A Multimedia System for Route Sharing and Video-Based Navigation
Trip planning and in-vehicle navigation are crucial tasks for easier and safer driving. The existing navigation systems are based on machine intelligence without allowing human knowledge incorporation. These systems give turn guidance with abstract visual instruction and have not reached the potential of minimizing driver's cognitive load, which is the amount of mental processing power required. In this paper, we describe the development of a multimedia system that makes driving and navigation safer and easier by offering tools for route sharing in trip planning and video-based route guidance during driving. The system provides a multimodal interface for a user to share his/her route with others by drawing on a digital map, naturally incorporating human knowledge into the trip planning process. The system gives driving instructions by overlaying navigational arrows onto live video and providing synthesized voice to reduce the driver's cognitive load, in addition to presenting landmark images for key maneuvers. We describe our observations which had motivated the development of the system, detailed architecture and user interfaces, and finally discusses our initial test findings in the real-road driving context

title: Automatic detection and recognition of signs from natural scenes
abstract: In this paper, we present an approach to automatic detection and recognition of signs from natural scenes, and its application to a sign translation task. The proposed approach embeds multiresolution and multiscale edge detection, adaptive searching, color analysis, and affine rectification in a hierarchical framework for sign detection, with different emphases at each phase to handle the text in different sizes, orientations, color distributions and backgrounds. We use affine rectification to recover deformation of the text regions caused by an inappropriate camera view angle. The procedure can significantly improve text detection rate and optical character recognition (OCR) accuracy. Instead of using binary information for OCR, we extract features from an intensity image directly. We propose a local intensity normalization method to effectively handle lighting variations, followed by a Gabor transform to obtain local features, and finally a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) method for feature selection. We have applied the approach in developing a Chinese sign translation system, which can automatically detect and recognize Chinese signs as input from a camera, and translate the recognized text into English.

title: Automatic detection of signs with affine transformation
abstract: In this paper, we propose an approach for detecting signs from natural scenes. The approach efficiently embeds multiresolution, adaptive search, and affine rectification algorithms in a hierarchical framework, with different emphases at each layer. We combine in multi-resolution and multi-scale edge detection techniques to effectively detect text in different sizes. By using the cites from text inside the image, we introduce affine rectification transformation to recover deformation of the text region caused by air inappropriate camera view angle. This procedure can significantly improve text detection rate and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) accuracy. Experimental results have demonstrated feasibility of the proposed algorithms. We have applied the proposed approach to a Chinese sign translation system, which can automatically detect Chinese text input from a camera, recognize the text, and translate the recognized text into English or voice stream.

title: Speechalator: Two-Way Speech-to-Speech Translation in Your Hand
abstract: This demonstration involves two-way automatic speech-to-speech translation on a consumer off-the-shelf PDA. This work was done as part of the DARPA-funded Babylon project, investigating better speech-to-speech translation systems for communication in the field. The development of the Speechalator software-based translation system required addressing a number of hard issues, including a new language for the team (Egyptian Arabic), close integration on a small device, computational efficiency on a limited platform, and scalable coverage for the domain.

title: A PDA-based sign translator
abstract: We propose an effective approach for a PDA-based sign system and present the sign translator. Its main functions include three parts: detection, recognition and translation. Automatic detection and recognition of text in natural scenes is a prerequisite for the automatic sign translator. In order to make the system robust for text detection in various natural scenes, the detection approach efficiently embeds multi-resolution, adaptive search in a hierarchical framework with different emphases at each layer. We also introduce an intensity-based OCR method to recognize characters in various fonts and lighting conditions, where we employ the Gabor transform to obtain local features, and LDA for selection and classification of features. The recognition rate is 92.4% for the testing set obtained from the natural sign. A sign is different from the normal used sentence. It is brief with a lot of abbreviations and place nouns. We only briefly introduce a rule-based place name translation. We have integrated all these functions in a PDA, which can capture sign images, auto segment and recognize the Chinese sign, and translate it into English.

