An annotated bibligraphy of multisensor integration

technical reportIn this paper we give an annotated bibliography of the multisensor integration literature

CAD-based robotics

Journal ArticleWe describe an approach which facilitates and makes explicit the organization of the knowledge necessary to map robotic system requirements onto an appropriate assembly of algorithms, processors, sensor, and actuators. In order to achieve this mapping, several kinds of knowledge are needed. In this paper, we describe a system under development which exploits the Computer Aided Design (CAD) database in order to synthesize

CAGD based 3-D visual recognition

Journal ArticleA coherent automated manufacturing system needs to include CAD/CAM, computer vision, and object manipulation. Currently, most systems which support CAD/CAM do not provide for vision or manipulation and similarly, vision and manipulation systems incorporate no explicit relation to CAD/CAM models. CAD/CAM systems have emerged which allow the designer to conceive and model an object and automatically manufacture the object to the prescribed specifications. !f recognition or manipulation is to be performed, existing vision systems rely on models generated in an ad hoc manner for the vision or recognition process. Although both Vision and CAD/CAM systems rely on models of the objects involved, different modeling schemes are used in each case. A more unified system will allow vision models to be generated from the CAD database. We are implementing a framework in which objects are designed using an existing CAGD system and recognition strategies based on these design models are used for visual recognition and manipulation. An example of its application is given

Combining symbolic and numeric computation on the CRAY

technical reportIt is now widely accepted that the CRAY supercomputers are very useful for large numeric applications, e.g., Finite Element Analysis, Fluid Dynamics, Image Processing, etc. Much work has been done to make them run efficiently on the CRAY. There has also been some effort to do symbolic computing (Al applications) on these machines. A dialect of LISP, called PSL (Portable Standard Lisp) has been available on the CRAY for some time. However, there has been no effort to effectively combine the two, which is useful for certain kinds of applications, e.g., image understanding. This work demonstrates the mixed computing capability of the CRAY supercomputer by implementing a rule-based segmentation system. The numeric part consists of the FORTRAN subroutines to segment an image into regions, merge and split regions. A forward-chained production system to guide the segmentation process forms to symbolic component. The process of linking the two components is also described

2-D scene analysis using split-level relaxation

technical reportWe present a new method for applying multiple semantic constraints based on discrete relaxation. A separate graph is maintained for each constraint relation and used in parallel to achieve a consistent labeling. This permits both local and global analysis without recourse to complete graphs. Here local means with respect to a paricular constraint graph, and thus actually includes global spatial relations on the features; e.g., parallel edges on an object will be neighbors in the parallel constraint graph even though they are far apart in Euclidean space. Another major result is a technique for handling occlusion by incorporating the use of spatially local feature sets in the relaxation-type updating method

IKS: image kernel system users' manual

Journal ArticleIKS (for Image kernel System), is an image processing system, currently being used by the Computer Vision and Image Processing group at the University of Utah. IKS provides a convenient environment for reading, writing, and manipulating images. The system consists of two types of routines. First, there are functions which can be used in C programs to manipulate images. There are also image operators which work on images directly. They can be called from unix like system utilities. This report describes the components and capabilities of IKS. It also describes how to use the system on various machines in the department on which it is available

Performance of arc consistency algorithms on the CRAY

Journal ArticleThe consistent labeling problem arises in high level computer vision when assigning semantic meaning to the regions of a n image. One of the drawbacks of this method is that it is rather slow. By using the consistency tests, node, arc and path consistency [9], the search space is drastically reduced. However, for large problems it takes a fair amount of time. To use these algorithms more efficiently, one can take two approaches. First, is to design special purpose hardware to specifically run these algorithms. Second is t o use faster computers. Here again, one can either take advantage of the multiprocessors, which are becoming very widely available, or use supercomputers like the CRAY, CDC, etc. Here, we present results of the performance of these algorithms in the CRAY supercomputer

TRIDIMENSIONAL REGRESSION

Shape analysis is useful for a wide variety of disciplines and has many applications. There are many different approaches to shape analysis, one of which focuses on the analysis of shapes that are represented by the coordinates of predefined landmarks on the object. This paper introduces Tridimensional Regression, a technique that can be used for mapping images and shapes that are represented by sets of three-dimensional landmark coordinates. The degree of similarity between shapes can be quantified using the tridimensional coefficient of determination (R2). An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this technique to correctly match the image of a face with another image of the same face. These results were compared to the R2 values obtained when only two dimensions are used, and show using three dimensions increases the ability to correctly discriminate between faces

Techniques for Computing Fitness of Use (FoU) for Time Series Datasets with Applications in the Geospatial Domain

Time series data are widely used in many applications including critical decision support systems. The goodness of the dataset, called the Fitness of Use (FoU), used in the analysis has direct bearing on the quality of the information and knowledge generated and hence on the quality of the decisions based on them. Unlike traditional quality of data which is independent of the application in which it is used, FoU is a function of the application. As the use of geospatial time series datasets increase in many critical applications, it is important to develop formal methodologies to compute their FoU and propagate it to the derived information, knowledge and decisions. In this paper we propose a formal framework to compute the FoU of time series datasets. We present three different techniques using the Dempster-Shafer belief theory framework as the foundation. These three approaches investigate the FoU by focusing on three aspects of data: data attributes, data stability, and impact of gap periods, respectively. The effectiveness of each approach is shown using an application in hydrological datasets that measure streamflow. While we use hydrological information analysis as our application domain in this research, the techniques can be used in many other domains as well

System and method for analyzing material properties using hyperspectral imaging

Systems and methods are provided for analyzing material properties of an object using hyperspectral imaging. An exemplary method includes obtaining a hyperspectral image of an object; analyzing the hyperspectral image according to an algorithm; and correlating data obtained from the analysis with material properties of the object