Reverse Engineering Trimmed NURB Surfaces From Laser Scanned Data

A common reverse engineering problem is to convert several hundred thousand points collected from the surface of an object via a digitizing process, into a coherent geometric model that is easily transferred to a CAD software such as a solid modeler for either design improvement or manufacturing and analysis. These data are very dense and make data-set manipulation difficult and tedious. Many commercial solutions exist but involve time consuming interaction to go from points to surface meshes such as BSplines or NURBS (Non Uniform Rational BSplines). Our approach differs from current industry practice in that we produce a mesh with little or no interaction from the user. The user can produce degree 2 and higher BSpline surfaces and can choose the degree and number ofsegments as parameters to the system. The BSpline surface is both compact and curvature continuous. The former property reduces the large storage overhead, and the later implies a smooth can be created from noisy data. In addition, the nature ofthe BSpline allows one to easily and smoothly alter the surface, making re-engineering extremely feasible. The BSpline surface is created using the principle ofhigher orders least squares with smoothing functions at the edges. Both linear and cylindrical data sets are handled using an automated parameterization method. Also, because ofthe BSpline's continuous nature, a multiresolutional-triangulated mesh can quickly be produced. This last fact means that an STL file is simple to generate. STL files can also be easily used as input to the system.Mechanical Engineerin

Curves with rational chord-length parametrization

It has been recently proved that rational quadratic circles in standard Bezier form are parameterized by chord-length. If we consider that standard circles coincide with the isoparametric curves in a system of bipolar coordinates, this property comes as a straightforward consequence. General curves with chord-length parametrization are simply the analogue in bipolar coordinates of nonparametric curves. This interpretation furnishes a compact explicit expression for all planar curves with rational chord-length parametrization. In addition to straight lines and circles in standard form, they include remarkable curves, such as the equilateral hyperbola, Lemniscate of Bernoulli and Limacon of Pascal. The extension to 3D rational curves is also tackled

Reverse Engineering Trimmed NURB Surfaces From Laser Scanned Data

A common reverse engineering problem is to convert several hundred thousand points collected from the surface of an object via a digitizing process, into a coherent geometric model that is easily transferred to a CAD software such as a solid modeler for either design improvement or manufacturing and analysis. These data are very dense and make data-set manipulation difficult and tedious. Many commercial solutions exist but involve time consuming interaction to go from points to surface meshes such as BSplines or NURBS (Non Uniform Rational BSplines). Our approach differs from current industry practice in that we produce a mesh with little or no interaction from the user. The user can produce degree 2 and higher BSpline surfaces and can choose the degree and number ofsegments as parameters to the system. The BSpline surface is both compact and curvature continuous. The former property reduces the large storage overhead, and the later implies a smooth can be created from noisy data. In addition, the nature ofthe BSpline allows one to easily and smoothly alter the surface, making re-engineering extremely feasible. The BSpline surface is created using the principle ofhigher orders least squares with smoothing functions at the edges. Both linear and cylindrical data sets are handled using an automated parameterization method. Also, because ofthe BSpline's continuous nature, a multiresolutional-triangulated mesh can quickly be produced. This last fact means that an STL file is simple to generate. STL files can also be easily used as input to the system.Mechanical Engineerin

