Summer Holidays

The deserved resting time was over. For three weeks I've been out of office, in my summer holidays with my wife and my son. Now I'm back to work.

Sandra and Tiago at the end of our holidays.

Master!

Yesterday I defended my MSc thesis. Now I am "Master Alfredo", eh eh eh...

Seriously, if you want to view the presentation used for the defense, it is available for download with demo video (ZIP 13,9MB) or without demo video (ZIP 3.8MB).

Presenting my work.

Another Basket Game

Following the success of the first event, Frederico organised another IMMI group basketball game. Twelve members of our group showed up, including Professor Joaquim Jorge. The result doesn't mather, what is important is the fun we all had.

Playing basketball... or, at least, trying to.

Preliminary presentation for MSc thesis defense

I have just finished the preliminary version of the presentation for my MSc thesis defense. A PDF file with the presentation is available here. I will appreciate any comments or suggestions on it.

No more CG exams to evaluate!

After three entire days evaluating Computer Graphics exams from a second year course and one morning publishing the results, and I've reached the "end of the tunnel". No more exams to evaluate this semester. Yesss!!!!

The IMMI group basketball game

For the first time, Professor Joaquim Jorge, Frederico Figueiredo and Paula Caetano arranged a baskteball match bewteen IMMI group members, followed by a delicious dinner. It was a funny and relaxing afternoon and evening. Now we are counting the days for the next event.

A picture taken during the game. Everybody is enjoying it.

Finished final version of MSc dissertation

Finally I have finished the final version of my dissertation for the degree of Master of Science in Information Systems and Computer Engineering at IST. An electronic version of this document is available for download in PDF (11.8MB) or PS(28.8MB) format.

Started development of editION

I am developing an calligraphic interface for an agents platform. This tool is part of a joint effort between our IMMI group and the GAIPS group to produce a distributed solution to support the development of agent worlds.

Currently, the interface is on the early stage of development. However, we expect that within a few weeks a beta version of this tool will be available.

Screen-shot of an early version of editION.

New contacts

Because I have moved to Taguspark campus, my postal address and telephone contact had changed. However, mail and home pages addresses remain unaltered. Thus, my current contacts are:

Postal Address:

Intelligent Multimodal Interfaces Group, INESC-ID
Taguspark, Edifício IST, Núcleo 7, Piso 2
Avenida Professor Doutor Cavaco Silva
2780-990 Porto Salvo, Portugal

Tel: +351.21.4233567
Fax: +351.21.4233252

Mail: alfredo.ferreira.jr@inesc-id.pt,
Web page (institutional): http://immi.inesc-id.pt/~afj
Web page (personal): http://afj.planetaclix.pt

Moving to Taguspark

Finally, after a long struggle to find a proper room for our group in IST's Taguspark campus, part of the IMMI group are moving there. I was the first to settle down, packing and unpacking my stuff last week. Despite some problems with furniture, which I hope will be solved soon, the room is now usable and all four of us have moved in. Below I depict the actual room layout, while we are waiting for the definitive furniture.

Actual room layout

Introduction changed in my Master Thesis Dissertation

During last weeks I have been rewriting my Master Thesis dissertation according to jury comments. One point focused was the "Introduction" chapter, which was a little bit confusing. Thus, it was completely renewed, suffering deep changes. From all changes made, the more important was a novel description for the system architecture of my approach for sketch and image based retrieval of engineering drawings, illustrated below.

SIBR system architecture.

Bentley-Ottmann algorithm implented in PDdemo

Our algorithm for polygon detection (see paper "Polygon Detection from a Set of Lines") starts by detecting the line segment intersections. To that end, we use the Bentley-Ottmann sweep line algorithm [BO79]. Today, we have implemented the intersection reporting functionality in the PDlib library. Thus, the PDdemo application evolved to version 0.2, which is available for download here.

Screenshot of PDdemo in debug mode

References:
[BO79] J.L.Bentley and T.Ottmann. "Algorithms for reporting and counting geometric intersections. IEEE Transactions on Computers, pages 643-647, 1979.

Teaching Human-Computer Interfaces is time consuming!

During last weeks all my time was consumed by the Human-Computer Interfaces course I teach in IST. I have been correcting and discussing student's projects. Additionaly, the preparation, correction and revision of exams had took several days. Thus, my PhD is on stand by, as well as the correction of my MsC dissertation thesis.

Too much bureaucracy... almost no work.

In last September, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) granted me a scholarship for my PhD studies. Unfortunately, the amount of bureaucracy needed to activate it turns out to be incredibly large. Therefore, I am still trying to gather all documents they need, because every time I go there they ask me for one more document missing or for a document different from one I have, which seems to be unsuitable for them. I am so tired...

Moreover, during the winter semester I am teaching "Human-Computer Interaction" and most of my time in the last few weeks was dedicated to it.

As a result of all this and other stuff, my research work is completely stopped. There are no softer way to describe it. Now, looking ahead I just hope that with the new year I can start a "new life".

Gathering requirements from mould industry

My PhD work is integrated in the EuroTooling21 project, which aims to improve competitiveness in European Mouldmaking and Special Tooling Industry.

Today I attended my first meetings within the EuroTooling21 project. These meetings were held in Marinha Grande on two distinct mould industry companies. There we performed a preliminary task analysis and gathered overall user requirements.

Besides users from the mould industry, other researchers from computer sciences and mechanics department from Instituto Superior Técnico and developers from Partner Solutions participate in these meetings. Thus, it was possible to know our closer partners within the EuroTooling21 project in person, providing a good chance to strengthen the relationships. Additionally, we perform task assignment and definition of next steps.

I consider these meetings as the kick-off for my PhD thesis, since I do nothing until now. Therefore, in my point of view I started my PhD on December 3rd, 2004. Let's see how my work goes from here....

PDdemo interface developed

In order to provide a independent component that implements the Polygon Detection algorithm (see paper "Polygon Detection from a Set of Lines") , as well as a platform for testing it we are currently developing in C++ the PDlib library and the PDdemo application. Today we finished the first version of the test application. This version comprises only the user interface with a few functionalities but does not include the detection algorithm yet. PDdemo ver. 0.1 is available for dowload here.

Screenshot of PDdemo




Deployment of AFJ's PhD Blog

This blog was launched today with the intend to report in detail every step made during my PhD thesis. However, I haven't started to work specificaly in my PhD because I am reviewing my master thesis dissertation.
Therefore, most of the next posts will be about my MsC instead of my PhD. Nevertheless, they are closely related and some research done in the MsC will be studied more deeply during the PhD.