Human Computer Interaction

The long term goal of this project is to allow for face-to-face communication between a user and the computer, creating a much more natural interface than a keyboard and mouse. We mainly focus on creating realistic graphics, but we do integrate several different systems with our graphics systems.

  • Kare

    • Project website

    Kare is a multi-lingual conversational agent. This project was started at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and we continue to work on the project. Currently we are working on an improved eye model, a 3D (as in display) version of Kare, improved vision, and improved speech recognition.

  • Prosody

    • Synthetic speech has very little control over prosody (how we say something, the rythm of the speech). However, for creating animated speech we wish to have this control. Also, how does prosody affect the visual signal. That is, if a syllable is emphasized, how will that look differently than when it is not emphasized. The goal of this project is to add prosdoc control to synthetic speech and to create a model of prosody for animated speech.

  • Realistic, Real-time Rendering

    • We need our facial animation system to be real-time if we are to use it as an interface. It, not only has to be real-time, but there should be cycles left over to do other work. The visual realism of such a system is extremely important. We are currently working on converting existing shaders to programmable graphics hardware, and developing new techniques.

Computer Vision

  • Image Registration

  • Diffeomorphic Point Matching

  • 3D Fingerprint Matching

  • Facial Warping

  • Cross Country Map Registration

Scientific Visualization

  • Nueces Bay Visualization Project

    Project website

    Nueces Bay is part of the Nueces Estuary. The estuary is home to countless species. In 1985 Choke Canyon was built upriver of Nueces Bay and limited the freshwater inflow into the bay. The changes in fresh water inflow caused significant changes in the salinity of the bay. Creating a need for water management in the estuary. A partnership was created between the City of Corpus Christi, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (now Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) , and Texas Water Development Board. Water flow management has been monitored in the Nueces Estuary since November 1991. The purpose of this project is to create a visualization of the salinity of Nueces Bay along with other data for the bay. This visualization can be used to not only monitor the bay, but be used to investigate relationships between the salinity and other factors that may exist, and also to evaluate the accuracy of a mathematical model of the salinity.

  • Water Levels

Other Projects

  • Tree Growth

    • Project website

    This project grows a tree based on internal and external factors. Some of the external factors are: water availability, light availability and quality, and space. While internal factors (genetics) include: branching characteristics, growth rates, internode lengths, auxin levels, and self-pruning. Along with tree growth we are working on improved rendering.