Automatic video segmentation employing object/camera modeling techniques

Practically established video compression and storage techniques still process video sequences as rectangular images without further semantic structure. However, humans watching a video sequence immediately recognize acting objects as semantic units. This semantic object separation is currently not reflected in the technical system, making it difficult to manipulate the video at the object level. The realization of object-based manipulation will introduce many new possibilities for working with videos like composing new scenes from pre-existing video objects or enabling user-interaction with the scene. Moreover, object-based video compression, as defined in the MPEG-4 standard, can provide high compression ratios because the foreground objects can be sent independently from the background. In the case that the scene background is static, the background views can even be combined into a large panoramic sprite image, from which the current camera view is extracted. This results in a higher compression ratio since the sprite image for each scene only has to be sent once. A prerequisite for employing object-based video processing is automatic (or at least user-assisted semi-automatic) segmentation of the input video into semantic units, the video objects. This segmentation is a difficult problem because the computer does not have the vast amount of pre-knowledge that humans subconsciously use for object detection. Thus, even the simple definition of the desired output of a segmentation system is difficult. The subject of this thesis is to provide algorithms for segmentation that are applicable to common video material and that are computationally efficient. The thesis is conceptually separated into three parts. In Part I, an automatic segmentation system for general video content is described in detail. Part II introduces object models as a tool to incorporate userdefined knowledge about the objects to be extracted into the segmentation process. Part III concentrates on the modeling of camera motion in order to relate the observed camera motion to real-world camera parameters. The segmentation system that is described in Part I is based on a background-subtraction technique. The pure background image that is required for this technique is synthesized from the input video itself. Sequences that contain rotational camera motion can also be processed since the camera motion is estimated and the input images are aligned into a panoramic scene-background. This approach is fully compatible to the MPEG-4 video-encoding framework, such that the segmentation system can be easily combined with an object-based MPEG-4 video codec. After an introduction to the theory of projective geometry in Chapter 2, which is required for the derivation of camera-motion models, the estimation of camera motion is discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. It is important that the camera-motion estimation is not influenced by foreground object motion. At the same time, the estimation should provide accurate motion parameters such that all input frames can be combined seamlessly into a background image. The core motion estimation is based on a feature-based approach where the motion parameters are determined with a robust-estimation algorithm (RANSAC) in order to distinguish the camera motion from simultaneously visible object motion. Our experiments showed that the robustness of the original RANSAC algorithm in practice does not reach the theoretically predicted performance. An analysis of the problem has revealed that this is caused by numerical instabilities that can be significantly reduced by a modification that we describe in Chapter 4. The synthetization of static-background images is discussed in Chapter 5. In particular, we present a new algorithm for the removal of the foreground objects from the background image such that a pure scene background remains. The proposed algorithm is optimized to synthesize the background even for difficult scenes in which the background is only visible for short periods of time. The problem is solved by clustering the image content for each region over time, such that each cluster comprises static content. Furthermore, it is exploited that the times, in which foreground objects appear in an image region, are similar to the corresponding times of neighboring image areas. The reconstructed background could be used directly as the sprite image in an MPEG-4 video coder. However, we have discovered that the counterintuitive approach of splitting the background into several independent parts can reduce the overall amount of data. In the case of general camera motion, the construction of a single sprite image is even impossible. In Chapter 6, a multi-sprite partitioning algorithm is presented, which separates the video sequence into a number of segments, for which independent sprites are synthesized. The partitioning is computed in such a way that the total area of the resulting sprites is minimized, while simultaneously satisfying additional constraints. These include a limited sprite-buffer size at the decoder, and the restriction that the image resolution in the sprite should never fall below the input-image resolution. The described multisprite approach is fully compatible to the MPEG-4 standard, but provides three advantages. First, any arbitrary rotational camera motion can be processed. Second, the coding-cost for transmitting the sprite images is lower, and finally, the quality of the decoded sprite images is better than in previously proposed sprite-generation algorithms. Segmentation masks for the foreground objects are computed with a change-detection algorithm that compares the pure background image with the input images. A special effect that occurs in the change detection is the problem of image misregistration. Since the change detection compares co-located image pixels in the camera-motion compensated images, a small error in the motion estimation can introduce segmentation errors because non-corresponding pixels are compared. We approach this problem in Chapter 7 by integrating risk-maps into the segmentation algorithm that identify pixels for which misregistration would probably result in errors. For these image areas, the