Visual code marker detection : A DIP project for engineers

Cameras in mobile phones are no longer used just for taking snap shots. The rapid growth of digital image processing has led to its growth of application in mobile phones too. The cameras in mobile phones can now be used to detect visual code markers in an image and eventually access the information embedded to it. A scenario for such an image processing is when one takes an image of the visual code marker next to the advertisement of a movie. With this visual code marker the mobile phone can decode the image and access the backend database to know the local screening time of the movie. Thus for a camera to detect the visual code marker in an image, it needs an implementation of unique algorithms. These algorithms mostly have the four main stages to ultimately retrieve its data.  :

The main four stages are pre-processing and segmentation, region analysis, registration and thresholding. All these stages are based upon visual code markers, how they are detected and decoded. Visual code markers are two dimensional bar codes which consists of an 11*11 square comprised of black and white bits. Two guide bars and three guide points are made fixed points for its digital detection. Thus out of 121, 83 contains specific information. These are read from top to bottom, right to left.

                      
The first stage pre-processing and segmentation aims at transforming the captured image to a binary image to clearly identify the key elements of a visual code marker. The captured 640*480 RGB image is converted to a 640*480 binary image highlighting the key elements such as guide bars and fixed corners in the code marker. Next the image is enhanced to reduce its noise and smoothen it by applying morphological open-close filters which produces a grey scale image. After all the processing in the first stage the resulting will be a binary image which identifies the key element of the code marker. The next stage does a region analysis where each key elements of code marker are localized and grouped. The short and long guide bars are identified first, and then with its properties the fixed corner regions are found. These region analyses are made either based on intrinsic properties or geometric relationship between two regions. The registration is for correction for scaling and distortion in the image since it can be taken at a variety of distance and angles. If multiple code markers are present then registration is applied individually for each marker. After obtaining all the bit locations the last stage reads data bits from each grey-scale sub-image. Histogram equalization is applied to the grey-scale image obtain maximum contrast between 1- and 0- valued bits. Bit values are determined by applying threshold at the estimated bit centres. Thus the algorithm is invariant to scaling, rotation and blurring caused due to the device mobility. It is implemented in c and takes approximately 100ms to execute per image using a pentium4 3.40GHz computer.
Download this project in a Pdf format for your reference here: http://goo.gl/Fp6U7

Automatic face detection using colour based segmentation and template/Energy threshold:

The project which is anticipated to give a huge advancement in technology deals with face detection based on color segmentation followed by template/energy matching. The drive of the project is to detect the presence and absence of face using computers. In EE368 (a graduate level introductory course to the fundamentals of digital image processing) they have given the task of training a system using collection of seven digital image for this face detection purpose to a set of students.

Here as the students face many complexities from deriving the algorithm for the successful execution of the project and to the simple steps to be followed, the first limitation was its time consumption of seven minutes for a single file. The students got catch hold of this concept not in their day one. They primarily started by reviewing all the articles on the topic and came up by trying out the methods that already existed such as neural networks, statistical methods, machine learning algorithms such as SVM,FLD,PLC(such as eigen faces and concept of “face space” as well as recent methodology such as “Maximum Rejection Classification”(MRC).

The students first tried out their hands with mainly two concepts “Eingen faces” and “neural networks”. They planned to have the Eigen faces based front end and neural network based back end. Eigen faces is a facial recognition technology that has set of Eigenvectors used in computer vision problem of human face recognition. But the neural networks were a great hindrance to clearly study the inner working of their system and were even unable to reveal the précised shortcomings in their system which may be rectified if found out. Thus they decided to leave this and thought of taking a different approach based on colour segmentation followed by template/Energy matching.

This approach has shown a better performance taking 80 to 120 seconds to run which relies on its internal down sampling rate applied to the input image and other parameters which can be altered. Its Performance accuracy was approximated to 85% to 100%. With their final parameters, in Dell 1.8 MHz Pentium IV laptop it takes about 100 seconds.

Download this complete project details here: http://goo.gl/IfJwB

A diverse team of nine students is participating in 2012 International Genetically Engineered Machine

A diverse team of nine students is participating in 2012 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, a global level that welcomes innovative biological system made from standard, interchangeable parts and which is simple to design and build.  So don’t think what’s new in this, it happens every year and what the big deal in it. Yes, there is something more this time. But before telling about that, let me furnish you some statistics which can make us realise what a huge advancement is yet to happen through this project!

“Diarrheal” is not a new word to anyone. According to World Health Organization it is the second leading factor for death in children under 5 years, which almost kills 1.5 million children worldwide every year!! Now here is the catch. Students from Arizona state university have thus taken this issue into concern and are working to develop a simple device that detects contaminated drinking water.  

