Text-to-scene generation systems take input in the form of a natural language text and output a 3D scene illustrating the meaning of that text. A major benefit of text-to-scene generation is that it allows users to create custom 3D scenes without requiring them to have a background in 3D graphics or knowledge of specialized software packages. This contributes to making text-to-scene useful in scenarios from creative applications to education. The primary goal of this thesis is to explore how we can use text-to-scene generation in a new way: as a tool to facilitate the elicitation and formal documentation of language. In particular, we use text-to-scene generation (a) to assist field linguists studying endangered languages; (b) to provide a cross-linguistic framework for formally modeling spatial language; and (c) to collect language data using crowdsourcing. As a side effect of these goals, we also explore the problem of multilingual text-to-scene generation, that is, systems for generating 3D scenes from languages other than English. The contributions of this thesis are the following. First, we develop a novel tool suite (the WordsEye Linguistics Tools, or WELT) that uses the WordsEye text-to-scene system to assist field linguists with eliciting and documenting endangered languages. WELT allows linguists to create custom elicitation materials and to document semantics in a formal way. We test WELT with two endangered languages, Nahuatl and Arrernte. Second, we explore the question of how to learn a syntactic parser for WELT. We show that an incremental learning method using a small number of annotated dependency structures can produce reasonably accurate results. We demonstrate that using a parser trained in this way can significantly decrease the time it takes an annotator to label a new sentence with dependency information. Third, we develop a framework that generates 3D scenes from spatial and graphical semantic primitives. We incorporate this system into the WELT tools for creating custom elicitation materials, allowing users to directly manipulate the underlying semantics of a generated scene. Fourth, we introduce a deep semantic representation of spatial relations and use this to create a new resource, SpatialNet, which formally declares the lexical semantics of spatial relations for a language. We demonstrate how SpatialNet can be used to support multilingual text-to-scene generation. Finally, we show how WordsEye and the semantic resources it provides can be used to facilitate elicitation of language using crowdsourcing.

Thesis (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: scene reconstruction vision, image based rendering, graphics, color consistency, specular objects. Includes bibliographical references (p. 56-57).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-92).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2010. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S. in Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Christian J. Darken, Joseph A. Sullivan. Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-92). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-134). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-123).

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No description available.

The purpose of this project is to develop the procedures to perform the camera calibration in a three dimension range finding system. The goal is to have a system that will provide reasonably accurate range data which can be used in further three-dimensional computer vision research such as edge detection, surface recovery and object recognition. In this project, an active lighting, optical, triangulation based range finding system has been developed. The software system is designed in object oriented technology and implemented using the C++ programming language. The overall performance of the system is investigated and the system has achieved 0.5 mm (or 4%) accuracy. A review of three range data acquisition techniques is given. Based on the analysis to the current system, suggestions to future improvement are also provided. / Department of Physics and Astronomy