FhG-FIT Coordinator

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft undertakes applied research of direct utility to private and public enterprises. At present, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains roughly 80 research units, including 57 Fraunhofer Institutes, at over 40 different locations in Germany. The Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, pursues a user-centered approach to information and cooperation systems design. The group of Life Science Informatics is involved in the research and development of computer vision techniques for medical applications and biologically-inspired image processing involving the development of cortically plausible algorithms for object shape learning & recognition, joint motion & depth detection, detection of visual saliency, fixation and pursuit of salient events. Related projects: MCCOOP.

Team:

• Dr. Marina Kolesnik
• Daniel Oberhoff
• Matthias Höffken
• Rafael Baranowski

DIBE - University of Genoa

The Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering (DIBE) at the University of Genoa is developing models that capture the “physicalist” nature of the information processing that takes place in the visual cortex, to understand the signal processing strategies adopted by the brain and build novel algorithms and hardware devices for artificial perception machines. The “Physical Structure of Perception and computation (PSPC)” group is conducting research on joint stereo and motion cortical representation, motion and stereo depth analysis, and active vision systems.

Team:

• Prof. Silvio Sabatini
• Dr. Fabio Solari
• Dr. Manuela Chessa

UUlm - Ulm University

Vision and Perception Science Lab investigates mechanisms and the underlying structure of visual information processing in biological and technical systems (biological and machine vision) as well as their adaptation to changing environments (visual learning) with the primary focus on mechanisms of visual information processing. Our integrative approach is based on the analysis of empirical data derived from psychophysics, neuroscience and imaging studies, and the mathematical and computational investigation of the underlying neural processes. We conduct psychophysical experiments in our computational perception lab with head and eye tracking facilities. Eye tracking particularly enables us to record eye movement traces and length of fixations deployed to scenic objects. The results of such experimental investigations (i) further guide our modelling of computational mechanisms of brain functionality and (ii) advances application oriented investigations into, e.g., attention processes for feature selection.

Team:

• Prof. Heiko Neumann
• Jan Bouecke
• Stephan Tschechne
• Ulrich Weidenbacher

INRIA -Odyssée Lab, INRIA, ENS, ENPC

ODYSSEE focuses on computational neuroscience and some of its applications. We try to unveil the principles that govern the functioning of neurons and assemblies thereof, to understand the relations between the anatomy of the human brain and its functions and to use our results to bridge the gap between biological and computational vision. Our work is very mathematical but we make heavy use of computers for numerical experiments and simulations. We have close ties with several top groups in biological neuroscience. We are pursuing the idea that the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” can also be brought to bear on neuroscience. We conduct research in the following main areas : Computational Neurosciences; Biological and Computational Vision; Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Electrical and Magnetic Functional Brain Imaging.

Team:

• Dr. Pierre Kornprobst
• Neil Bruce
• Émilien Tlapale

UniTue - University of Tübingen, Germany

The Section for Computational Sensomotorics (Sektion für theoretische Sensomotorik) represents one of two institutes working on Theoretical Neuroscience within the Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN). The section is also part of the Medical Faculty of the University of Tübingen (MFT) and of the Hertie Institut for Clinical Brain Research (HIH).

Research of the section focuses on the theoretical and experimental investigation of the perception and control of movements and actions, and its degeneration in neurological disease. In addition, the section develops technical applications in computer vision, computer graphics, diagnosis and rehabilitation. Specific research foci are:

• Investigation and quantification of motor control in neurological patients.
• Theories and experiments on the perception of action.
• Algorithms for the modeling of complex body movements.
• Bayesian inference for problems in neuroscience and computer vision.

We collaborate closely with the Center of Neurology at the University Clinic and the Max Planck Institute of Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. The section is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Hertie Foundation, and the European Community (EC).

Team:

• Prof. Martin Giese
• Dr. Dominik Endres

TrackMen Ltd.

The TrackMen team is an expert in software development and studio applications including sensor technologies for real-time image processing. TrackMen has an established cooperation with the LTU-Arena setting up visual systems for recording of sport events. This expertise will be used by the project consortium for conducting field trials of the Smart-Eyes system.

Team:

• Thorsten Mika

LTU Arena – Congress Center, Düsseldorf

Opened in Jan 2005 the LTU arena is a multifunctional event arena, owned by the City of Düsseldorf. Managed by Duesseldorf Congress, the LTU Arena hosts different events such as Football, American Football, Concerts and Business Events. With a capacity of 52.500 seats for sports events and up to 66.500 visitors for concerts, a retractable & opaque roof and a state of the art heating system the LTU arena is one of the most modern arenas in Europe.

Team:

• Heiko Müller