Section: Research Program

Related Scientific Domains

Figure 3. Related scientific domains of the MANAO project.

The MANAO project aims at studying, acquiring, modeling, and rendering the interactions between the three components that are light, shape, and matter from the viewpoint of an observer. As detailed more lengthily in the next section, such a work will be done using the following approach: first, we will tend to consider that these three components do not have strict frontiers when considering their impacts on the final observers; then, we will not only work in computer graphics, but also at the intersection of computer graphics and optics, exploring the mutual benefits that the two domains may provide. It is thus intrinsically a transdisciplinary project (as illustrated in Figure 3) and we expect results in both domains.

Thus, the proposed team-project aims at establishing a close collaboration between computer graphics (e.g., 3D modeling, geometry processing, shading techniques, vector graphics, and GPU programming) and optics (e.g., design of optical instruments, and theories of light propagation). The following examples illustrate the strengths of such a partnership. First, in addition to simpler radiative transfer equations  [36] commonly used in computer graphics, research in the later will be based on state-of-the-art understanding of light propagation and scattering in real environments. Furthermore, research will rely on appropriate instrumentation expertise for the measurement  [48], [49] and display  [47] of the different phenomena. Reciprocally, optics researches may benefit from the expertise of computer graphics scientists on efficient processing to investigate interactive simulation, visualization, and design. Furthermore, new systems may be developed by unifying optical and digital processing capabilities. Currently, the scientific background of most of the team members is related to computer graphics and computer vision. A large part of their work have been focused on simulating and analyzing optical phenomena as well as in acquiring and visualizing them. Combined with the close collaboration with the optics laboratory LP2N (http://www.lp2n.fr) and with the students issued from the “Institut d'Optique” (http://www.institutoptique.fr), this background ensures that we can expect the following results from the project: the construction of a common vocabulary for tightening the collaboration between the two scientific domains and creating new research topics. By creating this context, we expect to attract (and even train) more trans-disciplinary researchers.

At the boundaries of the MANAO project lie issues in human and machine vision. We have to deal with the former whenever a human observer is taken into account. On one side, computational models of human vision are likely to guide the design of our algorithms. On the other side, the study of interactions between light, shape, and matter may shed some light on the understanding of visual perception. The same kind of connections are expected with machine vision. On the one hand, traditional computational methods for acquisition (such as photogrammetry) are going to be part of our toolbox. On the other hand, new display technologies (such as the ones used for augmented reality) are likely to benefit from our integrated approach and systems. In the MANAO project we are mostly users of results from human vision. When required, some experimentation might be done in collaboration with experts from this domain, like with the European PRISM project. For machine vision, provided the tight collaboration between optical and digital systems, research will be carried out inside the MANAO project.

Analysis and modeling rely on tools from applied mathematics such as differential and projective geometry, multi-scale models, frequency analysis  [38] or differential analysis  [70], linear and non-linear approximation techniques, stochastic and deterministic integrations, and linear algebra. We not only rely on classical tools, but also investigate and adapt recent techniques (e.g., improvements in approximation techniques), focusing on their ability to run on modern hardware: the development of our own tools (such as Eigen) is essential to control their performances and their abilities to be integrated into real-time solutions or into new instruments.