Departing Sovereignty

The story of 'Sir Alfred', an Iranian man who lost his papers while in transit and lived in Charles de Gaulle airport for more than eleven years, occupied a significant, although decidedly eccentric, place in the global news media throughout the 1990s. 'Sir Alfred', whose real name is Merhan Karimi Nasseri, lived between the pizzeria and an electronics store in the airport's Terminal One, "his days punctuated by the rhythm of the flights", from 1988 until confirmation of his refugee status in 1999 (Neuffer 1997). His nickname apparently came from his desire to travel to England, his mother's native country and his temporary home as a student in the 1970s. Living in a transnational zone of business and tourism travel, he neither spoke nor learnt French during his years in the terminal. Even after he was granted French travel documents, he refused to leave the airport, demanding that he be given permission to resettle in the UK and that all immigration documents delete references to his nationality as Iranian (Moseley 1999

Sensor-Assisted Video Mosaicing for Seafloor Mapping

This paper discusses a proposed processing technique for combining video imagery with auxiliary sensor information. The latter greatly simplifies image processing by reducing complexity of the transformation model. The mosaics produced by this technique are adequate for many applications, in particular habitat mapping. The algorithm is demonstrated through simulations and hardware configuration is described

Seafloor Video Mapping: Modeling, Algorithms, Apparatus

This paper discusses a technique used for construction of high-resolution image mosaic from a videosequence and the synchronously logged camera attitude information. It allows one to infer geometric characteristics of the imaged terrain and hence improve the mosaic quality and reduce the computational burden. The technique is demonstrated using numerical modeling and is applied to videodata collected on Rainsford Island, Mass. Calculation of the transformation relating consecutive image frames is an essential operation affecting reliability of the whole mosaicing process. Improvements to the algorithm are suggested, which significantly decrease the possibility of convergence to an inappropriate solution

Improvement of Image Alignment Using Camera Attitude Information

We discuss a proposed technique for incorporation of information from a variety of sensors in a video imagery processing pipeline. The auxiliary information allows one to simplify computations, effectively reducing the number of independent parameters in the transformation model. The mosaics produced by this technique are adequate for many applications, in particular habitat mapping. The algorithm, demonstrated through simulations and hardware configuration, is described in detai

Underwater Video Survey: Planning and Data Processing

The importance of underwater video surveys as an exploration tool has been steadily increasing over recent years [1]. Better photographic equipment, more effective sources of illumination, and improved processing techniques - all make video surveying a reliable tool for seafloor habitat mapping, sediment boundary delineation and groundtruthing, mapping and documentation of forensic and archaeological sites. There is a change in attitude towards video surveying that affects the way the data is collected, and hence its quality. Earlier video data processing algorithms had to cope with whatever was recorded (often simultaneously with acquisition of other data, considered to be more important). Now we have a chance to plan ahead and organize a survey in a way most suitable for the processing. The goal of this paper is to review available processing techniques and to discuss preferable survey patterns, associated errors and processing stability