/ Tosiyasu L. Kunii / Professor
/ Takafumi Hayashi / Associate Professor
/ Karol Myszkowski / Associate Professor
/ Elena V. Anoshkina / Visiting Researcher
/ Oleg G. Okunev / Visiting Researcher
/ Galina Okuneva / Visiting Researcher
/ Runhe Huang / Research Associate
The Laboratory of Computer Science and Engineering has four permanent and three visiting members. The research conducted in the Laboratory is focused on developing new scientific concepts and methods through wide observation, hypothesis and theory formation, and proof and experiment, as well as through applying methods and concepts progressing in advanced mathematics, to abstract and model complexity. An important role in the research belongs also to visualization, which is helpful in understanding complex synthetic worlds in computers. The members of the Laboratory currently work on three projects:
1. Intelligent Dental Care System.
CAD/CAM techniques are used increasingly in dentistry for designing and fabricating teeth restorations. An important issue is preserving the occlusal contacts of teeth after restoration. A new mathematical model for global articulation simulation has been developed. The model is based upon the differential topological abstraction and characterization of the jaws considered as a mechanical system. The aim of the computer simulation is eliminating the use of mechanical articulators and manual adjustment in the process of designing dental restorations and articulation diagnostic.
2. Singularity and Differential Topological Modeling of Synthetic Worlds in Computer.
Singularity theory and differential topology turned out to be most versatile methods for abstracting and modeling complexity. The project is concentrated on the modeling of various singularity phenomena, in particular,
- singularities of surfaces and functions defined on surfaces (e.g., in wrinkling and mountains shape modeling);
- visualization of singularities and bifurcations that occur in differential geometry and its applications (surgery on manifolds, vector fields, etc.);
- singularity effects in lighting simulation (shading, caustics);
- applications to data management.
3. Virtual Reality SCCP Project.
The main goal of this work is the generation of realistic images, which are displayed at the real time rate on standard graphic workstations. The research work has been focused on application of texture mapping as an efficient drawing primitive, which successfully replaces complex polygonal meshes. The results of this research are summarized in [1] (See Refereed Proceeding Papers). Also, a video illustrating the proposed technique is available.
The members of the Laboratory also do research in theoretical mechanics, topology, parallel processing and lighting simulation.
Refereed Journal Papers
The topology of the system is completely described. The bifurcation diagram is constructed and topology of the constant energy are described.
Basic mathematical models are developed which simulate the deformation behavior of a sheet of unstretchable material such as paper. Two types of deformations, i.e., bending and creasing, are discussed and analyzed as transitions occurring between surfaces applicable to a piece of a plane. A topological criterion is presented which determines whether new, irregular points will emerge (i.e., creasing) or not (i.e., bending) during deformation. Comparisons with creases made in real sheets of unstretchable materials (paper and vinyl chloride) show that the qualitative aspects of real bending and creasing are well reproduced by our simulation models.
A novel structure named the truncated
cone was located in the apex of the acrosomal vesicle right beneath the outer
acrosomal membrane of abalone sperm head. This truncated cone structure was
composed of about 12 helically coiled filaments, each 3.5-3.6 m long
with a diameter of 8-12 nm, forming a tightly compressed helicoid. During the
acrosome reaction, the truncated cone elongated more than three times the
original height and transformed into a thin cylinder by further coiling up of
the filaments from the initial 2.5 to final 7 turns. The diameter and the
length of each filament did not change during the elongation of the truncated
cone into thin cylinder. Calculation from the equation of helical movement
(spiral motion) applying the actual values of the truncated cone structure
measured by electron microscopy gave the theoretical values nearly coincident
with the actual measurements. The computer animation simulated the process of
the movement of the coiled filaments composing the truncated cone and
suggested that the elongation of the truncated cone into thin cylinder can be
elucidated as a helical movement of the coiled filaments keeping their length
constant. Quick-freez, deep-etch electron microscopy further revealed that
each of the coiled filaments was characterized by its beaded configuration,
closely resembling that of the intermediate filaments of our previous results
by immunoelectron microscopy and immunoblot analysis. The movement of the
helically coiled filaments of the truncated cone may provide first example of
the intermediate filaments to participate in motility and fertilization.
One of the main purposes of visualization is understanding the structures of the objects. The understanding of the object structures also helps to reconstruct the objects from a series of measurements. In order to represent and understand the structures of three-dimensional (3D) objects in computers, we need a method to abstractly describe their shapes. In the case of a polyhedral object, we can describe its shape by listing its vertices, edges and faces; When the object has a more complex shape, as can be seen in natural objects, we cannot find any vertices, edges and faces. This paper brings you to a world of new methods to represent the structure of very complex shapes of natural 3D objects for visualization. The extracted information can be used to reconstruct and visualize the 3D objects from its measurements. We first construct a representation based on the singular points of the objects and then hierarchically analyze the complex shapes.
