Help Session for New Students

Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - 10:00 am
Swearingen 1D11 and 1D15
Here is link to a video on how to set up your laptop and or desktop in your dorm for CSCE 145. We will also be having as session with live help in Swearingen 1D11 and 1D15 tomorrow from 10:00-noon. We will help you:
  1. Install Java
  2. Install eclipse
  3. Access the wireless
Below is the link to the video version and you can try it for yourself. Install Java and Computer Basics https://breeze.sc.edu/p3hu5ipju2o/

Propagated Image Segmentation Using Edge-Weighted Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation Based Methods

Friday, June 19, 2015 - 02:00 pm
Swearingen (3A75 Conference Room)
DISSERTATION DEFENSE Candidate: Youjie Zhou Advisor: Dr. Song Wang Co-Advisor: Dr. Lili Ju Date: Friday, June 19, 2015 Time: 2:00 pm Place: Swearingen (3A75 Conference Room) Abstract Propagated image segmentation is the problem of utilizing the existing segmentation of an image for obtaining a new segmentation of, either a neighboring image in a sequence, or the same image but in different scales. We name these two cases as the inter-image propagation and the intra-image propagation respectively. The inter-image propagation is particularly important to material science, where efficient and accurate segmentation of a sequence of 2D serial-sectioned images of 3D material samples is an essential step to understand the underlying micro-structure and related physical properties. For natural images with objects in different scales, the intra-image propagation, where segmentations are propagated from the finest scale to coarser scales, is able to better capture object boundaries than single-shot segmentations on a fixed image scale. In this work, we first propose an inter-image propagation method named Edge-Weighted Centroid Voronoi Tessellation with Propagation of Consistency Constraint (CCEWCVT) to effectively segment material images. CCEWCVT segments an image sequence by repeatedly propagating a 2D segmentation from one slice to another, and in each step of this propagation, we apply the proposed consistency constraint in the pixel clustering process such that stable structures identified from the previous slice can be well-preserved. We justify the effectiveness of the proposed CCEWCVT method on a 3D material image sequence, and we compare its performance against several state-of-the-art 2D, 3D, propagated segmentation methods. Then for the intra-image propagation, we propose a superpixel construction method named Hierarchical Edge-Weighted Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation (HEWCVT) to accurately capture object boundaries in natural images. We model the problem as a multilevel clustering process: superpixels in one level are clustered to obtain larger size superpixels in the next level. The clustering energy involves both color similarities and the proposed boundary smoothness of superpixels. We further extend HEWCVT to obtain supervoxels on 3D images or videos. Both quantitative and qualitative evaluation results on several standard datasets show that the proposed HEWCVT method achieves superior or comparable performances to other state-of-the-art methods.

Capstone Projects Demo Day

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - 08:30 am
Amoco Hall, Swearingen
Come and see 21 Senior Capstone project demos. This year we have everything, from mobile apps to webapps to even some hardware projects. We have
  • 10 web applications, a couple of them mobile-optimized, most of them using responsive design
  • 5 Android applications
  • 1 iOS apps
  • 1 PhoneGap app, compiled to iOS and Android
  • 1 Unity app, compiled to Android, iOS, and web
  • 1 Erlang project, with some JavaScript for visualization
  • 2 hardware projects using raspberryPis with various attachments
You can watch videos of the apps or come to this event and watch them live! We have approximate scheduled times for each team. More details here.

Smash It! Day

Monday, April 27, 2015 - 10:00 am
Across from the Swearingen Food Truck

Autonomous Operation of Robots in the Field

Friday, April 24, 2015 - 04:00 pm
Swearingen 1A03 (Faculty Lounge),

Speaker: Dr. Ioannis Rekleitis, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina.

Time and Place: 1600-1700, Swearingen 1A03 (Faculty Lounge), USC Columbia Campus

 Title: Autonomous Operation of Robots in the Field.

Abstract :

In the last few years, robots have moved from the pages of science fiction books into our everyday reality. Currently, robots are used in scientific exploration, manufacturing, entertainment, and household maintenance. While the above advances were made possible by recent improvements in sensors, actuators, and computing elements, the research of today is focused on the computational aspects of robotics. 

