Staff Talk Schedule for CM50175
Research Project Preparation   2005

Projects

EE

• Duncan Allsopp's projects.  He isn't speaking, but wants interested people who are interested to come talk about it.
• Federica Causa left her power point, I converted it to web pages.
• Adrian N. Evans
• Research: image processing & analysis; image & video comprehension -- finding the one word in a thousand from a picture.
• segmentation, representation, recognition,
  
• SAR(adar) segmentation using local graulometries (texture)
• texture preserving speckle reduction
• cloud tracking (infrared) tracking deformable objects
• colour edge detection & segmentation
• Projects:
• Speckle reduction using granulometric sieves.
• Nonlinear texture segmentation
• Motion assisted video enhancement
  
• low quality video sequence (poor light or high compression)
• get stuff from a variety of frames & improve quality
  
• Paul Leonard has a link:
• Artificial Life -- starts from existing code
• model aspects of life by siulating simple cells
• programming in java (OOD)
• http://www.bath.ac.uk/~eespil/GA/
• cells live in a 2D space (could extend to 3D but more costly)
• Cells use energy to tick & move
• cells gain energy by eating food at current position in space
• subregion space has food, but slower growth rate than cells need to survive so they must move.  
  
• asexual reproduction, (could extend w/ sex)
• functions to change state
• genes -- currently random generation of operators & connections, could combine (breeding, mutations)
• projects: implement sex, do plants & animals
• Web based genetic music
• rep a musical composition as a colleciton of phrases (init. at random)
• combine phrases
• get "surfers" to determine the fitness of the phrases
• java applet clients, MySQL database on server, has some phrase representations already.
  

Comp Sci

• Claire Willis talked about L-systems to represent plants using rewrite tools (graphics & visualization).
• show how to change shape of plant systematically.
• simulating conditions where plant grows (response to virtual environment)
• teaching botany.
• modeling aging, esp. in trees.
• modeling complex ecosystems.
  
• build l-systems generator to control overall shape of plant.
• recognizing solar features (sun spots) (requires mathematics)
• cityscape generation.
• Surface animation of growing/changing objects.
• e.g. flower petals opening (a little mathematics, but existing phd to start from)
• genetic algorithms
• other modeling & graphics -- come talk (water, fire, clouds, rain)
  
• Derek Paddon (GUIs, graphics)
  
• demonstrated past projects with L systems that don't have enough parameters.
• Image stitching -- photoshop does it, but not well.  Want more flexible.
• applied to astronomy / galactic photos (requires good digital photo).
• applied to landscapes.
• stereoscopic pairs -> 3d
• quality of photographic images - color photography
• parallel ray tracing -- can do with grid computing (PCs, linda) ($$$$)
• Specification-based inheritance (extending from their class project)
  
• Algorithm animation -- sorting, searching, data management in general, better visualizations (3d).
• Modeling traffic flow (traffic lights vs. traffic circles)
• Alwyn Barry's projects.
• general interests: machine learning, artificial life (parts of AI).  Applications: data mining.
• research projects:
  
• Visualization of GBML (views population dynamics of population-based machine learner.)
• Group behavior of simulated robot lions.
• Simulated wolf group behavior in MASON.
• Aquatic group predators (not in his list linked above)
• tuna & killer whales
• requires reading & complex simulation.
• Grammatical Evolution -- learn new programs autonomously - in python.
• applications:
• a better multiple choice question / automated test system
• a tool for generating web pages that do database queries - produce forms, validation & update codes.  s/b better than MS access.
• Eamonn O'Neil  (all projects with industry)
  
• Specifying accessible experiences during rapid prototyping
• website design / sketches -- make accessible from start.
  
• Accessibility and emerging devices.
• mobile phones -- if you solve for blind people, will it solve general usability issues?
  
• (vodaphone) context aware information - phone recognizes what you want & gives it to you (ultimate goal).  For now -- recognize gps location, combine info from that with your todo list.  J2ME
• Phil Willis
• Main interest - VR including Games.  Most VR things are decorations, not behaving like stuff in real world.  Wants to increase the amount that are -- every object works.  Only need cpu power when something changes.
• Propose your own projects in VR -- the below are for inspiration.
  
