College of Engineering

The IRIS Lab's current areas of research are in scene building, scene description, and data visualization. The combination of these different fields gives rise to robust, usable systems and advanced developments in the underlying technologies. The IRIS Lab has the rare privilege of boasting expertise in all of these areas. The pages that follow will show more specifically how we apply these various aspects of 3D imaging, either separately or in concert, to produce new technologies for our sponsors and relevant, satisfying areas of investigation for our students. Figure 1 presents an integration of all the above fields to build an imaging, robotics, and intelligent system. The sub-fields listed in Figure 1 are thoroughly described in the next sections. This integration starts with a Scene Building process that consists of capturing sensor measurements to integrate them into a unified 3D representation referred to as a Multi-modal Model. At this point, Multi-modal Models can be analyzed through a Scene Description process leading to an Object-based scene representation. Each object contains an optimal amount of information, so that it accurately describes the initial data. Additionally, each object is associated with a multi-resolution description, so the amount of information necessary to accurately represent the object at any level of detail can be computed. This entire process facilitates data transmission, manipulation, and display. Data Visualization aims at maximizing the level of interaction between the user and the data being displayed in a virtual reality environment.