MoSculp: Interactive Visualization of Shape and Time

We present a system that allows users to visualize complex human motion via 3D motion sculptures---a representation that conveys the 3D structure swept by a human body as it moves through space. Given an input video, our system computes the motion sculptures and provides a user interface for rendering it in different styles, including the options to insert the sculpture back into the original video, render it in a synthetic scene or physically print it. To provide this end-to-end workflow, we introduce an algorithm that estimates that human's 3D geometry over time from a set of 2D images and develop a 3D-aware image-based rendering approach that embeds the sculpture back into the scene. By automating the process, our system takes motion sculpture creation out of the realm of professional artists, and makes it applicable to a wide range of existing video material. By providing viewers with 3D information, motion sculptures reveal space-time motion information that is difficult to perceive with the naked eye, and allow viewers to interpret how different parts of the object interact over time. We validate the effectiveness of this approach with user studies, finding that our motion sculpture visualizations are significantly more informative about motion than existing stroboscopic and space-time visualization methods.Comment: UIST 2018. Project page: http://mosculp.csail.mit.edu

Computer rotoscoping with the aid of color recognition

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1980.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-42).Rotoscoping is explored as a computer animation technique. The optical videodisc serves as the image storage and input source. Image processing and tablet painting routines are applied to digitized frames. "Color recognition", the exploitation of digital color information, enables the tracking of objects, from frame to frame, based on their color. This system allows for semi-automatic, selective processing of images.by Rebecca Allen.M.S

The Neural Basis of Object-Context Relationships on Aesthetic Judgment

The relationship between contextual information and object perception has received considerable attention in neuroimaging studies. In the work reported here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the relationship between aesthetic judgment and images of objects in their normal contextual setting versus images of objects in abnormal contextual settings and the underlying brain activity. When object-context relationships are violated changes in visual perception and aesthetic judgment emerges that exposes the contribution of vision to interpretations shaped by previous experience. We found that effects of context on aesthetic judgment modulates different memory sub-systems, while aesthetic judgment regardless of context recruit medial and lateral aspects of the orbitofrontal cortex, consistent with previous findings. Visual cortical areas traditionally associated with the processing of visual features are recruited in normal contexts, irrespective of aesthetic ratings, while prefrontal areas are significantly more engaged when objects are viewed in unaccustomed settings

Tactile, spatial interfaces for CAD

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-163).Computer-aided design (CAD) systems have become invaluable in three-dimensional creative design fields such as architecture and landscape architecture. However, these digital tools have not replaced the use of physical tools and materials as envisioned by the early developers of CAD. Instead, most designers have added digital media to their suite of physical media, gaining the benefits of both realms and using each where it is most advantageous. Given current CAD systems and how they are being used, two significant problems are apparent. First, the side-by-side physical/digital work environment has resulted in the need to frequently digitize and print in order to switch between physical and digital representations. This process is often time-consuming, costly, and frustrating. Second and more fundamental, the standard graphical user interface (GUI), although appropriate to some tasks, is restrictive as the only interface to CAD, because it lacks tactile and spatial qualities. Interacting with physical media such as paper, cardboard, and clay is a multisensory, spatial experience. Interacting in a GUI may be visual, but our other senses and spatial abilities remain underutilized. Recent interface design research includes embedding or augmenting physical artifacts with computation as one remedy to the limitations of the GUI. This dissertation investigates whether superimposing physical and digital media to create new interfaces for CAD has merit. Findings are presented from experiments performed with Illuminating Clay, a prototype interface that superimposes modeling clay and(cont.) topographic analysis. The objective was to discover whether these new kinds of interfaces could successfully combine the cognitive, motor, and emotional advantages of physical media with the capabilities of computation. Findings indicate that Illuminating Clay can indeed supplement a designer's eyeball analysis with more-accurate feedback while retaining the tactile and spatial advantages of working with a physical material. Salient issues pertaining to the design of tangible, and augmented-reality user interfaces were raised by these experiments: what the appropriate scale limitations should be, what the appropriate type of feedback is from computation, and whether real-time feedback is necessary.by Dorothy J. Shamonsky.Ph.D

