Protocol for Task Analysis in DecoSketch

In a near future my PhD work will be used in the DecoSketch project. More precisely, a few months from now a simple 3D shape retrieval mechanism should be integrated in our Computer Aided Decoration prototype. Thus, I am now fully engaged in this project. Today I write the first draft of the protocol for the task analysis. This document is now to be completed in cooperation with the senior year students of this project.

Reviewing a paper for WSCG 2006

I've reviewed a paper for the 14th International Conferences in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision (WSCG 2006). This paper focused on a hierarchical topological structure for a discrete modeling tool and presents a multi-level approach which provides an effective way to propagate changes in one level of representation to another.

A large video wall

Last Friday we visited the Brisa Operational Control Centre (CCO). Brisa owns most of the Portuguese highways. In their control centre they manage the entire infrastructure. To help them in such task they installed there a large video wall. This device was the main reason for our visit.

View of Brisa's CCO

Restarting work on editION

After a couple of months in stand by, we are going to focus our attentions again on the evolutION platform and its calligraphic interface, editION. This decision were formalized in a meeting between the team members.

PhD 2005 yearly report 2nd version

The second version of my PhD 2005 yearly report is finished [PDF 67KB]. The major changes were made on the work plan and the abstract. Now, if my advisor agrees, I can submit it to the department.

BiblioPad

Regarding my last week post on personal bibliographic/research software, Daniel Gonçalves reminded me of a senior year project he advised two years ago. The BiblioPad were developed to help researches organize bibliographic references. This application extracts information from papers, such as title, authors and references. With this data it establishes relationships among papers, organizing automatically the bibliography.

However, this is not what I am looking for. I want a tool that allows me not only to organize but also classify the bibliographic references I use during my research work. This classification should not only focus on the content of the paper but also other information, such as relevance, source, author credibility, affiliated institutions, related projects, etc...

So, I am still looking for such a tool.

Shape-Based Retrieval and Analysis of 3D Models

Thomas Funkhouser et al published last June a paper, in Communications of the ACM, that introduces the problems in 3D shape analysis and provide a road map for possible solution methods. This paper could be considered extremely relevant for my PhD work. Thus, I made a twenty minutes presentation [ZIP 774KB] about the paper and present it in the Information Retrieval course I am attending.

Following the balls

To understand the problems MultiModal Painter (MMP) senior students are facing I decided to apply some of my computer vision skills trying to solve one of them. To that end I implemented a small program that follows a set of balls in a pre-recorded video. Using MATLAB 6.5, it took me only a few lines of code to achieve it. The resulting video is available for download (ZIP [148KB]).

Snapshot of detection video.

Personal Bibliographic/Research Software

In order to maintain a database of my bibliographic citations and research notes I'm searching for a bibliographic/research Software. I have found a some interesting freeware applications, such as Scholar's Aid 4 Lite or BiblioExpress. Does anyone have any suggestions? Would you tell me your personal experience with this or other applications? I’ll be grateful.

PhD work plan v 0.3

After a first iteration with my advisors, I reviewed the work plan. In this new version I expect to deliver the thesis proposal sooner, leaving more time for research, development and testing.

Revised Gantt chart of PhD work plan.
(Click on chart for larger version)

PhD 2005 yearly report

In IST, PhD students must deliver by mid-December an yearly report on the progress of their work. I've just finished the first version [PDF 88KB] of my report. Now I am waiting for feedback from my advisor in order to produce a deliverable version of this document.

PhD work plan v 0.2

In the beginning of my PhD I devised a preliminary work plan. However, this draft was quite inaccurate and I decided to simply discard it and create a new one from the scratch.

Thus, I have finished the initial version of my PhD work plan, depicted below. Next I’m going to present and discuss it with my advisor and co-advisor in order to produce a plan as accurate as possible at this stage.

Preliminary Gantt chart of PhD work plan.
(Click on chart for larger version)

Co-advisory of PhotoFinder senior project

Since the PhotoFinder senior project is closely related to the work I developed during my master thesis, I'm co-advisoring this senior project. Today I attended a project meeting.

Note: Despite the similar name this project is not directly related with the University of Maryland PhotoFinder.

CALIdemo V1.0

The first version of the demonstration tool for CALI is finished. This tool allows the user to check the features extracted by CALI recognition library, as described in our paper "Generic Shape Classification for Retrieval" presented at GREC 2005.

An windows version of this tool is available for download (ZIP [361KB]) as a compressed stand-alone executable file. Installation or configuration is not required, just unzip and run.

Screen-shot of CALIdemo V1.0.

World Usability Day

I am attending the Portuguese event of the World Usability Day, focusing usability's new challenges.