Projects
Computer Graphics
- OpenGL Visualization plugin
Nawfel Tricha, Beth Weinstein and I created visualization plug-in for
our computer graphics class project in the spring of 2000 at the
University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP). This plug-in was
written using C/C++ and OpenGL for the Windows operating system. We
utilized Microsoft Visual C++ to organize and compile the necessary
DLL. A web-page describing the project is linked above. It
outlines how to install the plug-in. The zipped file includes source
code as well as all the files required to run Winamp.
In this project I coded the following characters utilizing Quake MD2
models found on the website
http://www.polycount.com: Boba
Fett, the robot which transforms into a plane, and the Snorks. I
created the table model using a wood texture and a surface of
revolution. As the focal point of the plug-in changes from character
to character, the current character controls the camera movements.
For each character I coded I use different camera angles and
movements. The movements of the robot and Boba Fett are driven by the
sound wave spectrum data received from the Winamp player. In essence,
the characters move with the beat of the song. Nawfel Tricha coded
the Ninja, the Martian and the Zumlin creature. Beth Weinstein coded
the Jupiter girl character, the stereo speakers and the stools as well
as designing the layout of the characters and scenery.
-
Artistic Filter in Hardware
Movies such as
Waking Life,
where images are rendered in a painterly fashion, are both
breath-taking and cumbersome to create. The paper linked above
describes a real-time hardware implementation, using a Virtex2Pro (a
combo of an FPGA and a PowerPC), of an artistic sketch filter. The
system takes in streaming video data and produces output that looks as
if it was sketched with a pencil.
-
Space-Time Manifolds
This was a project I worked on with two other graduate students, Aseem
Agarwala and Jonathan Ko, as a small research project in the spring of
2003 for a class we took on Digital Photography at the UW. The aim of
the project was to explore techniques for creating a single composite
image from a sequence of images depicting a time-lapse sequence. We
prototyped a user-interface that allowed users to paint regions of the
output image to create a correspondence between regions in the output
image and individual images in the time-lapse sequence. Linked above
is a web-page describing the techniques we developed and a collection
of artifacts we created with our system.
Computer Vision
-
Intelligent Scissors
For this project I created a user interface that allows a user to cut
an object out of one image and paste it into another. The program
assists the user by automatically "snapping" to the edges in the
image. Here is the original project description.
-
Panoramas
In this project I wrote image stitching software that creates 360
degree panoramas that can be viewed using a web browser like
QuicktimeVR. Here is the original project description.
-
PCA/Eigenfaces
This was a project that implemented face recognition tasks. I used
Eigenfaces to do face verification, recognition and detection. It was
trained on a set of images of the students in the class. The system
was able to recognize these students in other images, detect faces in
a group photo and mark them and automatically crop images to show just
the face. Here is the original project description.
-
Recovering Pose Information from AIBO CCD Images
This was a project I worked on with Jonathan Ko as a small research
project in the spring of 2003 for a class we took on Image Processing
at the University of Washington (UW). The aim of the project was to
compare and contrast two feature recognition techniques for extracting
pose information of an Sony Aibo robot dog from CCD images taken by a
Sony Aibo robot dog. One technique extended a face recognition
technique known as Eigenfaces. The second technique extracted SIFT
features from the images to create a database of pose-feature
correspondences. A description of each technique and experimental
results as well as a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of
each technique can be found on the web page linked above.
Networks
-
UWtella
This project explored peer-to-peer file sharing applications. One
drawback for ISPs that occurs when customers are using software like
Gnutella is that the company pays dearly when connections are made
across non-peering links. The paper linked above describes an
approach to dealing with this problem and shows some promising results.
Web-Design
-
Chess
Records Web-site
I designed this web-site as part of a final project in a history
course I took about America in the 1950s. The site highlights Chess
Records, an influential record label that put out many seminal blues
records in the 1950s and 1960s. It featured such artists as Chuck
Berry, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon.