Previous methods on text image motion deblurring seldom consider the sparse characteristics of the blur kernel. This paper proposes a new text image motion deblurring method by exploiting the sparse properties of both text image itself and kernel. It incorporates the L0-norm for regularizing the blur kernel in the deblurring model, besides the L0sparse priors for the text image and its gradient. Such a L0-norm-based model is efficiently optimized by half-quadratic splitting coupled with the fast conjugate descent method. To further improve the quality of the recovered kernel, a structure-preserving kernel denoising method is also developed to filter out the noisy pixels, yielding a clean kernel curve. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed method. The source code and results are available at: https://github.com/shenjianbing/text-image-deblur.

One of the main challenges in a projector-camera system is to be able to project on an arbitrary surface and compensate color changes due to the color of the projection surface. This task becomes dramatically more difficult in case the projection surface changes dynamically. Even a slight displacement of the surface breaks the photometric compensation and visible artifacts may occur. An approach that is able to compensate for a dynamic scene is of great importance since it expands the application range of such a system. In this paper, a method that requires only a single frame in order to adapt its photometric compensation to the new surface is demonstrated. Furthermore, it is compared with another state-of-the-art method that claims one-frame delay compensation. In addition, the complex characterization of a DLP projector is addressed. The results prove that not only our approach outperforms the pre-existing method but also it is robust against challenging surfaces with sharp and saturated color patches, as the ones in a real environment.

The notion of “movement qualities” is central in contemporary dance; it describes the manner in which a movement is executed. Movement qualities convey information revealing movement expressiveness; their use has strong potential for movement-based interaction with applications in arts, entertainment, education, or rehabilitation. The purpose of our research is to design and evaluate interactive reflexive visuals for movement qualities. The theoretical basis for this research is drawn from a collaboration with the members of the international dance company Emio Greco|PC to study their formalization of movement qualities. We designed a pedagogical interactive installation called Double Skin/Double Mind (DS/DM) for the analysis and visualization of movement qualities through physical model-based interactive renderings. In this article, we first evaluate dancers’ perception of the visuals as metaphors for movement qualities. This evaluation shows that, depending on the physical model parameterization, the visuals are capable of generating dynamic behaviors that the dancers associate with DS/DM movement qualities. Moreover, we evaluate dance students’ and professionals’ experience of the interactive visuals in the context of a dance pedagogical workshop and a professional dance training. The results of these evaluations show that the dancers consider the interactive visuals to be a reflexive system that encourages them to perform, improves their experience, and contributes to a better understanding of movement qualities. Our findings support research on interactive systems for real-time analysis and visualization of movement qualities, which open new perspectives in movement-based interaction design.

Despite numerous efforts on blur measurement of partially blurred images, there still lacks an effective blur measure that is both pixel-wise and locally sharp consistent. The paper proposes a novel method with two contributions to overcome this limitation: 1) A new pixel-based blur metric, Multi-resolution Singular Value (MSV), which leverages the average singular value of high frequency bands to measure the blur of each pixel, and 2) a locally continuous strategy, maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) based refinement, that ensures local continuity by imposing the local sharp consistency on pixel blur in a local correcting process. Experimental results show that our method is effective to smoothly measure the partially blurred images without local discontinuity.

Situated in the context of multimedia browsing, this study concerns perceptual processes involved in searching for an audiovisual object displayed among several distractors. The aim of the study is to increase the perceptual saliency of the target in order to enhance the search process. As blurring distractors and maintaining the target sharp has proved to be a great facilitator of visual search, we propose combining visual blur with an audio blur analogue to improve multimodal search. Three perceptual experiments were performed in which participants had to retrieve an audiovisual object from a set of six competing stimuli. The first two experiments explored the effect of blur level on unimodal search tasks. A third experiment investigated the influence of an audio and visual modality combination with both modalities cued on an audiovisual search task. Results showed that both visual and audio blurs render stimuli distractors less prominent and thus helped users focus on a sharp target more easily. Performances were also faster and more accurate in the bimodal condition than in either unimodal search task, auditory or visual. Our work suggests that audio and audiovisual interfaces dedicated to multimedia search could benefit from different uses of blur on presentation strategies.