It is proved that if is a
generalized linearly ordered space, then
admits a topological
imbedding in
for some dyadic compact
if and only if
is a
union of countably many compact metrizable subspaces.
Some necessary and some sufficient
conditions for and
being Lindelöf
-spaces are
obtained. We also get some results on the descriptive complexity of
.
We show that analyticity is preserved
by measurable mappings in the class of cosmic spaces. As an application, we
show that if is a separable metrizable space and
a dense countable
subspace of
, then the space of restricted continuous functions
is analytic if and only if
is
-compact.
We show, under Martin's
Axiom+Continuum Hypothesis, the existence of an uncountable subset of the
unit segment
such that the countable power of the space obtained from
by making the points in
isolated is Lindelöf. As an
application, an example of a separable,
-compact space
such that
Lindelöf, but
contains an uncountable discrete set, is
constructed under
.
A correction to the paper "A
method for constructing examples of -equivalent spaces", Topol.
Appl., vol. 36, 1990.
To achieve automatically and continually optimise combustion in a multiple burners furnace by altering the air inlet valve to each of the burners depending upon the carbon monoxide and oxygen readings taken from their common flue, a genetic algorithm based prototype control rules learning system has been developed and tested on the simulated ten burner installations. Prototype control rules are point based but only a limited number of points in the state space with associated control actions are learned by using genetic algorithm. The nearest neighbour matching algorithm is used to decide which of the rules to be activated.
Refereed Proceeding Papers
Mesh-based radiosity calculation requires many mesh elements to reconstruct subtle details of shading. On the other hand, the excessive number of polygons slows down rendering, impairing the sensation of interactivity when a user-navigated walkthrough in complex environment is performed. When distribution of illumination over a scene is to be quickly rendered, then the Gouraud shaded polygon becomes an inefficient drawing primitive, which can be successfully replaced by texture mapping. This paper proposes an application of texture mapping to reconstruct the shading of surfaces in the scene regions where distribution of illumination is extremely complex. Mesh-based Gouraud shading is used to visualize the remaining surfaces, exhibiting simple illumination, usually constituting the majority of the scene. As a result, many mesh elements can be eliminated, compared to traditional approaches, and image display can be done significantly faster. Also, the improvement of shading quality is possible by recalculating illumination and storing the results as textures in scene regions where a mesh-based approach produces shading artifacts. Experiments performed have shown that application of this idea pays off on high-end workstations, when hardware supported texture mapping is available.
We present a rendering method based on physically accurate lighting simulation designed to visualize complex scenes characteristic for architectural and interior design applications. Separating light interaction with surface into perfectly diffuse and specular components, we propose a method for efficiently handling light paths reaching diffuse surfaces via specular reflection by intermediate surfaces. Specular component is calculated ``on-the-fly", affecting diffuse component that is stored in adaptive mesh structure for later reuse. It allows a good quality walkthrough animation that by contrast to radiosity approach, exhibits also specular component illuminating diffuse surfaces. Final still images are generated by tracing rays from the eye and collecting mesh stored light from diffuse surfaces. The method compares favorably with analytically precalculated results.
The use of computers to break down communication barriers with the hearing impaired is one of the most challenging tasks of computer application. Our work to generate and recognize sign language based on graphic models, along with the in-depth review of the problems in the conventional approaches, has been summarized in this paper. The explanation is done divided into two subtasks, sign language generation and sign language recognition.
This paper presents a novel medical image database that can handle queries regarding the structural elements contained in the stored medical images based on the graph data mode. In the graph data model, a database is represented as a graph in which a vertex corresponds to a record and an edge (called a link) corresponds to the relationship between the two records. First of all, an image database whose vertices correspond to structural elements in images and whose links represent the relationships between structural elements is constructed. The graph operators that compute the minimum spanning tree, the transitive closure and other properties of the graph provide useful information for the medical diagnosis. As an application, we have constructed a CT image database where the structural elements are the blood vessels. The blood vessels in a CT cross-sectional image are extracted as line segments using Hough transformation. For example, by computing the minimum spanning tree of the graph, whether a blood vessel is an artery or a vein can be judged, which is important for the diagnosis of cancers.
Given a perspective drawing or painting of objects, human beings can reason about their shapes in three-dimensional space. This paper presents a new method that analyzes the locations of the viewpoints of a drawing or a painting even when it is rendered with multiple viewpoints. Our method uses the rectangles contained in it, because there are a great number of objects that consists of rectangular shapes. We then reconstruct the rectangular objects by specifying the viewpoints for them. Experimental results of the analysis of drawings that contain illusions of objects that cannot actually exist are shown. We also analyze modern paintings that do not use the traditional perspective method.
This paper proposes a new method to code the surface of a three-dimensional object using mathematical primitives called atoms. This method is an expansion of the method that codes the smooth surface of a natural object such as a human organ by the singular points of the height function based on Morse theory. It allows to handle the cases where there is more than one singular point on a level cross-sectional plane. Using the atoms, non-orientable surfaces such as the two-dimensional projective space and the Klein bottle can be coded. The method is further expanded to allow direct description with multiple height functions.
A multibody model of hands and arms is presented. Representative points of contact are considered as the end-effectors. The configuration space and the workspace are modeled as manifolds, and the task feasibility is defined using the notions of manifold mappings and Jacobian matrices. Joint rotation limits and dependencies between the joints are considered in the configuration space. A procedure to check the task feasibility is presented. The causes which lead to the infeasible task are classified into singular configuration, boundary transgression, and disharmony. Finally, a technique of martial arts, Shorinji Kempo, is analyzed to demonstrate the usefulness of the model.
Simulation of hand motions is a complicated task since its articulation makes complex movements with at least 27 degrees of freedom involving various constraints. A new approach to hand modeling, reflecting constraints of human hands, is presented. The validity of the presented model is verified through experiments to automatically recognize complex hand motions based on the model.
The surface singular points of a function defined on an object surface represents the topological structure of the object. This paper proposes and reports the implementation and testing of a new method to characterize the facial expressions by extracting the singular points of the face. As the input, the surface normals of human faces obtained by the lighting switch photometry method are used. An averaging filter is used to reduce the noise in the raw data. The experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method to characterize facial expressions.
From ancient times, area guide maps have been drawn intuitively without appropriate modeling. Understanding such maps and developing guide map CAD require clear modeling. This paper presents the model of area guide maps using manifolds and CW-complexes. The process of drawing an area guide map is modeled as that of creating a manifold. First, we represent the surface shape of an area as a CW-complex. Then, we glue the CW-complexes representing the areas into a manifold. Surface shapes in the overlaps are blended by a partition of unity. The mechanism to project a surface shape from multiple views is installed. Finally, the area guide map is generated automatically.
Visualization is a powerful means to understand the properties of objects for designing industrial products. Object visualization has been, however, mostly based on simple mathematical concepts such as vector fields and isosurfaces of functions. This paper proposes a method to visualize a highly abstract mathematical concept: algebraic topology, particularly homology groups. We present a system that visualizes the computational process of homology groups; i.e., computation of groups of cycles Z, groups of boundaries B, and then the homology groups as the quotient groups Z/B. The animation of homology exact sequences is provided to compute homology groups that are difficult to be obtained directly. Quotient groups are also visualized in the system.
Books
Chapters in Books
Unrefereed Papers
Technical Reports
Academic Activities
Karol Myszkowski, Runhe Huang, Elena Anoshkina, and Galina Okuneva, Assistants to Prof. Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Programme Co-Chair of ACM Multimedia '94 conference (San Francisco). Processing of 34 papers, 1993.
Assistants to Prof. Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Programme Co-Chair of ACM Multimedia '94 conference (San Francisco). Processing of 34 papers.
Karol Myszkowski, Siggraph '93 (U.S.A.), Computer Graphics International '94 (Australia), Virtual Reality Software and Technology '94 (Singapore), Eurographics '94 (Oslo), 1993.
Reviewing papers for the following conferences: Siggraph '93 (U.S.A.), Computer Graphics International '94 (Australia), Virtual Reality Software and Technology '94 (Singapore), Eurographics '94 (Oslo).
Karol Myszkowski, Machine Graphics and Vision Journal, 1993.
Reviewing papers for the Machine Graphics and Vision journal.
Karol Myszkowski, The Visual Computer International Journal of Computer Graphics (1993.12 - ). Editor of the Book Review section in this journal, 1993.
Position of Editorial Assistant in The Visual Computer International Journal of Computer Graphics (1993.12 - ). Editor of the Book Review section in this journal.
Karol Myszkowski, Programme Committee of 3rd International Conference on Computer Graphics and Image Processing held by Polish Academy of Sciences, 1993.
Member of Programme Committee of 3rd International Conference on Computer Graphics and Image Processing held by Polish Academy of Sciences.
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Board of Directors of Japan Society of Simulation and Gaming (1990.9 - ), 1993.
On the Board of Directors of Japan Society of Simulation and Gaming (1990.9 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Board of Directors of Japan Society of Sports Industry (1989 - ), 1993.
