Depth Vision
18 March, 2007 - 2 comments - Permalink
For the past 5 summers I have been working in a hostel that my parents own and I liked it very much. It's been fun and I've met A LOT of great people that I try my hardest to keep in touch with. This summer however, I decided that it was time for a change.
That change meant that I was in need of a job. I really wanted to do something that was related to my studies but since I am in my second semester I didn't really think I could get anything even closely resembling an IT job.
Fast forward two weeks. I signed up for an introduction to A.I. studies and there they showed us a really huge plexiglas screen that they were using in conjunction with a rear projector to make a huge monitor. One of the people there mentioned that they want to someday have two cameras that would track people standing in front of the screen and thus allowing a virtual character to interact with users.
Next week I talked to one the guys in charge of the A.I. lab and asked if it was a possibility to which he replied "Yes!". Sweet, I have the coolest summer job ever! Me and a girl, that I've worked with a lot on school assignments, will be working on this the whole summer and hopefully make some cool software!
So, what we will be trying to do is merge the data from a regular RGB camera and a very very fancy depth camera called the Swiss Ranger. This awesome camera works by using a bunch of infrared LEDs that light up the environment and use something called Time-of-Flight method (not sure what that means but soon will be!). From that we will have a RGBZ output where Z is for depth values. Hopefully we will be able to use that data to correctly identify miscellaneous objects and/or humans.
This will be a great summer project and will look very nice on our CV in the future. I will definitely post how the project goes and if we make any progress.
That change meant that I was in need of a job. I really wanted to do something that was related to my studies but since I am in my second semester I didn't really think I could get anything even closely resembling an IT job.
Fast forward two weeks. I signed up for an introduction to A.I. studies and there they showed us a really huge plexiglas screen that they were using in conjunction with a rear projector to make a huge monitor. One of the people there mentioned that they want to someday have two cameras that would track people standing in front of the screen and thus allowing a virtual character to interact with users.
Lightbulb!
I thought "Hey, maybe I could do that?"Next week I talked to one the guys in charge of the A.I. lab and asked if it was a possibility to which he replied "Yes!". Sweet, I have the coolest summer job ever! Me and a girl, that I've worked with a lot on school assignments, will be working on this the whole summer and hopefully make some cool software!
So, what we will be trying to do is merge the data from a regular RGB camera and a very very fancy depth camera called the Swiss Ranger. This awesome camera works by using a bunch of infrared LEDs that light up the environment and use something called Time-of-Flight method (not sure what that means but soon will be!). From that we will have a RGBZ output where Z is for depth values. Hopefully we will be able to use that data to correctly identify miscellaneous objects and/or humans.
This will be a great summer project and will look very nice on our CV in the future. I will definitely post how the project goes and if we make any progress.
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... says:
Sweet :D
Erasmus says:
Congrats! Keep up the good work and hey, how about a new blog?