OS6Sense

Yes, we have a video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXlmus93o68 I wasn't intending to work on any code this weekend but I felt compelled to try out the recognition server and run another set of tests but with the Logitech C900 in place. Results were an improvement on the PS3 eye, in part due to the better low light capabilities, in part due to the camera placement, and in part due to the wider angle. Some anecdotal notes : The recognition server provided seems to perform better that the unistroke implementation - I still need to sit down and do the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't significantly better. I suspect recall for all but the most basic figures/shapes provided via the default unistroke implementation will be poor amongst users. On the flip side, most of us know the alphabet! Big problem with the use of fiducials on the end of the fingers - they become obscured during natural hand movements! I ended up cupping the marker in my hand and s...

Just an update - while I had originally approached this with the intention of releasing the code as open source my findings regarding....well various aspects of this project, but relevant to this aim, the code itself, means that I'm putting any software development on the back burner for the next few weeks while I perform a study into how people naturally perform gestures. I'm also looking at some options to improve certain show stopping issues with the system (primarily the limited FOV of the webcam). Any code that does emerge for the project, at least for version 0.1 is unlikely to be very robust but I think that can be overcome : I'm currently thinking that broad colour segmentation followed by some form of object matching technique (e.g. SIFT/SURF) should make quite a robust and reasonably fast algorithm for marker detection however if the FOV problem cant be solved, I actually think that ANY vision based system is inappropriate for this sort of interaction style. Y...

Children back at school and I'm back off my hols (a rather interesting time in Estonia if you're interested). I've spent most of the last week becoming increasingly frustrated with my attempts at image segmentation. I've moved to a c++ implementation for speed and, while the VERY simplistic HSV segmentation technique I am using works, the problem is that I cannot get it to work robustly and doubt that it will ever do such. I've now covered the range of available techniques and even tried to plumb the depths of just emerging ones and it seems that every computer vision based object tracking implementation or algorithm suffers for the same issue with robustness (openTLD, camshift, touchless, hsv segmentation and cvBlob etc etc). YES, it can be made to work, but issues include (depending on the algorithm) : - Object drift : over time the target marker will cease to be recognised and other objects will become the target focus. - Multiple objects : During segments...

Another slow week ~ parenting, employment, school holidays and academia do not mix well. I have the hardware up and running how I want now. My initial build with the projector on the right and camera on the left had 2 problems. Firstly, as previously noted, its preferable to have the camera on the side of the users dominant hand since this will be used the most. Secondly...the PK301 has a small fan for cooling and having this on the right meant that the exhaust heat was blowing onto my neck and was hot enough to be very uncomfortable. So today I've switched things around, tied things off, added extra washers (oh, the technology!) for stability and, apart from the need for a more stable joint to hold the projector in a position so that it is level with the users view, I am reasonably satisfied with my budget implementation. Not $350...about £350 but then I could have bought a cheaper projector (and may well pick up a ShowWX for testing) and come under budget. I still need to add a...

http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~dennismv/corruptjpeg.html jdmarker.c lives in the OpenCV 3rdparty/libjpeg directory, edit out the appropriate line (search for "EXTRANEOUS"), make and install....happy days. Edit: Hmmmm actually the above doesn't work since OpenCV is linking the installed library rather than the 3rdParty version and I can't seem to convince CMake to use the local one...ahhh well one for another day since redirecting standard err to /dev/null works just as well.

I finally took the plunge and did the epoxy wields on the prototype rig using some Bondloc titanium epoxy and it works really well, setting hard in just a few minutes and rock solid after 15. While the rig is incredibly primitive it does allow me to shoulder mount both the projector and camera and do so so that they are stable. I just need to make a final decision re placement (left vs right for camera/projector) ~ my initial take was to place the projector on the right so as to be in line with my dominant eye, but I think of more importance/potential is to have a better correlation between the forward facing camera and the dominant hand for pointing...which should also reduce occlusion of the projection. I'm slowly uncovering papers in this area and found another one today Designing a Miniature Wearable Visual Robot which details the design rationale behind a robotised wearable camera. Mayol et al (2002) use a 3D human model to examine different frames of reference and requirem...

Slow progress. I've spent the last couple of days generally looking around at Neural Networks and OpenCVs machine learning code. My aim was to find some relatively simple to implement examples of NNs and form a basic impression of the applicability of the techniques to the task of skin and marker recognition in a video stream. Now I should point out that my understanding of most ML techniques and NNs is rudimentary at best and, at this point, that's fine since I am looking for practical techniques that can be employed at a rapid prototyping stage (hence the cost of experimenting with a proposed solution to a given problem should measure in the hours rather than days); so I am not going to go into too much depth on the AI part of things here. What I do need to do though is define the methodology and results of the experiments I've been running so far since a write-up at this stage will form a useful appendix to my thesis and demonstrate the design process and rationale b...