Author's School

School of Engineering & Applied Science

Author's Department/Program

Computer Science and Engineering

Language

English (en)

Date of Award

January 2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Chair and Committee

Robert Pless

Abstract

Understanding an outdoor scene’s 3-D structure has applications in several fields, including surveillance and computer graphics. Scene elements’ time-series brightness gives insight to their geometric orientation; and thus the 3-D structure of the overall scene. Previous works have studied the time-series brightness of individual pixels. However, there are limitations with this approach. Pixels are often quite noisy, and can require a lot of memory. This thesis explores the use of superpixels to address these issues. Superpixels, an approach to image segmentation, over-segment a scene but attempt to ensure that each segment lies on only one scene element. Applying superpixels to webcams reduces the effect of noise on pixels’ time-series brightness, and conserves memory by reducing the number of pixel “entities”. This thesis explores methods of solving for a superpixel’s surface normal, and demonstrates that the time at which maximum brightness is achieved serves as a basic indicator of geographic orientation.

Comments

Permanent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7936/K7R20ZDQ

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