Progress Report

1
Progress Report 1Stephen Kanji Chen

• Hsinchu, Taiwan
• Friday, June 30 2006

2
Original proposed project
Prior to arriving in Taiwan, we had outlined the
following preliminary goals for the Tile Display
Wall at NCHC

• Implement SAGE software on the TDW cluster
• Improve the scalability of the TDW cluster
  software to be able to stream multiple videos to
  multiple destinations (by multicasting network
  packets)
• Enhance the network-supportable resolution the
  cluster can output to a 2 megapixel video stream
• Establish a connection from remote instruments
  (Osaka, China) that output a video stream to make
  it viewable on the NCHC Tile Display Wall and at
  any other TDW in any remote location

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Current project
The software on the TDW is actually already well
established, and whereas multicast packets are
not implemented yet, any remote machine can
probably access video streams from NCHC if they
are correctly configured. Dr. Lin and his
researchers suggest working on the
image-processing software running behind the Tile
Display Wall.

• Our progress so far on this new focus includes
  the following
• Meeting with Kevin to discuss improved algorithms
  for real time motion detection and object
  boundary detection in an image or video
• Exploration into the mathematical level set
  method (link to Wikipedia) technique as an
  alternative to Kevins linear boundary detection
  algorithm
• Two studies on the current applications developed
  by Kevin (written in C) for real time motion
  detection and object boundary detection
• Development of a small C app that parses image
  headers, which will later serve to prepare an
  image frame for image processing

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Weekly goals
Next week will be a very short week (we will be
away with Dr. Lin until Wednesday), but Mahi and
I hope to have the following objectives achieved
by weeks end

• Finish the image parser application
• Develop an algorithm to use the level set method
  for a more accurate boundary detection image
  software
• Begin documenting a flowchart to implement this
  algorithm in a C application.

5
Photo of the week

• NCHC employees break for lunch Taiwanese food
  at a not-so-Taiwanese restaurant. Taiwan is
  extremely influenced by Western culture, and
  places like this that display a fusion of
  multiple cultures are very common.