The simultaneity of complementary conditions:re-integrating and balancing analogue and digital matter(s) in basic architectural education

The actual, globally established, general digital procedures in basic architectural education,producing well-behaved, seemingly attractive up-to-date projects, spaces and first general-researchon all scale levels, apparently present a certain growing amount of deficiencies. These limitations surface only gradually, as the state of things on overall extents is generally deemed satisfactory. Some skills, such as “old-fashioned” analogue drawing are gradually eased-out ofundergraduate curricula and overall modus-operandi, due to their apparent slow inefficiencies in regard to various digital media’s rapid readiness, malleability and unproblematic, quotidian availabilities. While this state of things is understandable, it nevertheless presents a definite challenge. The challenge of questioning how the assessment of conditions and especially their representation,is conducted, prior to contextual architectural action(s) of any kind

Redundancy of stereoscopic images: Experimental Evaluation

With the recent advancement in visualization devices over the last years, we are seeing a growing market for stereoscopic content. In order to convey 3D content by means of stereoscopic displays, one needs to transmit and display at least 2 points of view of the video content. This has profound implications on the resources required to transmit the content, as well as demands on the complexity of the visualization system. It is known that stereoscopic images are redundant, which may prove useful for compression and may have positive effect on the construction of the visualization device. In this paper we describe an experimental evaluation of data redundancy in color stereoscopic images. In the experiments with computer generated and real life and test stereo images, several observers visually tested the stereopsis threshold and accuracy of parallax measuring in anaglyphs and stereograms as functions of the blur degree of one of two stereo images and color saturation threshold in one of two stereo images for which full color 3D perception with no visible color degradations is maintained. The experiments support a theoretical estimate that one has to add, to data required to reproduce one of two stereoscopic images, only several percents of that amount of data in order to achieve stereoscopic perception

Physics-based visual characterization of molecular interaction forces

Molecular simulations are used in many areas of biotechnology, such as drug design and enzyme engineering. Despite the development of automatic computational protocols, analysis of molecular interactions is still a major aspect where human comprehension and intuition are key to accelerate, analyze, and propose modifications to the molecule of interest. Most visualization algorithms help the users by providing an accurate depiction of the spatial arrangement: the atoms involved in inter-molecular contacts. There are few tools that provide visual information on the forces governing molecular docking. However, these tools, commonly restricted to close interaction between atoms, do not consider whole simulation paths, long-range distances and, importantly, do not provide visual cues for a quick and intuitive comprehension of the energy functions (modeling intermolecular interactions) involved. In this paper, we propose visualizations designed to enable the characterization of interaction forces by taking into account several relevant variables such as molecule-ligand distance and the energy function, which is essential to understand binding affinities. We put emphasis on mapping molecular docking paths obtained from Molecular Dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations, and provide time-dependent visualizations for different energy components and particle resolutions: atoms, groups or residues. The presented visualizations have the potential to support domain experts in a more efficient drug or enzyme design process.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Adaptive Filters for 2-D and 3-D Digital Images Processing

Práce se zabývá adaptivními filtry pro vizualizaci obrazů s vysokým rozlišením. V teoretické části je popsán princip činnosti konfokálního mikroskopu a matematicky korektně zaveden pojem digitální obraz. Pro zpracování obrazů je volen jak frekvenční přístup (s využitím 2-D a 3-D diskrétní Fourierovy transformace a frekvenčních filtrů), tak přístup pomocí digitální geometrie (s využitím adaptivní ekvalizace histogramu s adaptivním okolím). Dále jsou popsány potřebné úpravy pro práci s neideálními obrazy obsahujícími aditivní a impulzní šum. Závěr práce se věnuje prostorové rekonstrukci objektů na základě jejich optických řezů. Veškeré postupy a algoritmy jsou i prakticky zpracovány v softwaru, který byl vyvinut v rámci této práce.The thesis is concerned with filters for visualization of high dynamic range images. In the theoretical part, the principle of confocal microscopy is described and the term digital image is defined in a mathematically correct way. Both frequency approach (using 2-D and 3-D discrete Fourier transform and frequency filters) and digital geometry approach (using adaptive histogram equalization with adaptive neighbourhood) are chosen for the processing of images. Necessary adjustments when working with non-ideal images containing additive and impulse noise are described as well. The last part of the thesis is interested in 3-D reconstruction from optical cuts of an object. All the procedures and algorithms are also implemented in the software developed as a part of this thesis.

Pedestrian Prediction by Planning using Deep Neural Networks

Accurate traffic participant prediction is the prerequisite for collision avoidance of autonomous vehicles. In this work, we predict pedestrians by emulating their own motion planning. From online observations, we infer a mixture density function for possible destinations. We use this result as the goal states of a planning stage that performs motion prediction based on common behavior patterns. The entire system is modeled as one monolithic neural network and trained via inverse reinforcement learning. Experimental validation on real world data shows the system's ability to predict both, destinations and trajectories accurately