Research
Since its inception, BVI has been the umbrella for many new research activities across all partner Departments. These include: the modelling of camouflage and its role in improving the detection of difficult targets in an image or video; low light imaging; anatomical and retinal imaging, animal tracking and identification, the analysis of historical works of art; the study of how everyday motor behaviour is controlled by visual information; the understanding and modelling of how the central nervous system processes visual inputs; and the development of new image quality metrics. BVI recently received an award of £0.4M from the Wellcome Trust to establish a unique state-of-the-art facility that will enable the creation of a wide variety of visual environments in order to measure everyday behaviour (e.g. locomotion, head, eye and hand movements).
BVI has been highly successful in stimulating research interaction and collaboration across the University and with external partners.
Projects
Camouflage
An obvious way to hide something is to make it like the background, which is called “crypsis”, and experiments with paper moths are contributing to the understanding of this kind of camouflage. Innes Cuthill, Tom Troscianko and colleagues have developed a simple method for testing the effectiveness of crypsis. Small triangles of paper are printed with the relevant pattern and pinned to trees in Bristol’s Leigh Woods. Attached to the middle of each triangle is a dead mealworm, which birds find delicious, and the number of mealworms eaten over time is recorded. This research found that high-contrast elements (i.e., blobs) located near the border of the object increase the “survival” times of the paper moths, and parallel studies with human “predators” show that this and other principles of camouflage generalise across animals with very different visual systems. [ Nature, 434, 72-74.]
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ViewNet
ViewNet is a 1.5M GBP project jointly funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board, the EPSRC and industrial partners. The aim is to develop the next generation of distributed localisation and user-assisted mapping systems, based on the fusion of multiple sensing technologies, including visual SLAM, inertial devices, UWB and GPS.
The target application is the rapid mapping and visualisation of previously unseen environments. It is a multidisciplinary collaboration between the University and a consortium of market leading technology companies and government agencies led by 3C Research. The project is being led by Andrew Calway and Walterio Mayol-Cuevas from the Computer Vision Group and Angela Doufexi and Mark Beach from the Centre for Communications Research in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
Spot The Penguin: non-invasive field biology
Our research aims at providing non-invasive solutions to problems of field biology and to better understand and conserve endangered species. Specifically we are developing hardware and software to permit remote monitoring and identification of large populations using techniques that originated in computer vision and human biometrics. Our initial work has been centred around the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus).
We have constructed an autonomously operating prototype system capable of monitoring and recognising individual African penguins in their natural environment without tagging or otherwise disturbing the animals. Currently, we are commissioning a permanent monitoring system on Robben Island for an entire penguin colony of nearly 20,000 individuals.
Find out more at www.spotthepenguin.com
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