AR-MoCap: Using augmented reality to support motion capture acting

Technology is disrupting the way films involving visual effects are produced. Chroma-key, LED walls, motion capture (mocap), 3D visual storyboards, and simulcams are only a few examples of the many changes introduced in the cinema industry over the last years. Although these technologies are getting commonplace, they are presenting new, unexplored challenges to the actors. In particular, when mocap is used to record the actors’ movements with the aim of animating digital character models, an increase in the workload can be easily expected for people on stage. In fact, actors have to largely rely on their imagination to understand what the digitally created characters will be actually seeing and feeling. This paper focuses on this specific domain, and aims to demonstrate how Augmented Reality (AR) can be helpful for actors when shooting mocap scenes. To this purpose, we devised a system named AR-MoCap that can be used by actors for rehearsing the scene in AR on the real set before actually shooting it. Through an Optical See-Through Head- Mounted Display (OST-HMD), an actor can see, e.g., the digital characters of other actors wearing mocap suits overlapped in real- time to their bodies. Experimental results showed that, compared to the traditional approach based on physical props and other cues, the devised system can help the actors to position themselves and direct their gaze while shooting the scene, while also improving spatial and social presence, as well as perceived effectiveness

Improving Antibiotic Resistant Infection Transmission Situational Awareness in Enclosed Facilities with a Novel Graphical User Interface for Tactical Biosurveillance

Serious challenges associated with antibiotic resistant infections (ABRIs) force healthcare practitioners (HCP) to seek innovative approaches that will slow the emergence of new ABRIs and prevent their spread. It was realized that traditional approaches to infection prevention based on education, retrospective reports, and biosurveillance often fail to ensure reliable compliance with infection prevention guidelines and real-time problem solving. The objective of this original research was to develop and test the conceptual design of a situational awareness (SA)-oriented information system for coping with healthcare-associated infection transmission. Constantly changing patterns in spatial distribution of patients, prevalence of infectious cases, clustering of contacts, and frequency of contacts may compromise the effectiveness of infection prevention and control in hospitals. It was hypothesized that providing HCPs with a graphical user interface (GUI) to visualize spatial information on the risks of exposure to ABRIs would effectively increase HCPs’ SA. Increased SA may enhance biosurveillance and result in tactical decisions leading to better patient outcomes. The study employed a mixed qualitative-quantitative research method encompassing conceptualization of GUI content, transcription of electronic health record and biosurveillance data into GUI visual artifacts, and evaluation of the GUI’s impact on HCPs’ perception and comprehension of the conditions that increase the risk of ABRI transmission. The study provided pilot evidence that visualization of spatial disease distribution and spatially-linked exposures and interventions significantly increases HCPs’ SA when compared to current practice. The research demonstrates that the SA-oriented GUI enables the HCPs to promptly answer the question, “At a given location, what are the risks of infection transmission there?” This research provides a new form of medical knowledge representation for spatial population-based decision-making within enclosed environments. The next steps include rapid application development and further hypothesis testing concerning the impact of this GUI on decsion-making

Exploring Responses to Art in Adolescence: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study

Adolescence is a peculiar age mainly characterized by physical and psychological changes that may affect the perception of one's own and others' body. This perceptual peculiarity may influence the way in which bottom-up and top-down processes interact and, consequently, the perception and evaluation of art. This study is aimed at investigating, by means of the eye-tracking technique, the visual explorative behavior of adolescents while looking at paintings. Sixteen color paintings, categorized as dynamic and static, were presented to twenty adolescents; half of the images represented natural environments and half human individuals; all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment tasks. Participants' ratings revealed that, generally, nature images are explicitly evaluated as more appealing than human images. Eye movement data, on the other hand, showed that the human body exerts a strong power in orienting and attracting visual attention and that, in adolescence, it plays a fundamental role during aesthetic experience. In particular, adolescents seem to approach human-content images by giving priority to elements calling forth movement and action, supporting the embodiment theory of aesthetic perception

Pedestrian Conspicuity: The Effects of Retroreflector Placement and Retroreflectivity

One factor that has been causally linked to nighttime pedestrian-vehicle collisions is pedestrians being insufficiently conspicuous to drivers. Pedestrian conspicuity can be enhanced by use of retroreflective material, and this on-road experiment investigated the influence of retroreflector configuration, the coefficient of retroreflection (RsubA) of those retroreflectors, and pedestrian motion on conspicuity. There were two retroreflector configurations, three levels of RsubA, and the test pedestrian either walked or stood in place. Data from 121 participants are reported. The pedestrian was detected by more participants and at greater distances when the pedestrian was walking and wearing retroreflectors on the wrists and ankles (W+A). Response distances to the walking pedestrian wearing the W+A configuration increased as RsubA increased. Increasing RA did not, however, increase response distances to the standing pedestrian wearing the W+A configuration, the standing pedestrian wearing the torso configuration, or the walking pedestrian wearing the torso configuration. These results suggest that RsubA may increase pedestrian conspicuity when biological motion information is present but RsubA may not increase pedestrian conspicuity when biological information is not presen