change-detection algorithm is modified to disregard the difference values for the pixels marked in the risk-map. This modification significantly reduces the number of false object detections in fine-textured image areas. The algorithmic building-blocks described above can be combined into a segmentation system in various ways, depending on whether camera motion has to be considered or whether real-time execution is required. These different systems and example applications are discussed in Chapter 8. Part II of the thesis extends the described segmentation system to consider object models in the analysis. Object models allow the user to specify which objects should be extracted from the video. In Chapters 9 and 10, a graph-based object model is presented in which the features of the main object regions are summarized in the graph nodes, and the spatial relations between these regions are expressed with the graph edges. The segmentation algorithm is extended by an object-detection algorithm that searches the input image for the user-defined object model. We provide two objectdetection algorithms. The first one is specific for cartoon sequences and uses an efficient sub-graph matching algorithm, whereas the second processes natural video sequences. With the object-model extension, the segmentation system can be controlled to extract individual objects, even if the input sequence comprises many objects. Chapter 11 proposes an alternative approach to incorporate object models into a segmentation algorithm. The chapter describes a semi-automatic segmentation algorithm, in which the user coarsely marks the object and the computer refines this to the exact object boundary. Afterwards, the object is tracked automatically through the sequence. In this algorithm, the object model is defined as the texture along the object contour. This texture is extracted in the first frame and then used during the object tracking to localize the original object. The core of the algorithm uses a graph representation of the image and a newly developed algorithm for computing shortest circular-paths in planar graphs. The proposed algorithm is faster than the currently known algorithms for this problem, and it can also be applied to many alternative problems like shape matching. Part III of the thesis elaborates on different techniques to derive information about the physical 3-D world from the camera motion. In the segmentation system, we employ camera-motion estimation, but the obtained parameters have no direct physical meaning. Chapter 12 discusses an extension to the camera-motion estimation to factorize the motion parameters into physically meaningful parameters (rotation angles, focal-length) using camera autocalibration techniques. The speciality of the algorithm is that it can process camera motion that spans several sprites by employing the above multi-sprite technique. Consequently, the algorithm can be applied to arbitrary rotational camera motion. For the analysis of video sequences, it is often required to determine and follow the position of the objects. Clearly, the object position in image coordinates provides little information if the viewing direction of the camera is not known. Chapter 13 provides a new algorithm to deduce the transformation between the image coordinates and the real-world coordinates for the special application of sport-video analysis. In sport videos, the camera view can be derived from markings on the playing field. For this reason, we employ a model of the playing field that describes the arrangement of lines. After detecting significant lines in the input image, a combinatorial search is carried out to establish correspondences between lines in the input image and lines in the model. The algorithm requires no information about the specific color of the playing field and it is very robust to occlusions or poor lighting conditions. Moreover, the algorithm is generic in the sense that it can be applied to any type of sport by simply exchanging the model of the playing field. In Chapter 14, we again consider panoramic background images and particularly focus ib their visualization. Apart from the planar backgroundsprites discussed previously, a frequently-used visualization technique for panoramic images are projections onto a cylinder surface which is unwrapped into a rectangular image. However, the disadvantage of this approach is that the viewer has no good orientation in the panoramic image because he looks into all directions at the same time. In order to provide a more intuitive presentation of wide-angle views, we have developed a visualization technique specialized for the case of indoor environments. We present an algorithm to determine the 3-D shape of the room in which the image was captured, or, more generally, to compute a complete floor plan if several panoramic images captured in each of the rooms are provided. Based on the obtained 3-D geometry, a graphical model of the rooms is constructed, where the walls are displayed with textures that are extracted from the panoramic images. This representation enables to conduct virtual walk-throughs in the reconstructed room and therefore, provides a better orientation for the user. Summarizing, we can conclude that all segmentation techniques employ some definition of foreground objects. These definitions are either explicit, using object models like in Part II of this thesis, or they are implicitly defined like in the background synthetization in Part I. The results of this thesis show that implicit descriptions, which extract their definition from video content, work well when the sequence is long enough to extract this information reliably. However, high-level semantics are difficult to integrate into the segmentation approaches that are based on implicit models. Intead, those semantics should be added as postprocessing steps. On the other hand, explicit object models apply semantic pre-knowledge at early stages of the segmentation. Moreover, they can be applied to short video sequences or even still pictures since no background model has to be extracted from the video. The definition of a general object-modeling technique that is widely applicable and that also enables an accurate segmentation remains an important yet challenging problem for further research

