randform

At Carnegie Mellon the group around Alexei Efros developed a technique to reconstruct 3d data from a single outdoor 2d image. With impressive results.
(via slashdot)

We finally managed to put an excerpt of our video documentation of seidesein on the daytar website.

seidesein is an interactive environment, which investigates communication in virtual 3D space.

seidesein can be experienced on a home computer as well as in bigger setups like a virtual reality theatre. This is due to the platform independency of the underlying software called jReality. (see also links above :-))

The images are from the article “Columbia Object Image Library (COIL-100),” by S. A. Nene, S. K. Nayar and H. Murase, (Technical Report CUCS-006-96, February 1996.)
The COIL-100 is a database of 7200 color images of the above 100 objects. Each object was fotographed in 72 different positions, by rotating the above black plate.
The database can be downloaded via ftp from the Columbia University server at: this link.

The collection/database was used in a realtime 100 object recognition system.
I.e. it was made in order to teach a computer to recognize/distinguish the above well chosen ;-) hundred objects. From the intro in the article:” The objects have a wide variety of complex geometric and reflectance characteristics.”

My little remix of the original video at youtube. :-)
The android is the work of electrical engineers at the University of Osaka.
From the article on national geographic news:

“Repliee Q1 appeared on June 9 at the 2005 World Expo in Japan, where she gestured, blinked, spoke, and even appeared to breathe. …the android is partially covered in skinlike silicone. Q1 is powered by a nearby air compressor, and has 31 points of articulation in its upper body.”

Whatsoever- one thing I learned from the video: real (android?) women wear pink jackets.

we might get an up to date flashplayer for linux in the end but until then at least there is a blog about its development at adobe: penguin.swf

Merci to Etienne for the info.