Processing and interactive editing of huge point clouds from 3D scanners

This paper describes a new out-of-core multi-resolution data structure for real-time visualization, interactive editing and externally efficient processing of large point clouds. We describe an editing system that makes use of the novel data structure to provide interactive editing and preprocessing tools for large scanner data sets. Using the new data structure, we provide a complete tool chain for 3D scanner data processing, from data preprocessing and filtering to manual touch-up and real-time visualization. In particular, we describe an out-of-core outlier removal and bilateral geometry filtering algorithm, a toolset for interactive selection, painting, transformation, and filtering of huge out-of-core point-cloud data sets and a real-time rendering algorithm, which all use the same data structure as storage backend. The interactive tools work in real-time for small model modifications. For large scale editing operations, we employ a two-resolution approach where editing is planned in real-time and executed in an externally efficient offline computation afterwards. We evaluate our implementation on example data sets of sizes up to 63 GB, demonstrating that the proposed technique can be used effectively in real-world applications.     

Harnessing the strengths of anytime algorithms for constant data streams

Anytime algorithms have been proposed for many different applications, e.g., in data mining. Their strengths are the ability to first provide a result after a very short initialization and second to improve their result with additional time. Therefore, anytime algorithms have so far been used when the available processing time varies, e.g., on varying data streams. In this paper we propose to employ anytime algorithms on constant data streams, i.e., for tasks with constant time allowance. We introduce two approaches that harness the strengths of anytime algorithms on constant data streams and thereby improve the over all quality of the result with respect to the corresponding budget algorithm. We derive formulas for the expected performance gain and demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel approaches using existing anytime algorithms on benchmark data sets.     

Designing Personalized Garments with Body Movement

The standardized sizes used in the garment industry do not cover the range of individual differences in body shape for most people, leading to ill-fitting clothes, high return rates and overproduction. Recent research efforts in both industry and academia, therefore, focus on virtual try-on and on-demand fabrication of individually fitting garments. We propose an interactive design tool for creating custom-fit garments based on 3D body scans of the intended wearer. Our method explicitly incorporates transitions between various body poses to ensure a better fit and freedom of movement. The core of our method focuses on tools to create a 3D garment shape directly on an avatar without an underlying sewing pattern, and on the adjustment of that garment's rest shape while interpolating and moving through the different input poses. We alternate between cloth simulation and rest shape adjustment based on stretch to achieve the final shape of the garment. At any step in the real-time process, we allow for interactive changes to the garment. Once the garment shape is finalized for production, established techniques can be used to parameterize it into a 2D sewing pattern or transform it into a knitting pattern.     

Continual learning of neural networks for quality prediction in production using memory aware synapses and weight transfer

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing - Deep learning-based predictive quality enables manufacturing companies to make data-driven predictions of the quality of a produced product based on process...     

AlphaPilot: autonomous drone racing

Autonomous Robots - This paper presents a novel system for autonomous, vision-based drone racing combining learned data abstraction, nonlinear filtering, and time-optimal trajectory planning. The...     

Quantum computing implementations with neutral particles

We review quantum information processing with cold neutral particles, that is, atoms or polar molecules. First, we analyze the best suited degrees of freedom of these particles for storing quantum information, and then we discuss both single- and two-qubit gate implementations. We focus our discussion mainly on collisional quantum gates, which are best suited for atom-chip-like devices, as well as on gate proposals conceived for optical lattices. Additionally, we analyze schemes both for cold atoms confined in optical cavities and hybrid approaches to entanglement generation, and we show how optimal control theory might be a powerful tool to enhance the speed up of the gate operations as well as to achieve high fidelities required for fault tolerant quantum computation.     

Monte Carlo techniques for phrase-based translation

Recent advances in statistical machine translation have used approximate beam search for NP-complete inference within probabilistic translation models. We present an alternative approach of sampling from the posterior distribution defined by a translation model. We define a novel Gibbs sampler for sampling translations given a source sentence and show that it effectively explores this posterior distribution. In doing so we overcome the limitations of heuristic beam search and obtain theoretically sound solutions to inference problems such as finding the maximum probability translation and minimum risk training and decoding.     

Nano-texturing of magnetic recording sliders via laser ablation

To increase the storage density of hard disk drives, the flying height of the slider needs to be reduced to <10 nm. This requires super-smooth surfaces of the disk and slider. As the roughness decreases, stiction and adhesion are found to increase substantially leading to failures of the head/disk interface. Texturing the slider surface is a well-known approach to this issue. In this study we investigated laser ablation as a potential process for texturing magnetic recording sliders. It was found that straight laser machining caused unwanted re-deposition of material. These deposits could be significantly reduced by using a chemical etching enhanced laser process.     

Continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo impurity solvers

Continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo impurity solvers are algorithms that sample the partition function of an impurity model using diagrammatic Monte Carlo techniques. The present paper describes codes that implement the interaction expansion algorithm originally developed by Rubtsov, Savkin, and Lichtenstein, as well as the hybridization expansion method developed by Werner, Millis, Troyer, et al. These impurity solvers are part of the ALPS-DMFT application package and are accompanied by an implementation of dynamical mean-field self-consistency equations for (single orbital single site) dynamical mean-field problems with arbitrary densities of states.

Program summary

Program title: dmftCatalogue identifier: AEIL_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEIL_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: ALPS LIBRARY LICENSE version 1.1No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 899 806No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 32 153 916Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: C++Operating system: The ALPS libraries have been tested on the following platforms and compilers:

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  Linux with GNU Compiler Collection (g++ version 3.1 and higher), and Intel C++ Compiler (icc version 7.0 and higher)

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  MacOS X with GNU Compiler (g++ Apple-version 3.1, 3.3 and 4.0)

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  IBM AIX with Visual Age C++ (xlC version 6.0) and GNU (g++ version 3.1 and higher) compilers

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  Compaq Tru64 UNIX with Compq C++ Compiler (cxx)

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  SGI IRIX with MIPSpro C++ Compiler (CC)

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  HP-UX with HP C++ Compiler (aCC)

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  Windows with Cygwin or coLinux platforms and GNU Compiler Collection (g++ version 3.1 and higher)

RAM: 10 MB–1 GBClassification: 7.3External routines: ALPS [1], BLAS/LAPACK, HDF5Nature of problem: (See [2].) Quantum impurity models describe an atom or molecule embedded in a host material with which it can exchange electrons. They are basic to nanoscience as representations of quantum dots and molecular conductors and play an increasingly important role in the theory of “correlated electron” materials as auxiliary problems whose solution gives the “dynamical mean field” approximation to the self-energy and local correlation functions.Solution method: Quantum impurity models require a method of solution which provides access to both high and low energy scales and is effective for wide classes of physically realistic models. The continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo algorithms for which we present implementations here meet this challenge. Continuous-time quantum impurity methods are based on partition function expansions of quantum impurity models that are stochastically sampled to all orders using diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo techniques. For a review of quantum impurity models and their applications and of continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo methods for impurity models we refer the reader to [2].Additional comments: Use of dmft requires citation of this paper. Use of any ALPS program requires citation of the ALPS [1] paper.Running time: 60 s–8 h per iteration.References:

• [1] 

  A. Albuquerque, F. Alet, P. Corboz, et al., J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 310 (2007) 1187.

• [2] 

  http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4474, Rev. Mod. Phys., in press.