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Intel Releases Open-Source Stereoscopic Software
Eslyjah writes "Intel has released a software library that allows computers to "see" in 3D. The library is available for Windows and Linux, under a BSDish license. Possible early applications include lipreading input. Check out the CNN Story, Intel Press Release, and project home page."
Being able to see all those lusty ladies in 3d, it might use too much bandwidth downloading pr0n.
When it is missing the leading "<"! Try this
Possible early applications include lipreading input.
Didn't we learn anything from 2001? You would think that people wouldn't be so eager to teach computers to read lips.
Very useful; especially being somewhat open.
Sure, it might sound a bit far fetched.
But.. a computer being able to actually construct something in 3 dimensions instead of simply a colorfield has *huge* implications with regards to image recognition.. it really does.
Take a single image of, say, a user's hands, for gesture recognition. How do you recognize the hands from the background? Color.... heuristics.. and what not.
But now.. it's simple. It's the stuff that's close to you! It's a completely different way to look at things.
This is not for rendering in 3d, but for allowing a machine to build a 3d model (internally) of the environment it uses. I assume it is based on the same sort of binocular mechanism as animal eyes, but the algorithms to build the internal structure are probably pretty advanced.
A cool application (I haven't seen if they've done this yet) is rendering in Open GL the internal view of what the robot eyes see. It would allow you to walk through a building, and then have a 3D model for various other uses. Reverse engineering blueprints.
THis would be great technology to have on any mars lander, or even just to analyze the data sent back.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
What's the use? Well, besides the obvious uses in architecture, etc., how about being able to play (insert favorite 1st person shooter game here) in your house?
Geeze, now that I think about it, maybe this isn't such a good idea. What would JonKatz think?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Too bad /.'ers here (at least the first 18 posts) don't see the benefits of this.
How about a way to have a PC recognize the position of your fingers and hands. You could use this to manipulate shapes in 3D in a 3D rendering and animation program WITHOUT SPECIAL GLOVES. You'd simply gesture into something like 3DStudioMax, Lightwave, or Caligari TrueSpace and create shapes by molding them with your fingers.
Or wouldn't it be cool to develop a "hand gesture API" which you could use to say play a karate game??? Think about a 3D Bruce Lee in front of you kicking, and you moving your OWN hands in front of the monitor to block it (and if you wear those cool 3D shutter glasses now common on graphics cards you will essentially have a low-budget VR system).
Or how about a driving game where you use no driving wheel but rather simply move your hands IN THE AIR. The game could be smart enough to recognize when you shift your hands away from an invissible steering wheel to grab an invissible gear stick on your side.
Or how about a tool to allow people like Stephen Hawkins gesture expressions and small movements in the air and have the computer react to these actions (like moving a wheelchair around, turning lights on and off, calling on the phone, changing TV channels, etc).
Think about the possibilities!!!
I honestly cannot think of any other logical uses for this library.
One word: mensuration.
Read that again. It's not a typo. Mensuration (which generally means the act or process of measuring) specifically means figuring out how tall buildings or features are from satellite photographs. Traditionally it involves calculating heights trigonometrically based on the time of day, latitude, and angle of lens inclination from which the photograph was taken, using shadows as points of reference.
This is not a research project. It's a very practical process, with tons of applications in the commercial world.
My point is that there are a lot of image analysis techniques that you've probably never heard of before. Don't mistake a lack of experience on your part for a lack of usefulness on theirs.
While i have to say that Intel's OpenCV library rocks (for a number of reasons), stereoscopic vision is nothing new. The cnn article is more or less crap ("Until today, computer vision applications has been restricted to two dimensions
;-) The inclusion of stereo vision will be cool for people trying to write vision applications, but it's not advancing the state of the art.
"? nice try...) It's mishmash of reporter hype and stock text which describes computer vision in general ("Over the next 5 to 10 years, Intel Corp. expects computer vision to play a significant role in simplifying the interaction between users and computers"). The Sussex Computer Vision Teach Files page has a reasonable description of stereoscopic vision from 1994. Lip reading is not really a 3D problem, so stereoscopic capabilites aren't going to help much. Many of the other uses- 3D environment modeling, object modeling and recognition, etc, are being worked on (again, the algorithms aren't new, this is just a new open source implentation) but they're not easy.
I don't mean to sound pessimistic, though. OpenCV is really cool, both as a corporate contribution to open source, and as a programming library even if you never look at the code. And the Matlab interface means fewer MSVC++ sessions which end with me feeling homicidal
Here's how you do make stereoscopic images with a digital camera:
Take a picture like you normally would, but be mindful of the position and angle of your camera.
2) Snap a picture.
3) If the subject you're photographing is close to you, take a small step to the right. If the subject is far away, take a large step to the right.
4) Aim your camera at the subject and photograph it again.
5) Pull up both images in the photo editor of your choice.
6) Arrange the photos side by side. The first image you took should be on the left, the second image you took should be on the right.
7) Sit directly infront of your monitor, and blur your eyes. If you cant blur them, try crossing them slightly. Try to focus on "the picture in the middle". If you still cant do it, hold up a pencil (eraser-side up) exactly halfway between your eyeball and the screen. Focus on the eraser. The image on the screen should pop out at you in stereoscopic 3D.
For some good examples of a stereoscopic images I took, go here. Try the picture of the steering wheel first...Its really easy. You'll also see a number of stereo photos of Tumacoccori, an 18th century Spanish mission that got the shit beat out of it by native americans. You'll also find another picture thats rather interesting---It's a downward view of a deactivated nuclear missile still in the silo at the Titan Missile Museum outside of Tucson. The view extends about 20 floors below ground. If I were to have taken this photo in 1981 versus 2001, I would have been shot on sight.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag