Two-View Matching with View Synthesis Revisited

Wide-baseline matching focussing on problems with extreme viewpoint change is considered. We introduce the use of view synthesis with affine-covariant detectors to solve such problems and show that matching with the Hessian-Affine or MSER detectors outperforms the state-of-the-art ASIFT. To minimise the loss of speed caused by view synthesis, we propose the Matching On Demand with view Synthesis algorithm (MODS) that uses progressively more synthesized images and more (time-consuming) detectors until reliable estimation of geometry is possible. We show experimentally that the MODS algorithm solves problems beyond the state-of-the-art and yet is comparable in speed to standard wide-baseline matchers on simpler problems. Minor contributions include an improved method for tentative correspondence selection, applicable both with and without view synthesis and a view synthesis setup greatly improving MSER robustness to blur and scale change that increase its running time by 10% only.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figure

The determination of critical processes shaping lake ecosystem resistance and resilience following extreme storms

Climate change is impacting the timing, frequency, intensity and duration of extreme storms worldwide, and the susceptibility of lake ecosystem resistance and resilience to changing storm dynamics is mostly unknown. The development of a systematic, standardized and quantitative methodology for synthesizing resistance and resilience following storms could be useful for predicting future impacts of extreme storms. Furthermore, the development of such methodology could perhaps help identify management strategies that work in conjunction with lakes to optimize physiographic specific processes which enhance resistance and or resilience following extreme storms. Therefore, the central goal of this thesis was to develop a systematic, standardized and quantitative methodology (i.e. Chapter 1) that allowed for the synthesis of resistance and resilience of multiple ecosystems (i.e. Chapter 2) relative to long-term (non-transitory) and short-term (transitory) lake and storm conditions. We developed an approach which incorporates high frequency limnological and meteorological data into boosted regression tree models to determine the hierarchical importance and partial dependency of lake characteristics and storm conditions in shaping lake ecosystem resistance and resilience. The results presented in this thesis provide a comprehensive view of the methodology we developed to disentangle and determine the critical lake processes that shape lake ecosystem resistance and resilience following extreme storms

Towards Designing Artificial Universes for Artificial Agents under Interaction Closure

We are interested in designing artificial universes for artificial agents. We view artificial agents as networks of highlevel processes on top of of a low-level detailed-description system. We require that the high-level processes have some intrinsic explanatory power and we introduce an extension of informational closure namely interaction closure to capture this. Then we derive a method to design artificial universes in the form of finite Markov chains which exhibit high-level processes that satisfy the property of interaction closure. We also investigate control or information transfer which we see as an building block for networks representing artificial agent

A Manufacturer Design Kit for Multi-Chip Power Module Layout Synthesis

The development of Multi-Chip Power Modules (MCPMs) has been a key factor in recent advancements in power electronics technologies. MCPMs achieve higher power density by combining multiple power semiconductor devices into one package. The work detailed in this thesis is part of an ongoing project to develop a computer-aided design software tool known as PowerSynth for MCPM layout synthesis and optimization. This thesis focuses on the definition and design of a Manufacturer Design Kit (MDK) for PowerSynth, which enables the designer to design an MCPM for a manufacturer’s fabrication process. The MDK is comprised of a layer stack and technology library, design rule checking (DRC), and layout versus schematic checking. File formats have been defined for layer stack and design rule input, and import functions have been written and integrated with the existing user interface and data structures to allow PowerSynth to accept these file formats as a form of input. Finally, an exhaustive DRC function has been implemented to allow the designer to verify that a synthesized layout meets all design rules before committing the design to manufacturing. This function was validated by running DRC on an example layout solution using two different sets of design rules