Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1967. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Cranes occupy a crucial role within the industry. They are used throughout the world in thousands of shipping yards, construction sites, and warehouses. However, payload oscillation inherent to all cranes makes it challenging for human operators to manipulate payloads quickly, accurately, and safely. Manipulation difficulty is also increased by non-intuitive crane control interfaces. Intuitiveness is characterized by ease of learning, simplicity, and predictability. This thesis addresses the issue of intuitive crane control in two parts: the design of the interface, and the design of the controller. Three novel types of crane control interface are presented. These interfaces allow an operator to drive a crane by moving his or her hand freely in space. These control interfaces are dependent on machine vision and radio-frequency-based technology. The design of the controller based on empirical means is also discussed. Various control architectures were explored. It was concluded that a controller with an input shaper within a Proportional Derivative feedback loop produced the desirable crane response. The design of this controller is complemented with a structured design methodology based on root locus analysis and computer numerical methods. The intuitive crane control systems were implemented on a 10-ton industrial bridge crane; simulation and experimental results are presented for validation purposes.

With the growth of computer power, Digital Image Processing plays a more and more important role in the modern world, including the field of industry, medical, communications, spaceflight technology etc. There is no clear definition how to divide the digital image processing, but normally, digital image processing includes three main steps: low-level, mid-level and highlevel processing. Low-level processing involves primitive operations, such as: image preprocessing to reduce the noise, contrast enhancement, and image sharpening. Mid-level processing on images involves tasks such as segmentation (partitioning an image into regions or objects), description of those objects to reduce them to a form suitable for computer processing, and classification (recognition) of individual objects. Finally, higher-level processing involves "making sense" of an ensemble of recognised objects, as in image analysis. Based on the theory just described in the last paragraph, this thesis is organised in three parts: Colour Edge and Face Detection; Hand motion detection; Hand Gesture Detection and Medical Image Processing. II In Colour Edge Detection, two new images G-image and R-image are built through colour space transform, after that, the two edges extracted from G-image and R-image respectively are combined to obtain the final new edge. In Face Detection, a skin model is built first, then the boundary condition of this skin model can be extracted to cover almost all of the skin pixels. After skin detection, the knowledge about size, size ratio, locations of ears and mouth is used to recognise the face in the skin regions. In Hand Motion Detection, frame differe is compared with an automatically chosen threshold in order to identify the moving object. For some special situations, with slow or smooth object motion, the background modelling and frame differencing are combined in order to improve the performance. In Hand Gesture Recognition, 3 features of every testing image are input to Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), and then the Expectation Maximization algorithm (EM)is used to compare the GMM from testing images and GMM from training images in order to classify the results. In Medical Image Processing (mammograms), the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and clustering rule are applied to choose the feature. Two classifier, ANN and Support Vector Machine (SVM), have been applied to classify the results, in this processing, the balance learning theory and optimized decision has been developed are applied to improve the performance.

Magister Scientiae - MSc / Research has shown that five fundamental parameters are required to recognize any sign language gesture: hand shape, hand motion, hand location, hand orientation and facial expressions. The South African Sign Language (SASL) research group at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has created several systems to recognize sign language gestures using single parameters. These systems are, however, limited to a vocabulary size of 20 – 23 signs, beyond which the recognition accuracy is expected to decrease. The first aim of this research is to investigate the use of two parameters – hand motion and hand shape – to recognise a larger vocabulary of SASL gestures at a high accuracy. Also, the majority of related work in the field of sign language gesture recognition using these two parameters makes use of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to classify gestures. Hidden Markov Support Vector Machines (HM-SVMs) are a relatively new technique that make use of Support Vector Machines (SVMs) to simulate the functions of HMMs. Research indicates that HM-SVMs may perform better than HMMs in some applications. To our knowledge, they have not been applied to the field of sign language gesture recognition. This research compares the use of these two techniques in the context of SASL gesture recognition. The results indicate that, using two parameters results in a 15% increase in accuracy over the use of a single parameter. Also, it is shown that HM-SVMs are a more accurate technique than HMMs, generally performing better or at least as good as HMMs.

