CS-511 - Final Project (30%)

Proposal due by: October 28, 2008
Project due by: November 20, 2008

Project Description

The final project is an individual project on one of the topics from the list below. The required project deliverables are a presentation, software implementation, and a written report. All the components should be submitted together by the due date. Late days are not allowed.

To sign up for a topic, make sure that the topic is available and prepare a short (2 pages) proposal describing the problem and the method you plan to apply to solve it. You must provide one or more references to the method you describe. There is a 5% penalty for not signing up for a project or not submitting the project proposal on time. The following is a detailed description of the main components of the project:

• In class presentation (15% of the final grade in the course): To prepare your presentation you need to research your topic and read one or more research papers or other relevant sources. You must clearly indicate the sources used for your presentation and specify their details. Possible sources for your presentation may be found on the web or by searching the online database of the Galvin Library (ACM/IEEE)¹). Your presentation should be prepared in powerpoint/html/pdf. Please do not plan to use the whiteboard as part of your presentation - all the necessary figures and diagrams should be part of the presentation file. The time allocated to each presentation is 25 minutes plus 5 minutes for questions. The time constraint will be strictly enforced to allow sufficient presentation time for other presenters. Your presentation should include: problem statement and background material, description of the proposed solution, implementation details, and discussion of the obtained results. The presentation should conform to one or more research papers and should not repeat material which was covered in class. It is highly recommended that you include a short demonstration of your implementation. Part of the presentation grade will be based on peer review. Questions regarding material presented in the presentations may be included in the final exam.

• Report and software implementation (15% of the final grade in the course): You need to write a computer program to implement the algorithms you chose and write a concluding report. You must provide instructions on how to use the program you wrote, and provide appropriate test data and configuration files for using it. Make sure that the program allows for interactive modification of parameters and the examination of intermediate results. When used without command line arguments, the program should display a short help message describing how to use it. Pressing the 'h' key should display a message describing key usage. Try to make sure that the program does not crash under any circumstances. Please do not use any windows specific code. The report should follow the same structure as in the assignments. You need to describe the problem you addressed, the method you took to solve it, and results obtained by the program you wrote. You must evaluate and discuss the results you obtained. The report should be written in a format of a research paper and must be at least 6-8 pages long. Sources used in your work should be clearly indicated in the bibliography section (including web resources and software libraries you used). Cited references should follow the IEEE/ACM conventions. You may use source code obtained from other sources provided that you explicitly state that you are doing so and provided that the code you use does not constitute the main part of your implementation.

Submission instructions

• You may sign up for a specific topic either in class or by sending an email to $cs.iit.edu$. The project topics and presentation dates are assigned on a first-come-first-serve basis. Please note that a topic/date is not assigned to you until you get a confirmation by email.

• Please follow the electronic submission instructions of the assignments. In addition to the code, report, exe, and data directories, please include the following directories:
  • presentation - containing the presentation files and a 4/6 slides/page handout.
  • sources - containing any sources you used in the project (e.g. papers and any external code/libraries).

• Late days may not be used for the final project. If you did not manage to complete the project you should submit what you have available on the due date.

Project Topics

When selecting a topic, you must identify a paper describing the core approach you will be implementing. In addition to the list below, any topic relevant to the course is possible. If you wish to propose a different topic please send an email to $iit.edu$ with a short description of the topic you propose and a list of sources you intend to use. A topic is assigned to you until you get a confirmation. Possible topics include:

1. Panoramic mosaics
2. Image-based view synthesis
3. Object morphing
4. Image/volume registration

5. Volume rendering
6. Curvature estimation in mesh surfaces
7. Terrain surfaces

8. Surface reconstruction
9. Surface characterization
10. Surface registration
11. Simplex meshes
12. Implicit surfaces

13. Cloth/hair/particle animation
14. Articulated object animation
15. Facial animation