Now coming to the project part, let me tell what the project is all about. This team from ASU is planning to develop a user friendly, DNA-based biosensor that can detect major pathogens. The team leaders words for this project is “we are developing a biosensor that can detect pathogenic bacteria such as, Shigella, Salmonella and E. coil that causes diarrhoea ”.  And also adds saying “Ideally, you would use our biosensor to check different water supplies in the third world countries to determine  whether the water is safe to drink”. This team is working on two designs. 

Among them” the first one targets DNA, since each pathogen has different DNA we design a complementary sequences- sequences that match specific DNA. The DNA will be taken out from the sample and check whether it complements the DNA which is probed. If it complements, it is shown in colour response which tells that the water is contaminated.” Says Nisrag patel a molecular bioscience and biotechnology major in school of Life Science. 

The second one tests the membranes of the bacteria. While using the device to test water, the water turns blue if certain protein is attached to the bacterial membrane indicating that the water is contaminated.  Abinav Markus, a biomedical engineering student of ASU says “the advantage of this design to the previous designs in the field lies in the cheap production of the probes and the enzymatic chain reaction”
When at once this team met Madeline Sands, anthropology major in the university’s school of Human Evolution and Social change, she suggested this idea of low cost biosensor. She who had once travelled to Guatemala as a part of her ASU field experience, conducted community health research where she came to know that contaminated water contributes a serious health problem to a developing country.  She says “my time in Guatemala made it clear that having a way to detect contaminated water would lead to further reduction in incidents and morbidity of diarrhoea”

This team will be presenting its device in this October during the iGEM regional competition at Stanford University. The other team members are: Rohit rajan, Ethan Ward, Hyder Hussain, Amanda Ispas and Ellen Qin. Kyile Standage-Beier, a biological science major and pervious iGEM team member, serves as an advisor. If successful they will be at the global competition in November at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reduced size antennas for mobiles :Full project report

This thesis aims at designing reduced size of the antennas elements which when used with an RF transceiver adapts with the radiation pattern and ensures better communication between master and slave mobile computers. In order to obtain a maximum efficiency, the project concentrate only on the antenna elements which is suitable to work in the bandwidth range of 2.45Ghz.the choice of the band is based on the fact that it is an ISM band which does not require permission for performing any experimental tests, another reason is that the antenna can be integrated to work with any standard communication devices that operate in this band such as IEEE802.11b standard and Bluetooth. Another advantage is that the Bluetooth modules and its associated w softwares are available in market by many manufactures at affordable prices so it becomes easy for any final year student to pursue this thesis.
From the last ten years we are being witnessing the rapid development of wireless communication which was possible mainly due to the advancements in the field of digital communication. This led to the transformation of the technology into many fields from military field. Since the digital communication had many advantages like resistance with noise and interference etc and better security with encoding techniques, makes it special unlike its analogue counterpart. These features assisted the rapid growth of the 2nd and 3rd generations of cellular phone systems.

The tremendous success of the cellular voice communication has led to the interest of using the radio communication technologies into other fields like wireless communication. Initially wireless computing was a process of inter linking computer and other devices sans wire and making it to perform all the operations like accessing, storing etc that was originally done by the devices using the wire, for example accessing the internet using a wireless acesspoint in places like hospitals universities etc, for the purpose of providing communication between the computers different part of electromagnetic spectrum can be used for transmission over the air, example Infra red radiations and light frequencies can be used but for using them there must not be any obstacles in between the line of site but this is only possible in indoors within less than 1 meter. laser communication also encounters the same problem even though it can be established over several kilometres, for achieving a non line of site communication we can make use of lower range electromagnetic spectrum  namely radio frequencies. An application of a particular radio frequency band depends on specifications of the communication range and the bandwidth of the information-carrying signal. Lower range of radio frequencies is able to cover larger distances. However, this is at the expense of a narrower bandwidth for the signal carrying the message. Which was a disadvantage another shortcoming was the size of the antennas which was required for the launch of the radio signal from RF circuit in to the free space.

For a traditional antenna to work efficiently its size must be half of the free space wavelength so for 1Ghz the antenna must be 15 cms but apparently for microwaves and millimetre waves utilizing  more than or above 1Ghz can offer a reduction in the size of the material radiating. The same frequencies can also offer substantial bandwidth for the information-carrying signal. For example, if it is assumed that a radio transducer operates over a 10% bandwidth, a 100MHz BW for a 1GHz carrier frequency system is theoretically obtainable.

