Currently offered Projects, Summer 2013

(some projects still subject to confirmation)

Supervisor: Amir Asif

Required Background: Computer Vision or Signal and Systems Course preferred; Matlab; Interest in Signal/Image Processing

Short Description: Over the past decade, large-scale camera networks have become increasingly popular in a wide range of applications, including: (i) Sports analysis; (ii) Security and surveillance; (iii) disaster response, and; (iv) Environmental modeling, where the objective is to follow the trajectory of a key target, for example, a star player in a soccer game or a suspect in a surveillance environment. In many applications, bandwidth constraints, security concerns, and difficulty in storing and analyzing large amounts of image data centrally at a single location necessitate the development of distributed camera network architectures. In this project, we investigate distributed scene analysis algorithms, where each camera estimates certain parameters of the target using a signal processing algorithm based upon its own set of observations. The local estimates are then shared with the neighboring cameras in an iterative, goosip-type fashion, and a final estimate is computed across the network using consensus algorithms. The selected student will develop Matlab code to apply distributed signal processing algorithms [1,2] that have been developed in the Signal Processing and Communications lab for target tracking and activity recognition in distributed camera networks.

[1] A. Mohammadi and A. Asif, Distributed Particle Filter Implementation with Intermittent/Irregular Consensus Convergence, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2013. http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.2431.

[2] A. Mohammadi and A. Asif, Decentralized Sensor Selection based on the Distributed Posterior Cramer-Rao Lower Bound, in proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Information Fusion, Singapore, 2012. pp. 1668-1675.

Supervisor: Wolfgang Stuerzlinger

Required Background: 3D computer graphics, C/C++ coding

The Leap Motion, leapmotion.com, is a new device that lets users control a computer with their fingers. This project creates a new 3D drawing system that enables users to quickly generate 3D solids.

Supervisor: Wolfgang Stuerzlinger

Required Background: 3D computer graphics, C/C++ coding

The 3Gear system, threegear.com, lets users control a computer with their hands and fingers. This project creates a new 3D drawing system that enables users to quickly generate and modify 3D solids.

Supervisor: Scott MacKenzie

Required Background: General 4080 prerequisites, CSE3461, and (preferably) CSE4441. Interest in user interfaces and human-computer interaction (HCI). Students can use their own Android phone for the project or one supplied by the course supervisor.

Touchscreen mobile devices commonly use a built-in accelerometer to sense movement or tilting actions of the device. Tilt is commonly used the change the orientation of the display between portrait and landscape. Gaming is another common use for tilting actions. However, tilt may also be used for target selection, as a replacement for touch. This research project will evaluate tilt as an input primitive for target selection on touchscreen mobile devices.

Readings: MacKenzie, I. S., & Teather, R. J. (2012). FittsTilt: The application of Fitts’ law to tilt-based interaction. Proceedings of the Seventh Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction – NordiCHI 2012, pp. 568-577. New York: ACM.

Supervisor: James Elder

Required Background: General CSE408x prerequisites, good programming skills, good math skills, knowledge of C and MATLAB programming languages

One of the challenges in remote learning is to allow students to communicate effectively with the lecturer. For example, when a student asks a question, communication will be more effective if the instructor has a zoomed view of the student’s face, so that s/he can interpret expressions etc.

The goal of this project is to apply attentive sensing technology (www.elderlab.yorku.ca) to this problem. This technology is able to monitor a large environment such as a classroom and direct a high-resolution ‘attentive’ sensor to events of interest.

In particular, working with a senior graduate student or postdoctoral fellow, the successful applicant will:

1. Study the problem of detecting hand-raises in the preattentive sensor stream
2. Implement algorithms for detecting hand-raises based upon this investigation
3. Evaluate these algorithms in a real-classroom setting, using proprietary attentive sensing technology

Supervisor: James Elder

Required Background: Good programming skills; Good math skills; Knowledge of C and MATLAB programming languages

The goal of this project is to modify York University’s patented attentive sensor technology to the sport video recording market. Specific application domains under investigation include skiing, indoor BMX parks, and horse tracks.