This dissertation presents a novel approach to develop a system for real-time tracking of the position and orientation of the human hand in three-dimensional space, using MEMS inertial measurement units (IMUs) and infrared cameras. This research focuses on the study and implementation of an algorithm to correct the gyroscope drift, which is a major problem in orientation tracking using commercial-grade IMUs. An algorithm to improve the orientation estimation is proposed. It consists of: 1.) Prediction of the bias offset error while the sensor is static, 2.) Estimation of a quaternion orientation from the unbiased angular velocity, 3.) Correction of the orientation quaternion utilizing the gravity vector and the magnetic North vector, and 4.) Adaptive quaternion interpolation, which determines the final quaternion estimate based upon the current conditions of the sensor. The results verified that the implementation of the orientation correction algorithm using the gravity vector and the magnetic North vector is able to reduce the amount of drift in orientation tracking and is compatible with position tracking using infrared cameras for real-time human hand motion tracking. Thirty human subjects participated in an experiment to validate the performance of the hand motion tracking system. The statistical analysis shows that the error of position tracking is, on average, 1.7 cm in the x-axis, 1.0 cm in the y-axis, and 3.5 cm in the z-axis. The Kruskal-Wallis tests show that the orientation correction algorithm using gravity vector and magnetic North vector can significantly reduce the errors in orientation tracking in comparison to fixed offset compensation. Statistical analyses show that the orientation correction algorithm using gravity vector and magnetic North vector and the on-board Kalman-based orientation filtering produced orientation errors that were not significantly different in the Euler angles, Phi, Theta and Psi, with the p-values of 0.632, 0.262 and 0.728, respectively. The proposed orientation correction algorithm represents a contribution to the emerging approaches to obtain reliable orientation estimates from MEMS IMUs. The development of a hand motion tracking system using IMUs and infrared cameras in this dissertation enables future improvements in natural human-computer interactions within a 3D virtual environment.

With the growth of computer power, Digital Image Processing plays a more and more important role in the modern world, including the field of industry, medical, communications, spaceflight technology etc. There is no clear definition how to divide the digital image processing, but normally, digital image processing includes three main steps: low-level, mid-level and highlevel processing. Low-level processing involves primitive operations, such as: image preprocessing to reduce the noise, contrast enhancement, and image sharpening. Mid-level processing on images involves tasks such as segmentation (partitioning an image into regions or objects), description of those objects to reduce them to a form suitable for computer processing, and classification (recognition) of individual objects. Finally, higher-level processing involves "making sense" of an ensemble of recognised objects, as in image analysis. Based on the theory just described in the last paragraph, this thesis is organised in three parts: Colour Edge and Face Detection; Hand motion detection; Hand Gesture Detection and Medical Image Processing. II In Colour Edge Detection, two new images G-image and R-image are built through colour space transform, after that, the two edges extracted from G-image and R-image respectively are combined to obtain the final new edge. In Face Detection, a skin model is built first, then the boundary condition of this skin model can be extracted to cover almost all of the skin pixels. After skin detection, the knowledge about size, size ratio, locations of ears and mouth is used to recognise the face in the skin regions. In Hand Motion Detection, frame differe is compared with an automatically chosen threshold in order to identify the moving object. For some special situations, with slow or smooth object motion, the background modelling and frame differencing are combined in order to improve the performance. In Hand Gesture Recognition, 3 features of every testing image are input to Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), and then the Expectation Maximization algorithm (EM)is used to compare the GMM from testing images and GMM from training images in order to classify the results. In Medical Image Processing (mammograms), the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and clustering rule are applied to choose the feature. Two classifier, ANN and Support Vector Machine (SVM), have been applied to classify the results, in this processing, the balance learning theory and optimized decision has been developed are applied to improve the performance.