This talk presents an overview of algorithmic problems related to robotics, with the particular focus on increasing the autonomy of robotic systems in challenging environments. In particular I will discuss the use of discrete structures as such as graphs to efficiently solve robotic problems. Cooperative Localization Mapping and Exploration employs teams of robots in order to construct accurate representations of the environment and of the robot's pose. The problem of coverage has found applications ranging from vacuum cleaning to humanitarian mine removal. A family of algorithms will be presented that solve the coverage problem efficiently in terms of distance travelled. I will present ongoing work on underwater robotics together with recent results from a multi-robot experiment employing a UAV, a USV, and an AUV operating in sync with a remote marine biologist located thousands of kilometers away. Finally, I will present some current work on the problem of searching under uncertainty.

The work that I will present has a strong algorithmic flavor, while it is validated in real hardware.

 Ioannis Rekleitis is an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the College of Engineering and Computing, University of South Carolina. He is the director of the Autonomous Field Robotics Lab. Previously he was an Adjunct Professor at the School of Computer Science, McGill University. Between 2004 and 2007 he was a visiting fellow at the Canadian Space Agency. During 2004 he was at McGill University as a Research Associate in the Centre for Intelligent Machines with Professor Gregory Dudek in the Mobile Robotics Lab (MRL). Between 2002 and 2003, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in the Sensor Based Planning Lab with Professor Howie Choset. He was granted his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2002 under the supervision of Professors Gregory Dudek and Evangelos Milios. Thesis title: "Cooperative Localization and Multi-Robot Exploration". His Research has focused on mobile robotics and in particular in the area of cooperating intelligent agents with application to multi-robot cooperative localization, mapping, exploration and coverage. His interests extend to computer vision and sensor networks. He has worked with underwater, terrestrial, aerial, and space robots. Ioannis Rekleitis has published more than sixty journal and conference papers. His work can be found online at: http://www.cse.sc.edu/~yiannisr/

Ward One: Community, Histories, and Memories: iPhone app

Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - 04:30 pm
Booker T. Washington Auditorium
Please see the attached pdf flyer for the iPhone mobile application "Ward One: Community, Histories, and Memories," a demonstration of which will take place on Wednesday, April 22, 1630-1800 (4:30-6pm) at Booker T. Washington Auditorium. "Ward One" was developed by students enrolled in the Critical Interactives (2015) course led by Drs. Buell and Cooley.

Awards Day Ceremony

Friday, April 17, 2015 - 04:30 pm
Amoco Hall
Dear CSE Students and Faculty, On April 17, 2015 in Amoco Hall at 4:30 the Computer Science and Engineering Department will hold its Awards Day ceremony. Please come early at 3:30 Alumnus John Hodgson of Blizzard Entertainment will give a talk entitled “Games? Serious Games?” on Friday, April 17, 2015, in Swearingen 1C01, Amoco Hall. Manton M. Matthews

Games? Serious Games?

Friday, April 17, 2015 - 03:30 pm
Swearingen 1C01 (Amoco Hall)
COLLOQUIUM Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of South Carolina John Hodgson Blizzard Entertainment Date: April 17, 2015 Time: 1530-1630 (3:30-4:20pm) Place: Swearingen 1C01 (Amoco Hall) Abstract There are "games" (some of which are "computer games"), and there are "serious games. What is meant by these terms? And are they the right terms? We will talk about why the term "serious game" might be a bad term. We will discuss how the values and purpose of video games informs their design and how the work of computer scientists and media artists can converge in the design and production of videogames. John Hodgson is a Technical Designer at Blizzard Entertainment, a position he has held since 2012. Following a B.S. degree in Computer Science, he received an M.S. degree in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina, with a thesis, "Desperate Fishwives: A Study in Applied Game Design," supervised by Dr. Heidi Rae Cooley and Dr. Duncan Buell and partially funded by an Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities (IATDH), with support from the NEH Office of Digital Humanities. At Blizzard, Mr. Hodgson designs and implements game elements and systems, interfacing between design and software development disciplines on the upcoming game Heroes of the Storm.