/ Ilia A. Bogaevski / Visiting Researcher
/ Przemyslaw Rokita / Visiting Researcher
The research conducted in the Computer Science and Engineering Laboratory is currently concentrated on the following projects:
1. Realistic Image Synthesis
The main goal of the project is enhancement of realism in virtual environments via careful simulation of lighting, and seamless real-time rendering. The research is focused on the following topics:
Human perception-based metrics of the image quality, and perception-driven lighting simulation algorithms. Many improvements in the computational efficiency of rendering can be attained by focusing computations only on those scene features readily perceived by human observers under given viewing conditions.
Lighting simulation using stochastic photon tracing and density estimation techniques. All visually important lighting phenomena can be easily simulated within this framework, however, efficient techniques of lighting storage and reconstruction are of key importance to make this technique suitable for practical applications.
Image-based rendering and virtual walkthroughs in the real-world environments. Photographs are very effective and inexpensive way to acquire information about the existing real-world objects. In this research, techniques for deriving images for arbitrary camera positions based on a finite number of photographs are investigated.
2. Differential Equations, Differential Geometry, and Singularity Theory for Image Processing and Geometric Modeling
In recent years it has been significant progress in applications of sophisticated mathematical theories to problems arising in image processing and computer graphics. Our current research is focused on methods based on partial differential equations, classical differential geometry, and singularity theory. It includes curvature-based shape and image analysis, singularity theory for shape interrogation, and homogenization of partial differential equations in media with periodic structures.
3. Designs of a Global Teaching and Learning aimed Educational System
Recent years, advances and great progresses in multimedia computing, network and the Internet techniques have brought about an educational revolution, i.e., {\it global teaching and learning}, which means that teachers and students can conduct their teaching/learning activities in anytime at anywhere so long as they have computers connected to the Internet. To enable global teaching and learning, a networked computer based education system is proposed and under developing.
The educational system consists of five main components: virtual office, virtual classroom, virtual collaborative room, virtual laboratory, and virtual library. The virtual classroom is a system to support preparation and authoring of teaching materials, to effectively organize teaching activities, and to ease students learning activities. Supplement environment, evaluation environment, exploring environment, and collaborative environment are developed and integrated as a hyper-environment to support the virtual classroom. The virtual collaborative room is a system to provide good interactions and communications among collaboration members. Different types of rooms are defined and constructed to support different types of collaborative activities. Framework of intelligent agent system is established to support automation of teaching and learning activities in an integrated education system.