This award will support a nine month long-term visit by Professor Narendra Ahuja, Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana, to Japan for a cooperative research project with Dr. Fumio Kishino, Communications Systems Research Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International (ATR) in Osaka. They will be undertaking research in the area of integrated image analysis and visualization. Professor Ahuja's current research includes 1) integration of the information present in diverse image cues for deriving a three-dimensional (3D) interpretation and 2) visually realistic and compact depiction of scenes. The success of a depiction is measured by the extent to which a human observer realistically perceives the desired scene characteristics from the depiction. Dr. Kishino's research is also concerned with both image interpretation and image synthesis, but for images that contain humans. They use a range of image cues related to human body motion in performing the interpretation. They also emphasize greatly the hardware implementation and prototype development issues. The researchers will closely study and compare the two lines of research, and attempt to determine ways in which each PI's research could be enhanced in effectiveness by incorporating the pertinent strengths of the other's activity. Results of the research could provide great military and commercial potential. Improved simulator technology could also be used as a scientific research tool in robotics, eliminating the need for real mobile robots to be built at every robotics laboratory. These robots are expensive to purchase and even more expensive to maintain and program. Both Professor Ahuja and Dr. Kishino are noted for very productive, high quality research. Likewise, both the University of Illinois and ATR are respected in the community for their significant research in the area of computer vision and visualization. It is expected that this collaborative effort will continue after the formal agreement has terminated, and it is further anticipated that useful publications will result from this bilateral effort.