The general problem is to use attentive sensing technology (www.elderlab.yorku.ca) to visually detect and track multiple moving agents (e.g., skiers, riders, horses) and to select specific agents for active high-resolution smooth pursuit.

The student will work with senior graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research scientists to help modify the attentive sensing technology to operate in these domains. Specific tasks include:

1. Ground-truth available datasets 2. Evaluate current attentive algorithms on these datasets 3. Modify these algorithms to improve performance on these datasets

Supervisor: Jeff Edmonds

Required Background: General CSE408x prerequisites

Recommended Background: Java software development

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a statistical technique that is becoming increasingly popular in the educational and behavioral sciences. SEM allows researchers to test the validity of hypothesized models involving complex relationships among multiple variables. Collected data is used to estimate the parameters of the equations and assessing the fit of the model.

The software required is an application that allows researchers to define their hypothesized models visually and will output the correct syntax for the analytical software of their choosing.

To date a promising functional application has been developed in JAVA by a Computer Science student as a 4080 project. The existing software allows the user to draw a path diagram and outputs code for the R package sem. There are a number of improvements to be made (refinements and additions to graphical user interface) and then the application needs to be extended to output syntax appropriate for additional software applications (openMX, MPlus and EQS). Though this project may not begin at “the first stages” of the software lifecycle, this scenario is likely common in the software development market. In addition, the student will be working with a primary “client” who is far less technically advanced, which is also reflective of real-world situations.

More details here.

Supervisor: Sotirios Liaskos (liaskos at yorku dot ca)

Required Background: Good knowledge of Unix tools / Python, Perl or Awk. Comfort with algorithms and programming. Essential: 2031 – Software Tools. Desired: 3402 – Functional & Logic Programming, 3101 – Design and Analysis of Algorithms, 4302 – Compilers and Interpreters.

Description: This project involves enriching and integrating a set of fairly complex scripts, which are components of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) planner, and exporting them to the public in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) fashion.

The components are various Unix executables and LISP programs that need to interact in complex ways. The components may be residing in different servers in different universities. Currently integration is performed manually, at the expense of usability. Thus, we aim at constructing a module that: (a) integrates involved components to deliver output in one call, (b) exports a unique web interface (preferably following WSDL/SOAP) to be easily accessed by custom front-end tools by anyone, anywhere, (c ) offers a simple front-end for human users.

Learning objectives:

• Understand the technologies and process involved in turning native code into a web-service (“servicizing”).
• Study a state-of-the-art AI planner and understand its workings.
• Exercise scripting skills.

Supervisor: Burton Ma

Description: Registration is a fundamental step in image-based surgical navigation. Several (seemingly) different approaches for predicting distance errors in registration are known, but for some surgical procedures, the angular error in registration is more important. This project will validate an approach for predicting angular error in registration; the student will use a combination of simulated and actual registration data for testing purposes.

Supervisor: Burton Ma

Description: Tracked pointers are the most common tools used in surgical navigation systems. A typical pointer has a tracked target on one end and a sharp or ball tip on the other end. Finding the location of the tip relative to the target is a calibration problem. One solution to the calibration problem involves pivoting the pointer about the tip while tracking the target; if the tip is kept stationary, then the target moves on the surface of a sphere. Fitting the tracking data to the surface of a sphere yields the location of the tip as the sphere center. Unfortunately, the calibrated tip position obtained using such a spherical calibration has high variance. This project will investigate how much variance there is in the calibrated tip position, and methods for reducing the variance of the calibrated tip position.

Supervisor: Uyen Trang Nguyen

Description: One of the major privacy concerns in Online Social Networks is photo sharing. A user may post his/her friends’ photos without their consent. The friends have no control over the user’s Facebook activities, namely photo sharing. In this project, we design and implement a third-party Facebook application that allows people to protect their identities in photos uploaded by another user without their consent.

Required prerequisite background: Proficiency in programming, especially in Java and Web application programming.

Desired prerequisite: Knowledge of image processing, Facebook API, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)