Research Groups and Projects |
The main current and recent research areas inside the Institute include:
Current Institute Grants |
The project will investigate two novel computer-based image analysis processes to prescreen video sequences for abnormal or crime-oriented behaviour. The ultimate goal is to filter out image sequences where uninteresting normal activity is occurring, as well as the much easier sequences where nothing is occurring. The two applications to be investigated are:
1. Detecting, understanding and discriminating between similar types of interactions, such as two people fighting versus meeting and greeting.
2. Analysing crowd scenes, where tracking of individuals is only possible over short time periods, where there might be many hundreds of people simultaneously in view, and where the overall flow of the crowd is more salient than the actions of any individual. The goal is to discriminate between normal behaviour, such as people normally exiting from a football match, and abnormal behaviour, such as when people have to divert around an obstacle (fallen person, fight, etc).
Contact : Bob FisherThis EPSRC funded project combines microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), analogue very large scale integration electronic circuit design (aVLSI), and neural simulation for controlling robots to develop a wind-sensing system based on insect hair cells. It will be implemented in a fully integrated MEMS/aVLSI chip and interfaced to a robot to test in controlling behaviours such as course stabilisation and upwind flight. Important issues to be addressed include: the most effective mechanical designs and the optimal sensor layouts for the task; the use of short-term synaptic plasticity in hardware neural circuits as a means of adaptive preprocessing of MEMS sensor output; development of hardware and software interfaces between aVLSI chips and digital circuits and neural simulations; and the design of insect inspired neural controllers for combining different sensory inputs and responding robustly in complex environments such as turbulent windflow.
Contact : Barbara WebbGrant Agency: EU Framework 6 IST Cognitive systems
Contact : Sethu VijayakumarThe aim of the SPARK Project is to develop new sensing-perceiving-moving artefacts inspired by the basic principles of living systems and based on the concept of "self-organization". Sensors will be treated as devices processing signals distributed in space and also showing non linear time dynamics. Perception will be studied as a result of a spatio-temporal pattern forming process, determined by information deriving from sensors and will directly influence the particular associated motor behaviour. The whole methodology will be implemented in a new architecture, a Spatial-temporal array computer based structure (SPARC), providing a new paradigm for active perception based on principles borrowed from psychology, synergetics, artificial intelligence and nonlinear dynamical systems theory.
The technical objective will be a moving artefact that will actively interact with the environment. It will integrate the sensor stimuli, will create an iconic, abstract and concise representation of the environment under the form of a dynamically emergent pattern in a SPARC based architecture and will generate a sequence of proper motor actions to reach a pre-specified target.
Contact : Barbara Webb
Vacancies |
None at the moment
