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RI SEMINAR -- Victor S. Grinberg



ABSTRACT

This talk represents some results achieved by the group of researchers and graduate students under Mel Siegel.

Computer Graphics is the science, technology, art, pastime (pick whichever you prefer) of visualizing still and/or moving imaginary scenes with the help of computers. In a variety of applications the goal of Computer Graphics is to create a 2-dimensional scene on the computer screen that is indistinguishable from a 3-dimensional scene viewed through a transparent window. One thing dramatically hinders this goal: the absence of depth perception. Depth perception is mainly achieved in real life because we look at an object with two eyes. Two images of the object on the retinae are slightly different resulting in visual depth perception. This is called the stereo effect.

The Cyclops had only one eye and therefore did not have much depth perception. Odysseus with his two eyes did have depth perception and this advantage helped him to beat the Cyclops.

To achieve a stereo effect in Computer Graphics one needs:

  1. to create a pair of images corresponding to the left and the right eye views;
  2. to separate these images so that each eye sees only the image intended for it.

An important and wide-spread technique for doing this is to place both images on the same screen, and then employ some separation trick for the eyes; sharing the same screen imposes rigorous geometrical constraints which we discuss.

We also will discuss the simulation of stereoscopic optical devices in Computer Graphics, i. e., the geometry that must be used in order to create screen images that are indistinguishable from the real scene viewed through stereo optical devices such as camera pairs, binoculars, stereo-microscopes, periscopes, etc.

In conclusion we will show how to simulate various types of geometrical aberrations that occur in optical devices such as spherical aberration, distortion, etc. It is important because in the process of human (stereo) image understanding geometrical aberrations may result in perceptual artefacts that have not yet been isolated and quantified; we are working toward this end, and eventually toward "rectification" of the most perceptually serious aberrations. The design of optical stereo devices is one of the possible applications of this simulation.


BIOGRAPHY

Victor S. Grinberg graduated the department of Mechanics and Mathematics of Kharkov State University (USSR) in 1964. He defended his thesis "Determinization of Graphs and Synthesis of Finite Automata" in the Institute of Cybernetics, Kiev (USSR) in 1973 and got the Candidate of Science degree in Mathematical Cybernetics.

Professional Interests: Combinatorial Optimization, Computability, Combinatorial Properties of Convex Sets, Finite Automata Theory, Sorting, Merging, Scheduling.

In 1990 moved from the USSR to the USA and since that time Project Scientist, Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University


Christopher Lee | chrislee@ri.cmu.edu
Last modified: Tue Aug 29 11:34:48 1995