Computer vision aims to detect and reconstruct features of surfaces from the images produced by cameras, in some way mimicking the way in which humans reconstruct features of the world around them by using their eyes. In this book the authors describe research in computer vision aimed at recovering the 3D shape of surfaces from image sequences of their 'outlines'. They provide all the necessary background in differential geometry (assuming knowledge of elementary algebra and calculus) and in the analysis of visual motion, emphasising intuitive visual understanding of the geometric techniques with computer-generated illustrations. They also give a thorough introduction to the mathematical techniques and the details of the implementations and apply the methods to data from real images using the most current techniques.

This is the 70th encyclopaedia of library and information science. It covers topics such as: intelligent systems for problem analysis in organizations; interactive system design; international models of school library development; lexicalization in natural language generation; and more.

The ?eld of robotics continues to ?ourish and develop. In common with general scienti?c investigation, new ideas and implementations emerge quite spontaneously and these are discussed, used, discarded or subsumed at c- ferences, in the reference journals, as well as through the Internet. After a little more maturity has been acquired by the new concepts, then archival publication as a scienti?c or engineering monograph may occur. The goal of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics is to publish new developments and advances in the ?elds of robotics research – rapidly and informally but with a high quality. It is hoped that prospective authors will welcome the opportunity to publish a structured presentation of some of the emerging robotics methodologies and technologies. The edited volume by Antonio Bicchi, Henrik Christensen and Domenico Prattichizzo is the outcome of the second edition of a workshop jointly sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. Noticeably, the previous volume was published in the Springer Lecture Notes on Control and Information Sciences. The authors are recognised as leading scholars internationally. A n- ber of challenging control problems on the forefront of today’s research in robotics and automation are covered, with special emphasis on vision, sensory-feedback control, human-centered robotics, manipulation, planning, ?exible and cooperative robots, assembly systems.

This volume gives an overview on recent developments for various applications of modern engineering design. Different engineering disciplines such as mechanical, materials, computer and process engineering provide the foundation for the design and development of improved structures, materials and processes. The modern design cycle is characterized by an interaction of different disciplines and a strong shift to computer-based approaches where only a few experiments are performed for verification purposes. A major driver for this development is the increased demand for cost reduction, which is also connected to environmental demands. In the transportation industry (e.g. automotive or aerospace), this is connected with the demand for higher fuel efficiency, which is related to the operational costs and the lower harm for the environment. One way to fulfil such requirements are lighter structures and/or improved processes for energy conversion. Another emerging area is the interaction of classical engineering with the health and medical sector. In this book, many examples of the mentioned design applications are presented.

Online applications have been gaining wide acceptance among the general public. Companies like Amazon, Google, Yahoo! and NetFlicks have been doing extremely well over the last few years largely because of people becoming more comfortable and trusting of the Internet. The increasing acceptance of online products makes it increasingly important to address some of the scientific techniques involved in developing efficient 3D online systems.The topics discussed in this book broadly cover four categories: networking issues in online multimedia; joint texture-mesh simplification and view independent transmission; view dependent transmission and server-side rendering; content and background creation; and creating simple online games.

Motivated by a variational model concerning the depth of the objects in a picture and the problem of hidden and illusory contours, this book investigates one of the central problems of computer vision: the topological and algorithmic reconstruction of a smooth three dimensional scene starting from the visible part of an apparent contour. The authors focus their attention on the manipulation of apparent contours using a finite set of elementary moves, which correspond to diffeomorphic deformations of three dimensional scenes. A large part of the book is devoted to the algorithmic part, with implementations, experiments, and computed examples. The book is intended also as a user's guide to the software code appcontour, written for the manipulation of apparent contours and their invariants. This book is addressed to theoretical and applied scientists working in the field of mathematical models of image segmentation.

This new edition describes pressure and temperature sensitive paints (PSP and TSP) in global surface pressure and temperature measurements in aerodynamics and fluid mechanics. The book includes the latest progress in paint formulations, instrumentation, and steady and unsteady aerodynamic measurements in various facilities including low-speed, transonic, supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels. The updated technical aspects of PSP and TSP in the book will be useful for students and researchers in experimental aerodynamics and fluid mechanics.

Automatic person authentication, the identification and verification of an individual as such, has increasingly been acknowledged as a significant aspect of various security applications. Various recognition and identification systems have been based on biometrics utilizing biometric features such as fingerprint, face, retina scans, iris patterns, hand geometry, DNA traces, gait, and others. This book originates from an international summer school on biometrics, held in Alghero, Italy, in June 2003. The seven revised tutorial lectures by leading researchers introduce the reader to biometrics-based person authentication, fingerprint recognition, gait recognition, various aspects of face recognition and face detection, topologies for biometric recognition, and hand detection. Also included are the four best selected student papers, all dealing with face recognition.