• past projects:
• previous project did bouncing balls, but no friction
• things fall with shadows (see run on website) cubes vs. balls
• mechanical & electrical -- recognize circuit formation after collision.
• gears & cogs - mechanical vs. electrical connectivity
• current projects
• facial animation & emotions
• 3d captured data -- visualize it in a uniform way
• Peter Hall
• projects on line (maybe, ask cpw) -- but his talk is his REAL interests,  but also happy to take proposals & negotiate project descriptions.
• Main interest is synthesizing art from images & video  (vision & graphics)
  
• salience maps -- understanding things in image enough to emphasize the important things.
• projects
• cubism
• futurism
• classifiers (more trad computer vision) w/ machine learning
• algebra over eigon values, gaussians, hidden Markov models -- maths & physic people welcome for these.
• recognize patterns e.g. eyes, teeth.
• eliminating flicker but maintain automated painting-like stuff.
• John Collomose
• research interests: computer graphics & vision
• non-photorealistic (artistic) rendering (NPR)
  
• video processing
• real-time graphics & vision
• evolutionary algorithms
• projects
• applying NPR to low-bandwidth video conferencing
• spherical panoramas -- real-time video stitching for augmented reality, immersive NPR, robot navigation
• evolutionary algorithms for NPR, document fragment matching (shredding!) distributed computing.
• real-time video clip classification -- visual spam filtering, fusion of multiple signal classifiers
• 3d face tracker -- applications in surveillance & cubist rendering
• Dan Richardson
• projects
• fireflies
• intermittent glowing synchronizes across insects (approximately)
• model & determine theory -- time across episodes
• is this like neural models?
  
• cicadas
• same phenomena, but with sounds/ chirping
  
• spiking neural networks
• listens to spikes coming in, when threshold exceeded, spikes.
• we know the brain has synchronized firing in collections of neurons, how is that controlled?
• same for heart cells
  
• already SW packages to model these.
• jellyfish
  
• a central network of 15 neurons, swimming involves synchronizing their firing, controls muscles for swimming
• so overall problems
• how do we get synchronization?
• what helps an element move back into time?
• if network is asleep, gets an input, sometimes activity dies, sometimes prompts ongoing activity.  characterize threshold between these.
• medical & computing applications
• lots of current research to read up on.
• Nicolai Vorobjov (easy to google)
• research : mathematical side of computer science
• example: examine geometric shapes using computers
• applications in graphics, but also more abstract
• may want to use them to compute!!
• how do we represent them such that a computer can handle them?
• finding alphabets that allow their description (algebraic geometry)
• topics for projects
  
• just some signposts, feel free to twist & turn into something you find more interesting & talk to him.
• computer linear algebra system -- a bunch of connected programs doing linear algebra -- solve systems of linear equations, handling matricies, etc.  A `baby sister' system for Maple, REDUCE etc., simplified & restricted to linear algebra.  Restrictions should allow for a better / faster specialized system.
• study of two-person games (not computer games, real games) -- represent as a matrix of numbers.  Players choose stategies (rows of matrix for agent 1, columns for agent 2)
• sounds abstract, but could even explain chess if you apply it correctly.
• Beautiful Mind stuff!
• Robot motion planning
• start & finish points, obstacles in between.  What's the shortest path such that it doesn't hit any obstacles?  The one with the least number of turns.  2D or 3D? 
  
• last year, student applied to sailing -- plan boat race courses.  different sorts of criteria.
• Joanna Bryson, see her projects link.
  
• Julian Padget, has projects pages
  
• Research interests:  agents, multi agent systems, music, norms and institutions, semantic web
  
• projects:
  
• Web Services Trading Agent Competition
• http://tac.sics.se
• Magic directories
• make them actually find what you need!
• allow you to find things over arbitrary / multiple indeces
• use virtual links, existing tools (semantic web)
• Location sensitive mapping
• gps+pda guide
• use for history, education, art -- a sound installation
• develop tools to build sucn things
• Sound & signal processing
• adapt existing tools for maths web services to provide music & sound ones. http://monet.nag.co.uk
  
• construct signal processing workbenchusing triana web services toolkit http:..http://www.triana.org
• A web client to support the automatic classification and construction of genre playlists from available audio files.
  
• Russel Bradford has a projects web page too.
  
• interests:  mathematics & crypto; networking
• projects
• networking
• firewalls to stop invaders -- look at packets.  make it easier to configure these.
• large number of machines connected -- can you visualize it? 
  
• spring based to make it prettier / fit it out
• eigen vector method (for people who know what that is only -- very maths oriented.)
  
• encription
• new dutch advanced encription standard Rijndael
  
• implement it in several languages, compare & contrast results.
• implement several ways in one language
• digital watermarks
• mathematics
• multiplying numbers that are thousands of digits long
• known algorithms, you just need to implement, figure out which one works better.
• Marina De Vos has also project pages.
• interests: answer set programming, knowledge representation and reasoning
• Presentation
• projects:
• ASP Projects
• An IDE for ASP
• ASP Agent Framework
• Finite State Autonoma Generation
• Incremental Propositional OCLP
• Compute Time Estimator for ASP
• Precompute branching for ASP
• An open implementation of DLT
• Non-ASP Projects
• Call Graphing in C
• Customised Wiki
• E-learning Site for @lis
• SSH Key Distribution
• Detailed list in pdf
• John (ffitch) Fitch
• interest: music and compilers
• projects
• classifying sound (e.g. birds)
• software for composers, rehearsal, performance
• automated music, drum machine
• modelling physical instruments
• sonification of data