The design and usage of the wireless computers needs a specific frequency band available for it. Everybody knows that the Radio Frequency spectrum is not a free commodity and it’s being governed by specific bodies to avoid its interference by irresponsible users. The other reason is that particular frequency bands can be allocated to specific services. Due to the importance of some offered services, a given frequency band, treated as commodity, may be worth of billions of dollars when auctioned by a government to competing bidders (companies).

Download this final project report on this link: http://goo.gl/aT9l8

All that is new in Amazon’s kindle

Everybody knows about kindle Paper white which was an EReader from Amazon that bashed the old black and white EReaders formerly available from Amazon with its high resolution screen and 25% better contrast. The tablets came next. Right away, Amazon raised eyebrows by simultaneously dropping the price of its Kindle Fire while improving the hardware. The Kindle Fire is now just $159 and boasts increased RAM and battery life.

Next was the biggest event of Amazon was its launch of KINDLE FIRE HD in two different sizes 7” and 8.9” worth $199 and $299 respectively. The large-size tablet has an impressive 1,920 x 1,200-pixel resolution while the smaller is 1,280 x 800. Amazon says its new tablets have faster wireless connections than any others thanks to dual-antenna dual-band Wi-Fi that supports MIMO (multiple input/multiple output).

Next Amazon left all of its buyers in surprise by Kindle Fire HD tablet that packs a 4G LTE connection. Saying it was the one feature that could justify a price point of $499, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos went on to reveal that customers could get a year of LTE service for the device for just $50 (although the data is capped at 250 megabytes per month).

Now, why these things were considered as a big deal? Because the kind of competition that Amazon puts in front with that of the other companies is awesome most of its tablets and EReaders   proves to be competitve to its rivalries like Google and apple which couldn’t survive in the market with its Google Nexus 7 and apple iPad.

Google improved upon the original Kindle Fire at the same $200 price point with the Nexus 7, Amazon had two countermoves in the revamped standard-def Kindle Fire for $159 and the $199 Kindle Fire HD. On the iPad front, the total cost between a 4G LTE iPad and a 4G LTE Kindle Fire HD is in the hundreds of dollars.

As Bezos said, Amazon is looking to make money off its services, not its hardware, revealing its secret to being able to price all its new toys so low. But it also has the effect of putting its competitors between a rock and a hard place in pricing their tablets — especially since not many have the breadth of services (e.g. Prime Video, Appstore and Cloud Player) that Amazon offers.

We may also think what is so special about Amazon apart from its prices but there are lots to say like The Paperwhite Kindle has the highest-resolution E Ink display currently available, at 212 pixels per inch. It can also measure your reading speed and tell you how much time it’ll take you to finish a book or chapter.

The Kindle Fire HD extends Amazon’s “X-Ray” feature — where you can find more information about subjects in your book — to things like movies and textbooks. You can now also switch from reading to listening as an audio book (say, while you’re jogging), and the Kindle will keep track of your place. There are also new parental controls, letting you do things like set time limits for certain apps, such as video games.

Now finally anybody who is thinking to buy an EReader may wait until till this, fall because apple is releasing another small screen iPad which may change the tablet market once again coz iPads are as popular as the Amazon.

ECE / CSE Projects: Smart phones as computer’s remote control.

This project is all about converting your smartphone into the remote of your computer wirelessly. There exist several situations where we want to wirelessly and comfortably operate a computer, where the computer screen is projected onto a big screen through a projector or big-screen television, such as classrooms, conference/meeting rooms, mobile, workgroup project environments and modern office environments, and even living rooms This project will eliminate most of the discomforts we experience in places like conference rooms class rooms and in places where presentations are given by projecting computers.

 The main idea behind this system is that it makes use of the smartphone as the mouse of the computer being projected though there are several specifically designed devices are available on the market for the purpose of operating computers remotely and wirelessly. Wireless keyboard, uses either Bluetooth or wireless USB mini-receiver plugged into the USB port of computer for the communication between the keyboard and the computer. Some wireless keyboards have a touchpad for controlling the mouse cursor. Wireless presentation controller, allows user to operate his/her computer remotely for PowerPoint presentation through Bluetooth connection. It usually has several buttons, including mouse-left, mouse-right, next slide and previous slide buttons (for PPT presentation), and even a small size rectangle touchpad for moving mouse cursor. However, all those devices have certain drawbacks. Wireless keyboard has limited flexibility and is not Manuscript received June 2, 2012; revised July 1, 2012.

Whereas wireless presentation controller ensures its convenient for the presenter to carry around the place while presenting, which is not in the case of a wireless keyboard, apart from that it also doesn’t allow the presenter to have a complete control of the computer where as this device does have good mobility allow user to have full operation on the computer, such as running a program, moving or closing an application window, etc. Even it has a small touchpad for moving mouse cursor however it is very difficult for the presenter to use it to move the mouse cursor while he/she is walking around.

