Operator vision aids for space teleoperation assembly and servicing

This paper investigates concepts for visual operator aids required for effective telerobotic control. Operator visual aids, as defined here, mean any operational enhancement that improves man-machine control through the visual system. These concepts were derived as part of a study of vision issues for space teleoperation. Extensive literature on teleoperation, robotics, and human factors was surveyed to definitively specify appropriate requirements. This paper presents these visual aids in three general categories of camera/lighting functions, display enhancements, and operator cues. In the area of camera/lighting functions concepts are discussed for: (1) automatic end effector or task tracking; (2) novel camera designs; (3) computer-generated virtual camera views; (4) computer assisted camera/lighting placement; and (5) voice control. In the technology area of display aids, concepts are presented for: (1) zone displays, such as imminent collision or indexing limits; (2) predictive displays for temporal and spatial location; (3) stimulus-response reconciliation displays; (4) graphical display of depth cues such as 2-D symbolic depth, virtual views, and perspective depth; and (5) view enhancements through image processing and symbolic representations. Finally, operator visual cues (e.g., targets) that help identify size, distance, shape, orientation and location are discussed

Automatic camera selection for activity monitoring in a multi-camera system for tennis

In professional tennis training matches, the coach needs to be able to view play from the most appropriate angle in order to monitor players' activities. In this paper, we describe and evaluate a system for automatic camera selection from a network of synchronised cameras within a tennis sporting arena. This work combines synchronised video streams from multiple cameras into a single summary video suitable for critical review by both tennis players and coaches. Using an overhead camera view, our system automatically determines the 2D tennis-court calibration resulting in a mapping that relates a player's position in the overhead camera to their position and size in another camera view in the network. This allows the system to determine the appearance of a player in each of the other cameras and thereby choose the best view for each player via a novel technique. The video summaries are evaluated in end-user studies and shown to provide an efficient means of multi-stream visualisation for tennis player activity monitoring

RGB-D datasets using microsoft kinect or similar sensors: a survey

RGB-D data has turned out to be a very useful representation of an indoor scene for solving fundamental computer vision problems. It takes the advantages of the color image that provides appearance information of an object and also the depth image that is immune to the variations in color, illumination, rotation angle and scale. With the invention of the low-cost Microsoft Kinect sensor, which was initially used for gaming and later became a popular device for computer vision, high quality RGB-D data can be acquired easily. In recent years, more and more RGB-D image/video datasets dedicated to various applications have become available, which are of great importance to benchmark the state-of-the-art. In this paper, we systematically survey popular RGB-D datasets for different applications including object recognition, scene classification, hand gesture recognition, 3D-simultaneous localization and mapping, and pose estimation. We provide the insights into the characteristics of each important dataset, and compare the popularity and the difficulty of those datasets. Overall, the main goal of this survey is to give a comprehensive description about the available RGB-D datasets and thus to guide researchers in the selection of suitable datasets for evaluating their algorithms

Fuzzy logic applications to expert systems and control

A considerable amount of work on the development of fuzzy logic algorithms and application to space related control problems has been done at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) over the past few years. Particularly, guidance control systems for space vehicles during proximity operations, learning systems utilizing neural networks, control of data processing during rendezvous navigation, collision avoidance algorithms, camera tracking controllers, and tether controllers have been developed utilizing fuzzy logic technology. Several other areas in which fuzzy sets and related concepts are being considered at JSC are diagnostic systems, control of robot arms, pattern recognition, and image processing. It has become evident, based on the commercial applications of fuzzy technology in Japan and China during the last few years, that this technology should be exploited by the government as well as private industry for energy savings

Autonomous monitoring of cliff nesting seabirds using computer vision

In this paper we describe a proposed system for automatic visual monitoring of seabird populations. Image sequences of cliff face nesting sites are captured using time-lapse digital photography. We are developing image processing software which is designed to automatically interpret these images, determine the number of birds present, and monitor activity. We focus primarily on the the development of low-level image processing techniques to support this goal. We first describe our existing work in video processing, and show how it is suitable for this problem domain. Image samples from a particular nest site are presented, and used to describe the associated challenges. We conclude by showing how we intend to develop our work to construct a distributed system capable of simultaneously monitoring a number of sites in the same locality

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-byadaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation