
uncertainty by only considering the geometric structure of the scene. In this
paper, we argue that motion planning for vision-controlled robots should be
perception aware in that the robot should also favor texture-rich areas to
minimize the localization uncertainty during a goal-reaching task. Thus, we
describe how to optimally incorporate the photometric information (i.e.,
texture) of the scene, in addition to the the geometric one, to compute the
uncertainty of vision-based localization during path planning. To avoid the
caveats of feature-based localization systems (i.e., dependence on feature type
and user-defined thresholds), we use dense, direct methods. This allows us to
compute the localization uncertainty directly from the intensity values of
every pixel in the image. We also describe how to compute trajectories online,
considering also scenarios with no prior knowledge about the map. The proposed
framework is general and can easily be adapted to different robotic platforms
and scenarios. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated with extensive
experiments in both simulated and real-world environments using a
vision-controlled micro aerial vehicle.Comment: 16 pages, 20 figures, revised version. Conditionally accepted for
IEEE Transactions on Robotic
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