There is also a draw back with such devices where we can connect only one such device to the computer if suppose the session is an interactive one and the audience also want to connect to the computer to ask question means it’s not possible. This imposes inconvenience when a group of people, such as a project team or a company internal meeting attendees, are having discussion and need to interact with each other through the same computer with its screen projected onto a wall.

The widely used and very popular smart devices, such as iPad, smartphones, PDAs, and smart game controllers, can be the excellent alternatives as computer remote controllers if we develop appropriate apps for them. For example, Yang and Li developed a system to use WiiRemote, Wiimote in short, to remotely operate a computer, where Wiimote communicates with the computer through Bluetooth. B. Koo etc. proposed a framework of using smartphones to control consumer electronics. C. Wingrave and others provided an excellent tutorial on how to use a smart device, Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote) in 3D User Interface systems. Generally speaking, smart devices are digital, active, computer networked, and user reconfigurable devices that can operate to some extent autonomously. These devices usually have the many unique characteristics, such as

Small physical size for excellent mobility. They are designed for handholding and carrying around. They are owned and operated by individuals.
Good Human-Computer-Interface. They have a small touch screen, a build-in physical keyboard or soft keyboard, and run a simplified modern operating system with good graphics user interface. Strong network capability, such as Wi-Fi wireless and Bluetooth allowing Internet access.

Download this complete project details in PDF format here: http://goo.gl/LQU2s

Robot toy working with artificial intelligence technology

Artificial intelligence related project request keep flowing into our inbox right from the time we started the request form concept. This project here is about an Robot top that works with AI. So, we are trying to collect the best projects to list it for our visitors here. One such project is posted below a complete project PDF document attached with it, at the bottom. 

Here in this project the inventor Chang-bae has used one kind of joint motor to assemble and control the robot toy in various shapes. This toy is vary interesting and effective for our projects because, we students normally have that interest towards the robotics and robots that can change shapes. Adding more to this project details, here this probate includes a plurality of joint mechanism parts which are having ability to assemble and disassemble to various forms, it has a processor with one plurality joint mechanism, for the output part this control signal is connecting to another joint with pre-feed patterns and more such parts. 

The main objective of this project is to provide an AI, robotic toy and method of control that would vary the shape of the toy by requesting motions of the joints that are easily changeable and it also concentrates on reducing the number of parts used previously and reduce the time for changing the shape.

Download this complete project details in PDF: http://goo.gl/zrjFz

Our team which is working on collecting and creating very good engineering projects and papers for students who are interested in it are trying our best to bring out the best of data for you. Still as we are flooded with requests from many students. So our process is getting slow. Still if you feel you need help you can always contact us: http://engineering-request.blogspot.com/

People grow fat because of technology

Now will you believe me if am going to tell you that yes, people grow fat with growing technology!?! Feeling that am linking two really unrelated things? Fine let me try to convince you with all the points that I have!

It’s now statistically proven that people grow fat with growing technology. According to The Milken institute, an economic thinking tank, about a 10% increase in information and communication technology (ICT) can increase the American population by 1.4% more people wearing shape wears, which can be approximated to around 4.2 million people!

The main factor is the “knowledge-based society” states The Milliken institute according to its survey and adds up “more processed food, spending enormous time in front of screens (TV, computers or playing video games etc.), which of course obviously leads to decreased energy usage, and last but not the least eating of junk foods”.

Let me give you a small visual statistics which proves this issue. Round the globe the obesity rates have up surged higher than the population’s blood sugar. Placing the key Asian countries in the bars shown below is the graph visualizing the growing rate of obesity in a short period of around 6 to 11 years with the era of rise in technology.

Starting with japan, it has an increase of 1.5times more from 2.2 to 3.9 for a period of 8 years span. South Korea is alike japan with 1.7times rise from 2.2 to 3.8 but in period of 11 years. China and India are the worst victims for this. While china has doubled from 2.5 to 5.7, India has almost tripled from 0.7 to 1.9! Now don’t even think in dream from seeing the chart that America is going to be an exception for this case. They have a rate of 33.3% increase in obesity beating all the countries shown above! For the past 2 decades the calories consumption per day has increased to 150-300 calories in U.S.

There are many ways to reduce this obesity like simple walking everyday can save your life from death sometimes! Around 2.8 million adults die due to these obesity or weight related diseases. It accounts to for around $147 billion for medical cost!
So it’s high time for us to realize and be conscious about our diet and health and keep an eye on our country’s obesity rates!