title: A robust approach for recognition of text embedded in natural scenes
abstract: In this paper, we propose a robust approach for recognition of text embedded in natural scenes. Instead of using binary information as most other OCR systems do, we extract features from intensity of an image directly. We utilize a local intensity normalization method to effectively handle lighting variations. We then employ Gabor transform to obtain local features, and use the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for selection and classification of features. The proposed method has been applied to a Chinese sign recognition task. The system can recognize a vocabulary of 3755 level I Chinese characters in the Chinese national standard character set GB2312-80 with various print fonts. We tested the system on 1630 test characters in sign images captured from the natural scenes, and the recognition accuracy was 92.46%. We have integrated the system into our automatic Chinese sign translation system.

title: Design of an Automatic Control System for Coal Preparation Process
abstract: In this paper, an automatic control system based on industrial control computers (IPC) and a programmable logic controller is designed by using field bus, PLC and configuration techniques to solve the automatic control problem of coal preparation process. The cross complex process control and fault processing are implanted by PLC, and configuration program provides friendly interface to user. Compared with traditional relay control system, this system has advantages of simplified operation, convenient maintenance and good adaptability. Practical production shows that this system has the characteristics of steady performance, high efficiency and economical benefit.

title: Methods and Simulations for the Protein Folding
abstract: Corrosion of metals in contact with liquid systems is reduced by adding to the system a small amount of an amino carboxylic acid containing at least one hydrophobic group in combination with another nitrogen containing compound. The other compound is preferably an ether amine or a quaternary ammonium compound which also contain hydrophobic groups. The combination of substances is particularly useful for preventing corrosion in different areas of oil recovery and in petroleum industry.

title: Spectral Unmixing Technique Based on Flexibly Selected Endmembers
abstract: In traditional spectral unmixing methods of hyperspectral imagery, all endmembers (EMs) take part in the process of each pixel unmixing, and each EM is invariable in the whole processing. This kind of ways discounts unmixing accuracy by introducing some EMs unrelated with mixed pixel to be analyzed, and by the inaccuracy representation of each class by a fixed EM. So the traditional way of spectral unmixing can not get satisfied result. In this case, the paper proposes spectral unmixng ways based on flexibly selected EMs to improve unmixing accuracy. In the first way, partly EMs corresponding to classes of interest are selected to be used in the whole process of spectral unmixing. In the second way, related EMs of a mixed pixel are concluded by utilizing spatial information, then spectral unmixing is done with only related classes considered. In the third way, each class EM is adjusted regionally in each locally divided area. And so, more accuracy EMs are used in spectral unmixing. Experimental results show that spectral unmixing based on flexibly selected EMs can get better performance.

title: Model-based development of dynamically adaptive software
abstract: Increasingly, software should dynamically adapt its behavior at run-time in response to changing conditions in the supporting computing and communication infrastructure, and in the surrounding physical environment. In order for an adaptive program to be trusted, it is important to have mechanisms to ensure that the program functions correctly during and after adaptations. Adaptive programs are generally more difficult to specify, verify, and validate due to their high complexity. Particularly, when involving multi-threaded adaptations, the program behavior is the result of the collaborative behavior of multiple threads and software components. This paper introduces an approach to create formal models for the behavior of adaptive programs. Our approach separates the adaptation behavior and non-adaptive behavior specifications of adaptive programs, making the models easier to specify and more amenable to automated analysis and visual inspection. We introduce a process to construct adaptation models, automatically generate adaptive programs from the models, and verify and validate the models. We illustrate our approach through the development of an adaptive GSM-oriented audio streaming protocol for a mobile computing application.

title: Research and Practice in Undergraduate Embedded System Course
abstract: Embedded systems are becoming very common and meantime create a high demand for hardware and software engineer to support the development of IT. The higher education institutions are facing the need to update their embedded system syllabus. In this paper, we will share our experiences in the development of an undergraduate embedded systems course. This paper describes the design, implementation and teaching style of Application & Principle of Embedded System course in Department of Electrical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology. The paper also presents the challenges encountered due to broad knowledge background and how to achieve the right balance between theory and practice. We also introduce how co-operation between BIT and INTEL in Embedded System Joint Lab.