VISION-LIST Digest 1988 10 21

Published in

· 6 Jan 2024

Vision-List Digest	Fri Oct 21 14:55:25 PDT 1988 

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Today's Topics: 

 FULCRUM  
 gathering dense image sequences 

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Date: Friday, 21 October 1988 10:22:36 EDT 
From: Dave.McKeown@maps.cs.cmu.edu 
Subject: FULCRUM  
Status: RO 

FULCRUM is an interactive map display system that uses a video 
disk to store digitized maps at various resolutions.  There is 
a graphic man-machine interface that allows a user to query the 
display for lat/lon/elevation, a gazetteer, and the ability to 
generate and place icons.  It is not so much automated mapping 
(ie., cultural or terrain feature extraction from imagery, or 
automated map name placement, or automated map digitization)  
as it is a way to interface the display of precompiled cartographic 
information with a spatial database of geographic facts. 
It is (was) developed by a company called Interactive Television 
Company in Virgina, but I don't know any other particulars. 
Cheers, Dave 

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Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 14:22:07 PDT 
From: pkahn@meridian.ads.com (Phil Kahn) 
Subject: gathering dense image sequences 
Status: RO 

 
I thought this might be of interest to those of you trying to acquire 
controlled motion image sequences for testing or developing algorithms. 

I am particularly interested in acquiring dense image sequences; that 
is, imagery in which objects don't move more than about a single pixel 
between frames (as described in Bolles, Baker, & Marimont IJCV, V1, 
1987; Kahn, PAMI 7/85 and CVPR88 for a better description). 

Smooth and controlled motion can be simply obtained by using a special 
dolly and track available from most Motion Picture Equipment and 
Supplies rental services (check the phone book). The movie industry 
uses this to obtain smooth translation of the camera while 
changing camera position.  Your tripod mounts on top of the dolly 
(about 2' x 3') and fixed positions may be marked along the track 
position in order to precisely control the position of the camera on 
the ground plane. Tracks come in 4' and 8' sections.  It only cost $25 
p/day for the dolly and $8 p/day for each 8' track section. For $50 
p/day, we were able to acquire very smooth and precise motion. 
Because of drift in robots, it is even more precise and controllable 
than using a mobile robot vehicle to acquire test imagery. 

 

 
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