Digital shadowing is a source of interest in immersive and interactive artworks because it enhances the feeling of presence, and because it is a very intuitive and engaging interaction "device." After a presentation of some major pieces in shadow-based artwork along two categories (silhouette-based digital shadows and cast shadow-based digital shadows), we propose a real-time software platform that can produce these two types of shadows from video capture and image processing. The processing is divided into image analysis for shadow extraction, calibration, and special effects. It is made highly flexible and parameterized, so that it can fit various configurations. Two specific configurations are illustrated because of their genericity: one for infrared light silhouette-based shadow and live performance, and one for both digital shadowing categories and interactive art installations with visible light. We then present some of the applications of such a platform through various live performances made by two theater companies involved in a collaborative project with scientists. The examples confirm the wide variety of scenographic setups in which shadow can be involved as a key component.

Virtual Mirrors are augmented reality applications that capture a viewer's image and add 2D or 3D overlaid virtual elements, such as cloth patterns, or replace existing pieces of garments, such as shoes, by virtual ones. The purpose of our study is to focus on the addition of jewels that present complex rendering issues due to reflection and translucency, especially for real-time applications. We propose two complementary approaches which are both suited for particular objects. The image-based rendering technique relies on an image data-set of photos taken on a semi-circle of camera positions and a 3D reconstruction of the jewel. This approach is exploited to demonstrate real jewels with sophisticated refractions and highlights. The analytical 3D rendering technique can also visualize configurable virtual jewels and is based on the decomposition of the jewel into parts without non-local reflection or transparency. A graph-based rendering chain takes in consideration some of the self-reflection and lighting effects.

This work is about the remediation of one of Mark Rothko's Seagram murals through the composition of several online sources and additional digital rendering. Based on reproductions of Rothko's "Red on Maroon" found on the Internet, and using computer graphics compositing associated with moiré and specular lighting effects, "Encounter (Resonances)" offers a new approach to the presentation of a piece of work that allows a viewer to perceive some of its very subtle nuances. The work echoes Rothko's mixed media layered painting technique by using reproductions of various color palettes and resolutions as metaphors for the layers of paint in his original works. While each of these copies may instantly remind us of the original work, the graphical rendering of "Encounter (Resonances)" combines them at three levels of representation (global shape, micro and macro structure), in an effort to encourage a level of prolonged engagement and gradual discovery in the artwork.

Bateau Ivre is a project presented on the Seine River to make a large audience aware of the possible developments of Augmented Reality through an artistic installation in a mobile outdoor environment. The installation could be viewed from a ship by a large audience without specific equipment, through nightly video-projection on the River banks. The augmentation of the physical world was implemented through real-time image processing for live special effects such as contouring, particles, or non-realistic rendering. The artistic purpose of the project was to immerge the audience into a non-realistic view of the River banks that would differ from the traditional tourist tours that highlight the main landmarks of Paris classical architecture.

We study interaction combination performed using a tabletop device, a mouse, and/or a six Degrees Of Freedom(DOF) input device in a systemcombining a 2Dflat (map-kind) view presented horizontally and a 3D perspective vertical view of the same virtual environment. The design of such a 2D/3D interface relies on the RVDT model and its design space that allow easy high-level combined interactions to achieve spatial tasks. RVDT integrates the relations between physical and numerical DOFs and applies to any graphical user interface in which multiple views, multiple display surfaces and multiple input devices are combined. The user study shows that experimented users prefer table-top/6DOF input device interaction combination with a maximal number of elementary tasks performed with both devices.

