Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry (ESPI) dates from 1971. Attempts at commercial exploitation were unsuccessful; at the beginning of this decade it remained essentially a laboratory technique. Problems arose from the practical operation of the instrument and the nature of the output. Correlation fringes are intrinsically noisy and their quality depends on many interrelated factors. It is shown that by simplifying the optical design and improving the quality of the optical components, the fringe contrast is greatly improved and the instrument is made easier to use. Extensions and improvements to the system are discussed: analogue image processing techniques as a low cost means of improving the appearance of the output; time invariant noise subtraction in time averaged fringes gives similar quality results as that of the subtraction mode; ensemble averaging of time variant noise is a new technique for producing holographic quality results. Electronic speckle contouring (ESC) gives a selection of methods for producing programmable contour spacings and orientations for shape measurement. ESPI is compared with other optical measurement techniques and is shown to have fundamental advantages.

Manoeuvring a vehicle with additionally attached trailers is a tedious task. Albeit driver assistance systems support the driver in nearly any situation in these days, tools facilitating the manoeuvring process of extended vehicles can only rarely be found in research and especially in the market. This thesis deals with the prototypical implementation of a rear view camera parking assistance system. In particular, the visualisation of the predicted driving path of the tractor-trailer combination in the camera image is emphasised, following the representation of existing parking assistance systems for individual vehicles. A general approach is aiming at the portability of the system to nearly any kind of trailer. The superimposed guidelines are based on a state space model, which is derived on top of assumptions agreeing with results found in the literature. Due to the strong assumptions and simplifications, the model is tested in three different ways and moreover for different types of trailers. All underlying methods are described in detail and furthermore tested in several scenarios, if necessary. Special importance is attached to the comparison of the actual driven paths with their previous predictions, for which a new method has been derived, implemented and tested successfully. Beside the implementation of the guideline projection to the camera’s image, the human-machine interface is augmented by a Bird’s Eye view animation, too. A final test of the integrated system for different types of trailers shows the proper operation of the overall system during parking situations.

Student Number : 9900639H - MA research report - School of Dramatic Art - Faculty of Humanities / This report is concerned with analysing the cinematic representations of the ‘township space’ and its articulation of black masculinity in two post apartheid South African films – Wooden Camera directed by Ntshaveni Wa Luruli and Tsotsi directed by Gavin Hood. I argue that the ‘township space’ has become a fetishised cinematic trope in post-apartheid South African filmmaking. Cinematic representation’s of the space of the township articulates the performance of black identity associated with criminality, excessive violence and deviancy relegating the black experience to one of ‘otherness’. In this report I argue that the ‘Cinematic Township’ predetermines a black identity that appears to be shot through a colonial lens, or from an ‘outsider’s point-of-view’. This space developed on the fringes of major cities was developed - through Afrikaner Nationalist Ideologies - as a ‘port’ into major cities. The township was constructed through a process of ‘othering’ and is often represented as the manageable part of modernity for ‘black identity’. Cinematically there appears to be a ‘fixing’ or ‘freezing’ of an authentic black experience within the ‘township space’ that essentialises black identity and the black experience. Apart from analysing the cinematic representations of the ‘township space’ and the manner in which space determines sexuality and identity, this report speaks to issues of representation and who can claim the rights to representation in post-apartheid South Africa (Thiong’o, 2000 and Axel, 1999). The South African filmmaking landscape is unique because of the interesting mix of ‘white’ and ‘black’ filmmakers. This raises questions about ‘Racialised Africanness’ and what are the implications for ‘African whiteness’? These are important issues in relation to the South African post-apartheid body politic and the role of the filmmaker in post-apartheid South African cinema. In this paper I suggest that the cinematic township is representative of the fetishisation of the ‘township space’ in the imagination and representations of post-apartheid filmmakers. The ‘township space’ has transcended its political memory and appears to be invested with nostalgia and myth-making.

Additionally, we suggest a new formulation for the perspective camera projection matrix. In particular, regarding how the 3 x 3 rotation matrix, R, of the camera should be incorporated into the 3 x 4 camera projection matrix, P. We show that the incorporated rotation should neither be the camera rotation R nor its transpose, but a reversed (left-handed) version of it. The fundamental matrix between a pair of stereo cameras is reformulated more accurately accordingly. This is extremely useful when we want to calculate the fundamental matrix accurately from the stereo camera matrices. It is especially true when the feature correspondences are too few for robust methods, such as RANSAC, to operate. We expect that this new model would have an impact on various applications. / Furthermore, the process of estimating the rotation and translation parameters between a stereo pair from the essential matrix is investigated. This is an essential step for our multi-camera pose estimation method. We show that there are 16 solutions based on the singular value decomposition (not four or eight as previously thought). We also suggest a checking step to ascertain that the proposed algorithm will come up with accurate results. The checking step ensures the accuracy of the fundamental matrix calculated using the pose obtained. This provides a speedy way to calibrate a stereo rig. Our proposed theories are supported by the real and synthetic data experiments reported in this thesis. / In this thesis, we solve the pose estimation problem for robot motion by placing multiple cameras on the robot. In particular, we use four cameras arranged as two back-to-back stereo pairs combined with the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The EKF is used to provide a frame by frame recursive solution suitable for the real-time application at hand. The reason for using multiple cameras is that the pose estimation problem is more constrained for multiple cameras than for a single camera. Their use is further justified by the drop in price which is accompanied by the remarkable increase in accuracy. Back-to-back cameras are used since they are likely to have a larger field of view, provide more information, and capture more features. In this way, they are more likely to disambiguate the pose translation and rotation parameters. Stereo information is used in self-initialization and outlier rejection. Simple yet efficient methods have been proposed to tackle the problem of long-sequence drift. Our approaches have been compared, under different motion patterns, to other methods in the literature which use a single camera. Both the simulations and the real experiments show that our approaches are the most robust and accurate among them all as well as fast enough to realize the real-time requirement of robot navigation. / Mohammad Ehab Mohammad Ragab. / "April 2008." / Adviser: K. H. Wong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: B, page: 1763. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 138-148) and index. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

