Abstract: This highly interdisciplinary research addresses two fundamental challenges in image sensing and image understanding: 1) versatile camera systems in a small form factor, and 2) 3-dimensional scene and object recognition from 2-dimensional photos. These fundamental challenges are tackled together by developing a cyber-physical imaging system, called a smart flexible camera sheet, which integrates an array of many micro-cameras (each millimeters in size) onto a thin substrate.

This Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) project supports research to enable the automated monitoring of building and infrastructure construction projects. The purpose of construction monitoring is to provide developers, contractors, subcontractors, and tradesmen with the information they need to easily and quickly make project control decisions. These decisions have a direct impact on the overall efficiency of a construction project. Given that construction is a $800 billion industry, gains in efficiency could lead to enormous cost savings, benefiting both the U.S. economy and society.

Abstract: Despite many advances in vehicle automation, much remains to be done: the best autonomous vehicle today still lags behind human drivers, and connected vehicle (V2V) and infrastructure (V2I) standards are only just emerging. In order for such cyber-physical systems to fully realize their potential, they must be capable of exploiting one of the richest and most complex abilities of humans, which we take for granted: seeing and understanding the visual world.