Robust Bundle Adjustment for Structure from Motion
Structure from motion (SFM) is the problem of reconstructing the geometry of a scene from a stream of images. In this problem, the geometry of the scene must be inferred from images, along with the camera pose parameters. Bundle adjustment (BA) is a refinement method used to improve SFM solutions. It consists in simultaneously improving a set of initial estimates for all parameters (structure and camera pose) by minimizing a global cost function. It is generally considered to be highly accurate, and so is typically used as a last refinement step in most current SFM methods. Unfortunately, estimating the pose of the camera from a stream of images is an ill-conditioned problem. We thus propose a BA adjustment formulation which does not involve solving for the camera orientations. We tested this approach on several real world models. The numerical results obtained show that this approach is much less affected by noise than traditional BA.

title: Simplifying the Reconstruction of 3D Models using Parameter Elimination
abstract: Reconstructing large models from images is a significant challenge for computer vision, computer graphics, and related fields. In this paper, we present an approach for simplifying the reconstruction process by mathematically eliminating external camera parameters. This results in less parameters to estimate and in an overall significantly more robust and accurate reconstruction. We reformulate the problem in such a manner as to be able to identify invariants, eliminate superfluous parameters, and measure the performance of our formulation under various conditions. We compare a two-step camera orientation-free method, where the majority of the points are reconstructed using a linear equation set, and a camera position-and- orientation free method, using a degree-two equation set. Both approaches use a full perspective camera and are applied to synthetic and real-world datasets.

title: Name Disambiguation Using Atomic Clusters
abstract: Name ambiguity is a critical problem in many applications, in particular in the online bibliography systems, such as DBLP and CiteSeer. Previously, several clustering based methods have been proposed although, the problem still presents to be a big challenge for both research and industry communities. In this paper, we present a complementary study to the problem from another point of view. We propose an approach of finding atomic clusters to improve the performance of existing clustering-based methods. We conducted experiments on a dataset from a real-world system: Arnetminer.org. Experiments results show that significant improvements can be obtained by using the proposed atomic clusters finding approach (about +8% and +27% improvements depending on different clustering methods).

title: Camera Calibration from a Single Frame of Planar Pattern
abstract: A method to calibrate camera from a single frame of planar pattern is presented in this paper. For a camera model with four intrinsic parameters and visible lens distortion, the principal point and distortion coefficients are firstly determined through analysis of the distortion in an image. The distortion is then removed. Finally, the other intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the camera are obtained through direct linear transform followed by bundle adjustment. Theoretically, the method makes it possible to analyze the calibration result at the level of a single frame. Practically, such a method provides a easy way to calibrate a camera used in industrial vision system on line and used in desktop vision system. Experimental results of both simulated data and real images validate the method.

title: Maintaining software product lines — an industrial practice
abstract: Improved product quality and accelerated software development through systematic reuse of common software assets have been the key attractions behind software product lines. Magnitude of improvement in industrial practices has been reported in the literature. However, experiences with software product line also showed that it is a rather chall enging task to maintain software product lines and families over a long period of time. The time and resources needed to manage and maintain product lines increase and quality degrades as product lines evolve. This paper describes an industrial practice of software product line maintenance and evolution. The conventional software maintenance process is enhanced with data mining techniques to uncover lost reuse pattern and defects, maintain reuse, and reduce design erosion of product lines. Case studies with mobile phone product lines are described.

title: Dynamic provisioning with availability guarantee for differentiated services in survivable mesh networks
abstract: Survivability is a key concern in modern network design in order to achieve fast service restorability against network failures. This paper investigates the problem of survivable dynamic connection provisioning in general telecom backbone networks, which are mesh structured. These networks employ optical fibers, which may fail due to network outages such as fiber cuts, etc. Our study applies to survivability of optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) as well as multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) networks. For survivability study, we assume differentiated services where connections may have different availability requirements, so they may be provisioned differently with protection (if needed) based on their availability requirements and current network state. Therefore, it may be possible that connections with the same source, destination, and availability requirement are provisioned differently (unprotected, shared-path protected, or dedicated-path protected) at different times based on current network state. Such differentiated provisioning can provide diverse levels of service performance and achieve network resource optimization flexibly. Our main contributions are as follows. First, we develop an analytical model to quantify the availabilities of connections with various protection modes, i.e., unprotected, dedicated-path protected, and shared-path protected. Particular emphasis is placed on computing a connection's availability with shared-path protection by employing the link-vector technique, because this technique can maximally explore the sharing potential among backup paths and achieve bandwidth-assignment flexibility. Based on the mathematical model, we then present a novel provisioning strategy for dynamic connection requests in which multiple levels of services are provided and different protection schemes may be applied to different connections. The strategy jointly considers both connection availability satisfaction and resource optimization. Numerical results show very good accuracy of our model and high effectiveness of our provisioning strategy

title: Advances in Fuzzy Method for Natural Computing
abstract: Both natural computing and fuzzy method exhibit human-like mental processing. Natural computing is the field of research that works with computational techniques inspired in part by natural systems. Fuzzy method is an alternative to traditional notions of set membership and logic, and it occurs in many applications of engineering, science and medicine. This paper presents a survey of recent advances in fuzzy method for natural computing, such as fuzzy artificial neural networks, fuzzy genetic algorithms, fuzzy ant colony optimization, fuzzy artificial immune systems, etc. We utilize uncertainty handling capacity of fuzzy method for modeling ambiguity, and the learning ability of natural computing for efficiently traversing large search spaces.