6040271
Web-Based Handwriting Education with Animated Virtual Teacher
Traditionally, in teaching handwriting, the teacher writes a character on the blackboard, and then students try to follow the teacher in order to write the same character. The teacher can check whether a student’s handwriting is spatially correct by looking at its shape but he/she is not able to verify if the student is writing in the correct stroke order with the correct number of strokes. As a result, we design a web-based handwriting education system. With our proposed system, students can stay at home to do the exercises for learning the handwriting of characters. A student’s handwriting can be captured in digital format with the information in both temporal and spatial domain and the results can be sent to the teacher for evaluation. In addition, we propose to animate a virtual teacher on the student’s terminal for demonstrating the handwriting of the characters to give students a sense of presence.
206606372
A Web-Based Chinese Handwriting Education System with Automatic Feedback and Analysis
We propose a web-based Chinese handwriting system that allows students to learn Chinese handwriting at anytime and anywhere. The system combines technologies such as electronic ink, database, Flash animations, and pattern recognition technique to provide students with an intelligent and effective learning environment. In particular, our system contains an Automatic Feedback and Analysis (AFA) tool that can check multiple kinds of handwriting mistakes and provide useful feedback to the user. Survey results show that most users agreed that our proposed system can help them to learn Chinese handwriting more efficiently as well as reducing teachers’ workload. The user evaluation results suggest that it takes less time for users to learn Chinese handwriting with our system than with traditional teaching method.
18767073
Fitting Ellipses to a Region with Application in Calligraphic Stroke Reconstruction
Given a region, it is a challenge to find a set of primitive shapes such as rectangles, circles or ellipses to cover it. This is in fact a set-covering problem, which is known to be NP-hard. The focus of this paper is on fitting a set of ellipses onto an image region. This problem was first formulated by identifying a number of criteria required for the ellipse fitting. A solution is then proposed for automatically determining the set of ellipses that best fits onto an image region. The proposed ellipse fitting algorithm has also been applied to strokes forming characters of Chinese calligraphic artwork. The results show that our proposed algorithm generates ellipses fitting onto stroke regions and capturing the characteristics of the strokes during turning, tilting and back-trace.
15674805
Animating reactive motions for biped locomotion
In this paper, we propose a new method for simulating reactive motions for running or walking human figures. The goal is to generate realistic animations of how humans compensate for large external forces and maintain balance while running or walking. We simulate the reactive motions of adjusting the body configuration and altering footfall locations in response to sudden external disturbance forces on the body. With our proposed method, the user first imports captured motion data of a run or walk cycle to use as the primary motion. While executing the primary motion, an external force is applied to the body. The system automatically calculates a reactive motion for the center of mass and angular momentum around the center of mass using an enhanced version of the linear inverted pendulum model. Finally, the trajectories of the generalized coordinates that realize the precalculated trajectories of the center of mass, zero moment point, and angular momentum are obtained using constrained inverse kinematics. The advantage of our method is that it is possible to calculate reactive motions for bipeds that preserve dynamic balance during locomotion, which was difficult using previous techniques. We demonstrate our results on an application that allows a user to interactively apply external perturbations to a running or walking virtual human model. We expect this technique to be useful for human animations in interactive 3D systems such as games, virtual reality, and potentially even the control of actual biped robots.
35321520
Reconstructing the Correct Writing Sequence from a Set of Chinese Character Strokes
A Chinese character is composed of several strokes ordered in a particular sequence. The stroke sequence contains useful online information for handwriting recognition and handwriting education. Although there exist some general heuristic stroke sequence rules, sometimes these rules can be inconsistent making it difficult to apply them to determine the standard writing sequence given a set of strokes. In this paper, we proposed a method to estimate the standard writing sequence given the strokes of a Chinese character. The strokes are modeled as discrete states with the state transition costs determined by the result of the classification into forward/backward order of each stroke pair using the positional features. Candidate sequences are found by shortest path algorithm and the final decision of the stroke sequence is made according to the total handwriting energy in case there is more than one candidate sequence. Experiments show that our results provide better performance than existing approaches.
42246755
A Constraint-Based Interactive Train Rescheduling Tool
In this paper, we formulate train rescheduling as constraint satisfaction problem and describe a constraint propagation approach to tackle it. Algorithms for timetable verifications and train rescheduling are designed under a coherent framework. We define two optimality criteria that correspond to minimizing passenger delay and the number of station visit modifications respectively for rescheduling. Two heuristics are then proposed to speed up and direct the search towards the optimal solutions. The feasibility of our proposed algorithms and heuristics are confirmed with experimentation using real-life data.
30262171
Improving defect removal effectiveness for software development
The paper first reviews the industry statistics on defects, presents a model of defect removal, then develops the relationships between the defect removal effectiveness of different defect removal phases. The defect removal effectiveness of an average organization is determined based on published data. Combining the industry data with the defect removal model, insights into improvement of the defect removal process can be gained. It is determined that the defect removal effectiveness of individual phases cannot be higher than that of the overall development process. Also, introducing inspection to the software development process will certainly allow an average organization to achieve higher defect removal effectiveness.
6994949
Ergodic chaotic parameter modulation with application to digital image watermarking
This paper presents a novel technique for image watermarking based on chaos theory. Chaotic parameter modulation (CPM) is employed to modulate the copyright information into the bifurcating parameter of a chaotic system. The system output is a wideband signal and is used as a watermark to be inserted into the host image. In the detection, a novel method based on the ergodic property of chaotic signal is developed to demodulate the embedded copyright information. Compared to previous works on blind watermarking, the proposed technique can effectively remove the interference from the host image and, thus, improve the detection performance dramatically. Simulation results show that the ergodic CPM approach is effective for image watermarking in terms of noise performance, robustness against attacks, and payload. In addition, its implementation is very simple and the computation speed is fast. Compared to holographic transform domain method and the conventional spread spectrum watermarking scheme, the proposed technique is shown to be superior.
11779035
Chaotic binary sequences for efficient wireless multipath channel estimation
This paper presents a better binary sequence design for efficient wireless multipath channel estimation. Chaotic binary sequences with better properties than conventional maximal length sequences are obtained through an optimization algorithm based on DNA computation. The proposed method is attractive due to its ability to generate binary sequences for specific design criteria. The generated chaotic binary sequences have superior performance compared to maximal length sequences and have complexity similar to the levels of shift register implementation. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated for sequence design for frequency domain channel estimation. Simulation results clearly show the improved performance of the sequence obtained using the proposed scheme over the maximal length sequence. Further, the proposed scheme is not only limited to channel estimation sequence design but can be applied to various communication system design problems.
1639053
A Constraint-Based Interactive Train Rescheduling Tool
In this paper, we report the design and implementation of a constraint-based interactive train rescheduling tool, a project in collaboration with the International Institute for Software Technology, United Nations University (UNU/IIST), Macau. We formulate train rescheduling as constraint satisfaction and describe a constraint propagation approach for tackling the problem. Algorithms for timetable verification and train rescheduling are designed under a coherent framework. Formal correctness properties of the rescheduling algorithm are established. We define two optimality criteria for rescheduling that correspond to minimizing the number of station visits affected and passenger delay respectively. Two heuristics are then proposed to speed up and direct the search towards optimal solutions. The feasibility of our proposed algorithms and heuristics are confirmed with experimentation using real-life data.