On the Board of Directors of Japan Society of Sports Industry (1989 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Committee on Information Processing Education at Universities and Colleges, Information Processing Society of Japan, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Government of Japan (1989.4 - ), 1993.
Member of the Committee on Information Processing Education at Universities and Colleges, Information Processing Society of Japan, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Government of Japan (1989.4 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Information System Working Group of the Committee on Information Processing Education at Universities and Colleges, Information Processing Society of Japan, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Government of Japan (1989.4 - ), 1993.
Head of Information System Working Group of the Committee on Information Processing Education at Universities and Colleges, Information Processing Society of Japan, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Government of Japan (1989.4 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, British Computer Society (1988.8 - ), 1993.
Member of British Computer Society (1988.8 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, IFIP Working Group 5.10 on Computer Graphics (1988.8 - ), 1993.
Member of IFIP Working Group 5.10 on Computer Graphics (1988.8 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Information and Computer Science Education Committee sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Government of Japan (1988.4 - ), 1993.
Member of Information and Computer Science Education Committee sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Government of Japan (1988.4 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Board of Councillors of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (1988.4 - ), 1993.
Member of the Board of Councillors of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (1988.4 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Board of Directors, International Information Science Foundation (1987.4 - ), 1993.
On the Board of Directors, International Information Science Foundation (1987.4 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, IEEE (1991.1 - ), 1993.
Fellow of IEEE (1991.1 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, IFIP Working Group 7.1 on Modeling and Simulation (1972 - ), 1993.
Member of IFIP Working Group 7.1 on Modeling and Simulation (1972 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The International Conference on Multi-Media Modeling (MMM'93) (1993.11), 1993.
Program Co-Chairperson of the International Conference on Multi-Media Modeling (MMM'93) (1993.11).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, IEEE Visualization '93 Conference (1993.10), 1993.
Program Committee member of the IEEE Visualization '93 Conference (1993.10).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, IFIP TC5/WG5.10 Second Working Conference on Modeling in Computer Graphics (1993), 1993.
Programme Chairperson of IFIP TC5/WG5.10 Second Working Conference on Modeling in Computer Graphics .
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, First Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Application (Pacific Graphics '93) (1993), 1993.
Program Co-Chair and a Member of Conference Committee of the First Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Application (Pacific Graphics '93).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, CG International '93 (1993), 1993.
Program Committee member of the CG International '93 .
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Computer Animation '93 (1993), 1993.
Program Committee member of Computer Animation '93 .
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Workshop on Topological Modeling for Visualization (1994.1), 1993.
Program Co-Chairperson of the Workshop on Topological Modeling for Visualization.
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal Transputer Communications, 1993.
On the Editorial Board of The Journal
Transputer Communications
(1993.8 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal Modeling and Scientific Computing, 1993.
On the Editorial Board of The Journal Modeling and Scientific Computing (1991.9 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal Mathematical Modeling and Scientific Computing, 1993.
On the International Editorial Board of The Journal Mathematical Modeling and Scientific Computing (1993.1 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal IEICE Transactions, 1993.
Advisory Member of The Journal IEICE Transactions (1991.1 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal Modelling and Scientific Computing, 1993.
On the Editorial Board of The Journal Modelling and Scientific Computing (1990.11 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Journal of Visualization and Computer
Animation,
1993.
Associate Editor-in-Chief of The
Journal of Visualization and Computer
Animation (1990.9 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal The Computer Bulletin, 1993.
On the Editorial Board of The Journal Computer Bulletin (1988.8 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal Electronic Publishing, 1993.
On the Editorial Board of The Journal Electronic Publishing (1987.8 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal Distributed Computing, 1993.
On the Editorial Board of The Journal Distributed Computing (1986.1 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Visual Computer: An International Journal of Computer Graphics, 1993.
Editor-in-Chief of The Visual Computer: An International Journal of Computer Graphics (1984.9 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, The Information Sciences: An International Journal, 1993.
Associate Editor of The Information Sciences: An International Journal (1983.10 - ).
Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Journal Information Systems, 1993.
Advisory Editor of The Journal Information Systems (1976 - ).
Oleg G. Okunev, American Mathematical Society, 1993.
Reviewer for Journal ``Mathematical Reviews''.
Galina Okuneva, American Mathematical Society, 1993.
A member of the American Mathematical Society.
Galina Okuneva, American Mathematical Society, 1993.
A reviewer for Journal ``Mathematical Reviews''.
Reviewing papers for WTC/TAT '93 International Conference.
Assistant to Professor Tosiyasu L. Kunii in reviewing papers for Journal ``Transputer Communications''.
Others