Physical models and particles are very attractive for digital artists because they offer new ways of exploring representations of the living and animated world. We propose an environment for the design, the parameterization and the control in real-time of mass-spring systems. Control is based on live image analysis, whether video capture or real-time 3D image synthesis. Efficient and fluid rendering is ensured by parallel computing on the graphic processor. Several setups are presented to illustrate the wide variety of designs that can be implemented through this platform.

This paper presents a novel platform for interactive virtual room acoustics simulation and visualization. The platform is based on two autonomous modules: EVERTims for acoustic simulation and Audio2graphical for graphical rendering and interaction management. The system is a tool for acousticians and architects to understand better the acoustic properties of a closed space. Beside visualizing sound reflections, it allows navigation as well as geometrical properties modification of a given sound source and a listener.

Two immersive art installations that involve virtual shadows for better engagement of the viewers are presented. One installation is a stereo film enhanced with a 3D reconstructed mesh for shadow projection, and the other one is a virtual 3D model with texture compositing and transparency. The hardware and software components are chosen for an economical but efficient rendering with standard computer and video equipments.

OCEAN is a tool for a posteriori visual data mining that uses the output of a text miner to help users better explore a document space. Clustered documents are transformed into a hierarchical 3D representation analog to Reconfigurable Disk Trees. An intermediary document representation allows for interface customization and offers a generic approach to 3D structuring of text miner outputs. An interactive exploration is offered that avoids tree manipulation and provides local 2 1/2D view of the disks. A user evaluation is reported that outlines the benefit of controlled document hierarchy traversal and 2 1/2D document layout.

With this first issue of Volume 10 of Natural Language Engineering we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the development of the journal, especially over the last year or two, and to look forward to a number of future developments.

This is the first issue of Volume 8, and we thought we would take this opportunity to bring readers of Natural Language Engineering up-to-date with various developments with the journal.

Because of their constant renewal, it is necessary to acquire fresh named entities (NEs) from recent text sources. We present a tool for the acquisition and the typing of NEs from the Web that associates a harvester and three parallel shallow parsers dedicated to specific structures (lists, enumerations, and anchors). The parsers combine lexical indices such as discourse markers with formatting instructions (HTML tags) for analyzing enumerations and associated initializers.

A two-tier model for the description of morphological, syntactic and semantic variations of multi-word terms is presented. It is applied to term normalization of French and English corpora in the medical and agricultural domains. Five differenct sources of morphological and semantic knowledge are exploited (MULTEXT, CELEX, AGROVOC, WordNet1.6, and Microsoft Word97 thesaurus).

A system for the automatic production of controlled index terms is presented using linguistically-motivated techniques. This includes a finite-state part of speech tagger, a derivational morphological processor for analysis and generation, and a unification-based shallow-level parser using transformational rules over syntactic patterns. The contribution of this research is the successful combination of parsing over a seed term list coupled with derivational morphology to achieve greater coverage of multi-word terms for indexing and retrieval. Final results are evaluated for precision and recall, and implications for indexing and retrieval are discussed.

This study proposes an algorithm for automatically acquiring morphological Iinks between words.This algorithm relies on the concurrent use of a corpus and a list of multi-word terms, and does not require any prior linguistic knowledge.The four steps of the algorithm are (1) single-word truncation, (2) conflation of multi-word terms, (3) classification and filtering, and (4) clustering of contiation clasea.At each step a precise evaluation is performed in order to chose the optimal parameters.The final results indicate a clustering of 45% of the classes with a prectilon of 87Y0.The derivational knowledge acquired through this method can be used for conceiving a domain-oriented stemmer for scientific and technical corpora.

No abstract available.

The computational lexicalization of a grammar is the optimization of the links between lexicalized rules and lexical items in order to improve the quality of the bottom-up filtering during parsing. This problem is NP-complete and untractable on large grammars. An approximation algorithm is presented. The quality of the suboptimal solution is evaluated on real-world grammars as well as on randomly generated ones.