Ricardo Fabbri

Ricardo Fabbri, Timothy Duff, Hongyi Fan et al.

We present a method for solving two minimal problems for relative camera pose estimation from three views, which are based on three view correspondences of i) three points and one line and the novel case of ii) three points and two lines through two of the points. These problems are too difficult to be efficiently solved by the state of the art Groebner basis methods. Our method is based on a new efficient homotopy continuation (HC) solver framework MINUS, which dramatically speeds up previous HC solving by specializing HC methods to generic cases of our problems. We characterize their number of solutions and show with simulated experiments that our solvers are numerically robust and stable under image noise, a key contribution given the borderline intractable degree of nonlinearity of trinocular constraints. We show in real experiments that i) SIFT feature location and orientation provide good enough point-and-line correspondences for three-view reconstruction and ii) that we can solve difficult cases with too few or too noisy tentative matches, where the state of the art structure from motion initialization fails.

Anil Usumezbas, Ricardo Fabbri, Benjamin Kimia

The three-dimensional reconstruction of scenes from multiple views has made impressive strides in recent years, chiefly by methods correlating isolated feature points, intensities, or curvilinear structure. In the general setting, i.e., without requiring controlled acquisition, limited number of objects, abundant patterns on objects, or object curves to follow particular models, the majority of these methods produce unorganized point clouds, meshes, or voxel representations of the reconstructed scene, with some exceptions producing 3D drawings as networks of curves. Many applications, e.g., robotics, urban planning, industrial design, and hard surface modeling, however, require structured representations which make explicit 3D curves, surfaces, and their spatial relationships. Reconstructing surface representations can now be constrained by the 3D drawing acting like a scaffold to hang on the computed representations, leading to increased robustness and quality of reconstruction. This paper presents one way of completing such 3D drawings with surface reconstructions, by exploring occlusion reasoning through lofting algorithms.

Anil Usumezbas, Ricardo Fabbri, Benjamin B. Kimia

Reconstructing 3D scenes from multiple views has made impressive strides in recent years, chiefly by correlating isolated feature points, intensity patterns, or curvilinear structures. In the general setting - without controlled acquisition, abundant texture, curves and surfaces following specific models or limiting scene complexity - most methods produce unorganized point clouds, meshes, or voxel representations, with some exceptions producing unorganized clouds of 3D curve fragments. Ideally, many applications require structured representations of curves, surfaces and their spatial relationships. This paper presents a step in this direction by formulating an approach that combines 2D image curves into a collection of 3D curves, with topological connectivity between them represented as a 3D graph. This results in a 3D drawing, which is complementary to surface representations in the same sense as a 3D scaffold complements a tent taut over it. We evaluate our results against truth on synthetic and real datasets.

Ricardo Fabbri, Benjamin Kimia

The field of multiple view geometry has seen tremendous progress in reconstruction and calibration due to methods for extracting reliable point features and key developments in projective geometry. Point features, however, are not available in certain applications and result in unstructured point cloud reconstructions. General image curves provide a complementary feature when keypoints are scarce, and result in 3D curve geometry, but face challenges not addressed by the usual projective geometry of points and algebraic curves. We address these challenges by laying the theoretical foundations of a framework based on the differential geometry of general curves, including stationary curves, occluding contours, and non-rigid curves, aiming at stereo correspondence, camera estimation (including calibration, pose, and multiview epipolar geometry), and 3D reconstruction given measured image curves. By gathering previous results into a cohesive theory, novel results were made possible, yielding three contributions. First we derive the differential geometry of an image curve (tangent, curvature, curvature derivative) from that of the underlying space curve (tangent, curvature, curvature derivative, torsion). Second, we derive the differential geometry of a space curve from that of two corresponding image curves. Third, the differential motion of an image curve is derived from camera motion and the differential geometry and motion of the space curve. The availability of such a theory enables novel curve-based multiview reconstruction and camera estimation systems to augment existing point-based approaches. This theory has been used to reconstruct a "3D curve sketch", to determine camera pose from local curve geometry, and tracking; other developments are underway.

Renato Fabbri, Ricardo Fabbri, Vilson Vieira et al.

