The Systems Research Group
Networks and Operating Systems
Part II/Diploma Project Suggestions, 1998-1999
Multimedia Related Projects
Stand-alone Video Conference Station (Shark)
Currently, along with the infamous Trojan Room Coffee Pot, Computer Lab
seminars are broadcast on the Lab MBONE setup, allowing those with this
capability to watch the conference without having to be in the Babbage
Lecture theatre. The SRG has a number of DEC ``Sharks'', set-top boxes,
based around the StrongARM chip. They have builtin audio, ethernet and
TV output facilities, and are largely sitting around idle. It would be
nice if these boxes could be utilized to take the MBONE video and audio
streams from the network and display it on a TV (or a local monitor, at
the users' discretion).
This could involve porting various of the MBONE tools (such as VIC and
VAT) to run directly on the Shark's hardware, decoding data from the network,
and driving the TV output correctly. It might turn out to be easier to
run Nemesis on the Sharks (90% complete) and then port vic and vat to Nemesis.
With a suitable cheap video camera interface (DEC SRC have these --
we don't at the moment), they could be used as video conferencing terminals.
Live Video Texture Mapper
Last year, there was an excellent student project to develop a demonstration
`virtual advertising billboard'. The program, known as Scamper (Scanner-Mapper),
was able to detect and locate a blue rectangular object in a live video
image, and texture map another video image over the top of it. The program
tried to `guess' the location of the blue billboard even if it was partly
obscured, and then distort the `advert' onto the billboard taking perspective
into account.
Scamper did a pretty reasonable job, but there's loads more that could
be done to improve it. For instance, the program could carry forward knowledge
between frames in the input video stream, enabling it to optimise its search
for the billboard, and also to improve its estimate of the location of
the billboard's corners. Also, rather than using a plain blue billboard,
perhaps the accuracy of the location algorithm could be improved by using
a patterned target e.g. a blue and yellow chequer board.
This project has loads of potential for developing some nice algorithms,
and also looks really cool. Come along to the Atlas room for a demo of
the current version...
Video Conferencing Tools for Nemesis
The MBONE tools (vic and vat) enable users to view and participate in multi-party
video conferences both locally and world-wide. These tools currently run
on Unix style operating systems, but are hampered by the fact that the
OS doesn't provide any Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees, so the video
and audio can break-up if the machine is also being used for other tasks.
The Nemesis operating system has been designed specifically to enable
QoS guarantees to be made to applications. The aim of this project is to
port part of the MBONE tool set to Nemesis, but to re-write it such that
it is able to exploit the QoS guarantees Nemesis provides. The tools should
be made resource-adaptive: capable of trading-off the fidelity of their
output depending on how much resource the OS says will be available to
them.
This project is reasonable tricky, and requires some nice computer science
to write the adaptive audio/video algorithms. It will look really cool
and be fun to do though...
Project enquiries to:
Austin Donnelly, Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Austin.Donnelly@cl.cam.ac.uk
Stephen Early, Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Stephen.Early@cl.cam.ac.uk
Dickon Reed, Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Dickon.Reed@cl.cam.ac.uk
HTML gripes to:
Richard Mortier, Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Richard.Mortier@cl.cam.ac.uk
Last updated: $Date: 1998/06/02 11:30:09 $