Aktor Non-Negara dalam Hubungan Internasional: Studi Kasus Detox Campaign oleh Greenpeace di Republik Rakyat Tiongkok 2011-2014

Environmental issue in China is a concern for international relations actors, including non-state actors. Greenpeace is an international non-government organization that acts to solve global environmental problems in China. This research will explain an environmental campaign, Detox Campaign, by Greenpeace to solve water pollution problem in China. This research aims to explain challenges that Greenpeace has faced in conducting Detox Campaign in China. In conducting Detox Campaign, Greenpeace has faced challenges that contribute to Greenpeace’s failure to change China’s government policy. This research used Global civil society as a theoretical framework, to explain external factors as challenges for Greenpeace in conducting Detox Campaign in China. This research found that water pollution issue is not a main priority in China and Greenpeace is still constrained by their limited organizational capacity. Greenpeace has limited political space in terms of policy advocacy that caused failure of Detox Campaign in China

Dimensions of spline spaces over unconstricted triangulations

AbstractOne of the puzzlingly hard problems in Computer Aided Geometric Design and Approximation Theory is that of finding the dimension of the spline space of Cr piecewise degree n polynomials over a 2D triangulation Ω. We denote such spaces by Snr(Ω). In this note, we restrict Ω to have a special structure, namely to be unconstricted. This will allow for several exact dimension formulas

PERBEDAAN HASIL BELAJAR SISWA PEMBELAJARAN YANG MENGGUNAKAN DAN TANPA MENGGUNAKAN MEDIA BERBASIS WEB MOODLE PADA MATERI MENGELOLA KARTU AKTIVA TETAP DI XI AK SMK NEGERI 10 SURABAYA

Penggunaan media komputer berbasis website dirancang untuk memotivasi siswa dalam meningkatkan pengetahuan dan keterampilannya, karena media ini memiliki karakteristik menarik, interaktif dan variatif. Pembangunan dan pengembangan media website dengan perangkat lunak Learning Management Sistem (LMS) yaitu moodle yang diharapkan dapat membantu pemahaman materi sehingga dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa khususnya pada materi mengelola kartu aktiva tetap. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui perbedaan hasil belajar siswa yang menggunakan media berbasis media web moodle dan tanpa web moodle pada siswa XI AK pada materi mengelola kartu aktiva tetap di SMK Negeri 10 Surabaya. Metode penelitian ini adalah kuantitatif dengan jenis penelitian eksperimen. Populasi penelitian adalah siswa kelas XI AK yang terdiri atas XI AK 1, XI AK 2, dan XI AK 3 dengan pemilihan sampel menggunakan teknik simple random sampling yang terdiri dari kelas XI AK 2 sebagai kelas eksperimen dan XI AK 1 sebagai kelas kontrol. Berdasarkan analisis uji t program SPSS diperoleh hasil t-test menunjukkan taraf signifikansi sebesar 0,001 (0,000 < 0,05). Serta diketahui bahwa thitung > ttabel (7,391 > 2,000) yang berarti Ho ditolak dan Ha diterima. Ini menunjukkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan hasil belajar yang signifikan antara hasil belajar siswa yang menggunakan dan tanpa menggunakan media berbasis web moodle pada materi mengelola kartu aktiva tetap kelas XI AK di SMK Negeri 10 Surabaya. Kata kunci : hasil belajar siswa, media berbasis web moodl

Significant Fishery Management Issues in the Law of the Sea Conference: Illusions and Realities

This article discusses several significant fishery issues left unsettled by the Third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference. The author begins by addressing the issue of 200-mile exclusive economic zones for coastal nations. Next, the author discusses several approaches of the conservation regime, including a universal approach, regional approach, treaty approach, and non-treaty approach. The author then examines regional fishery problems in the North Pacific, East Central Atlantic, and Indian Ocean. The author concludes by giving a final appraisal of the Law of the Sea Conference and a possible solution for the conservation of fisheries

Mehrsprachigkeit in der Bildung in Deutschland – eine Diskursanalyse

Multilingualism in Education in Germany – a Discourse Analysis. In the Republic of Germany, language acquisition for children with a mother tongue other than German has been a widely discussed topic in education science as well as in public and political discourse over the last decades. Annual studies on preschool and primary education point to the ongoing disadvantage – or even discrimination – suffered by multilingual children in the German education system. Given Germany’s history as a country of immigration, and in light of recent public discussions on the increased immigration of refugees, the question of the problematic’s socio-political background arises. This leads to the issue of linguistic concepts among society and their influence on domestic language policies. This article presents analysis of discourse around languagepolitical concepts and practices among stakeholders in language promotion in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Five semi-structured interviews with state employees were analysed following a discourse analytical approach. The analysis, deploying frameworks from the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, focused on the discursive practice of legitimation in the evaluation of multilingualism. Multilingualism as a phenomenon in society appeared to be evaluated according to differing standards (for example correctness or properness) depending on the language. As for evaluation, the analysis indicated an additional dimension in discourse which assigns different groups of speakers a belonging to particular languages. All in all, the collected data pointed to a diverse and ever-changing discourse in the field of language promotion in North-Rhine Westphalia. The presented analysis aims to stimulate a debate and suggests some directions for future research.         &nbsp