We present a new self-regulating methodology for coordinating distributed team work called Algorithmic Autoregulation (AA), based on recent social networking concepts and individual merit. Team members take on an egalitarian role, and stay voluntarily logged into so-called AA sessions for part of their time (e.g. 2 hours per day), during which they create periodical logs - short text sentences - they wish to share about their activity with the team. These logs are publicly aggregated in a website and are peer-validated after the end of a session, as in code review. A short screencast is ideally recorded at the end of each session to make AA logs more understandable. This methodology has shown to be well-suited for increasing the efficiency of distributed teams working on Global Software Development (GSD), as observed in our reported experience in actual real-world situations. This efficiency boost is mainly achieved through 1) built-in asynchronous on-demand communication in conjunction with documentation of work, products, and processes, and 2) reduced need for central management, meetings or time-consuming reports. Hence, the AA methodology legitimizes and facilitates the activities of a distributed software team. It thus enables other entities to have a solid means to fund these activities, allowing for new and concrete business models to emerge for very distributed software development. AA has been proposed, at its core, as a way of sustaining self-replicating hacker initiatives. These claims are discussed in a real case-study of running a distributed free software hacker team called Lab Macambira.

Vilson Vieira, Guilherme Lunhani, Geraldo Magela de Castro Rocha Junior et al.

Live coding is a performance and creative technique based on improvised and interactive coding. Many recent endeavors have focused in live coding both because of aesthetics and as a way to alleviate performance drawbacks when the musical instrument is a computer. This paper describes the principles and the design of Vivace, a live coding language and environment built with Web technologies to be executed on web browsers. The approach is compelling by 1) allowing many performers to code simultaneously, 2) the synthesis of audio and video, 3) a very simple syntax, 4) being a multiplatform software. We also strive to contextualize Vivace by means of historical and usage summaries including a live coding sub-genre.

Mauro de Amorim, Ricardo Fabbri, Lucia Maria dos Santos Pinto et al.

This work aims at generating a model of the ocean surface and its dynamics from one or more video cameras. The idea is to model wave patterns from video as a first step towards a larger system of photogrammetric monitoring of marine conditions for use in offshore oil drilling platforms. The first part of the proposed approach consists in reducing the dimensionality of sensor data made up of the many pixels of each frame of the input video streams. This enables finding a concise number of most relevant parameters to model the temporal dataset, yielding an efficient data-driven model of the evolution of the observed surface. The second part proposes stochastic modeling to better capture the patterns embedded in the data. One can then draw samples from the final model, which are expected to simulate the behavior of previously observed flow, in order to determine conditions that match new observations. In this paper we focus on proposing and discussing the overall approach and on comparing two different techniques for dimensionality reduction in the first stage: principal component analysis and diffusion maps. Work is underway on the second stage of constructing better stochastic models of fluid surface dynamics as proposed here.

Ricardo Fabbri, Ivan N. Bastos, Francisco D. Moura Neto et al.

Several experimental measurements are expressed in the form of one-dimensional profiles, for which there is a scarcity of methodologies able to classify the pertinence of a given result to a specific group. The polarization curves that evaluate the corrosion kinetics of electrodes in corrosive media are an application where the behavior is chiefly analyzed from profiles. Polarization curves are indeed a classic method to determine the global kinetics of metallic electrodes, but the strong nonlinearity from different metals and alloys can overlap and the discrimination becomes a challenging problem. Moreover, even finding a typical curve from replicated tests requires subjective judgement. In this paper we used the so-called multi-q approach based on the Tsallis statistics in a classification engine to separate multiple polarization curve profiles of two stainless steels. We collected 48 experimental polarization curves in aqueous chloride medium of two stainless steel types, with different resistance against localized corrosion. Multi-q pattern analysis was then carried out on a wide potential range, from cathodic up to anodic regions. An excellent classification rate was obtained, at a success rate of 90%, 80%, and 83% for low (cathodic), high (anodic), and both potential ranges, respectively, using only 2% of the original profile data. These results show the potential of the proposed approach towards efficient, robust, systematic and automatic classification of highly non-linear profile curves.

Ricardo Fabbri, Odemir Martinez Bruno, Luciano da Fontoura Costa

This paper is an overview of Image Processing and Analysis using Scilab, a free prototyping environment for numerical calculations similar to Matlab. We demonstrate the capabilities of SIP -- the Scilab Image Processing Toolbox -- which extends Scilab with many functions to read and write images in over 100 major file formats, including PNG, JPEG, BMP, and TIFF. It also provides routines for image filtering, edge detection, blurring, segmentation, shape analysis, and image recognition. Basic directions to install Scilab and SIP are given, and also a mini-tutorial on Scilab. Three practical examples of image analysis are presented, in increasing degrees of complexity, showing how advanced image analysis techniques seems uncomplicated in this environment.