This thesis explores software algorithm for implementing a people counting and matching system to be used on a bus. A special camera is used, known as a texel camera, that generates depth and color information for a scene. This added information greatly facilitates both the tasks of matching and counting. Although people counting is a relatively mature field, there are several situations in which current technologies are not able to count correctly. Several of these difficult situations are tested with 82% counting accuracy. The idea of matching people on a bus is also developed. The goal is not to identify a specific person on a bus, but to find the time that a specific person is on the bus, and what bus stops were used. There are several aspects of this matching problem that differentiate it from other classification tasks that have been researched. In this thesis, multiple measurements are used to classify a person and sequence estimation techniques explored. The techniques developed classify with 92% accuracy, even with a relatively large number of people on a bus.

With the development of hardware, mobile phone has become a feature-rich handheld device. Built-in camera and Bluetooth technology are supported in most current mobile phones. A real-time image processing experiment was conducted with a SonyEricsson P910i smartphone and a desktop computer. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a system which uses a mobile phone as a PC mouse. The movement of the mobile phone can be detected by analyzing the images captured by the onboard camera and the mouse cursor in the PC can be controlled by the movement of the phone.

The demand of digital cameras in Taiwan has been steady increasing during 2011 to 2012; the total sales volumes are expected to be positive in the future. On other hand, due to consumers are pursuing higher quality lives, they buy more functionalities cameras. As DSLR cameras are too heavy and low-end digital cameras have low functionalities, which are why DSLR-like cameras and high-end digital cameras have become more popular recently. Despite the increase sale of cameras, the qualities of cameras accessories are still in chaos, especially in products like camera lens protector. There is no such a high C/P value of camera lens protector in the Taiwan market. Because of the above opportunity, some of my friends and I have founded a company to produce a high C/P value of camera lens protector. Our company vision is to product the best quality camera lens protector with medium price in Taiwan. Our company goal is to reach 50% market share in the camera accessories market. We have our own R&D in Taiwan, and guarantee that our products will be made in Taiwan. Our camera lens protector will be mainly sold in Taiwan in the beginning of year. About our channel selections, we will mainly focus on some independent stores in Bo-Han camera areas, two largest 3C chain stores. In order to sell our products to those independent and chain stores, pre-launching marketing is also needed. We will provide POSM to channels, incentives to sales people, and internet marketing to promote our products. When our products are steady in Taiwan, our company will be discovering more export sales in overseas. We are looking forward to doing OEM or ODM, if there were any opportunities in the future.

This paper describes a system for high resolution video conferencing. A number of camcorders are used to capture the video, which are then mosaiced to generate a wide angle panoramic view. Furthermore this system is made “real-time” by detecting changes and updating them on the mosaic. This system can be deployed on a single machine or on a cluster for better performance. It is also scalable and shows a good real-time performance. The main application for this system is videoconferencing for distance learning but it can be used for any high resolution broadcasting. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

It is commonly assumed that the goal of stereovision is computing explicit 3D scene reconstructions. We show that very accurate camera calibration is needed to support this, and that such accurate calibration is difficult to achieve and maintain. We argue that for tasks like recognition, figure/ground separation is more important than 3D depth reconstruction, and demonstrate a stereo algorithm that supports figure/ground separation without 3D reconstruction.

Modern day cars are often equipped with a vision system that collects informa- tion about the car and its surroundings. Camera calibration is extremely impor- tant in order to maintain high accuracy in an automotive safety applications. The cameras are calibrated offline in the factory, however the mounting of the camera may change slowly over time. If the angles of the actual mounting of the cam- era are known compensation for the angles can be done in software. Therefore, online calibration is desirable. This master’s thesis describes how to dynamically calibrate the roll angle. Two different methods have been implemented and compared.The first detects verti- cal edges in the image, such as houses and lamp posts. The second one method detects license plates on other cars in front of the camera in order to calculate the roll angle. The two methods are evaluated and the results are discussed. The results of the methods are very varied, and the method that turned out to give the best results was the one that detects vertical edges.