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Paul Dickson

Paul's preatty face Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Computer Science
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Contact Information

Computer Science Building
140 Governors Drive
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003

phone: (413) 687-8385
office phone: (413) 545-0528
email: pauld[at]cs[dot]umass[dot]edu

Education

Research Interests

Current Work
I am currently working on a Ph.D. dissertation that uses computer vision techniques to automatically capture and organize lecture recordings. For years the University of Massachusetts has recorded lectures and turned them into indexed presentations that include a video of the lecturer, a table of contents linked to different parts of the lecture, and an enlargement of whatever appeared on the computer screen or white board. The recordings were part of the Multimedia Asynchronous Networked Individualized Courseware (MANIC) project in the Research in Presentation Production for Learning Electronically (RIPPLES) laboratory. These presentations were always hand generated from videos captured by human operators because no method had been created that could automatically store the material presented and determine significant points that would make up the table of contents. As a dissertation I have designed a system to do just that using computer vision techniques. Out working title for the project is Presentations Automatically Organized from Lectures (PAOL) but will change as soon as we come up with a better acronym.

My lecture-recording system uses a device to capture the output of a lecturer's computer as it is sent to a projector. I use vision techniques to determine when significant changes occur and store an image of the material as well as the time when the change occurred. This capture technique works far better, identifying fewer insignificant changes than the best commercial system. Unlike many computer capture systems, mine uses image processing techniques to determine significance and is able to determine significant events and generate content from any application displayed on screen.

High-resolution cameras face the front of the lecture room and capture the entire white board space at 15 frames per second. Simple vision techniques are used to locate the lecturer in these frames and to extract a window that centers on the lecturer. These smaller frames are used to create a video of the lecturer. Vision techniques are also used on the images of the front of the room to remove the instructor from the scene in order to better capture material written on the white board. These images are processed to heighten the contrast and sharpness of what is written or drawn on the board. The board images are then analyzed to determine when material has been added, and selected images and the times they appear are saved. Though some similar work has been done with constrained aspect ratio white boards, none has attempted content capture over such large surfaces and with such varied lighting.

This material, with a soundtrack of the lecture, is sufficient to create an indexed presentation from the lecture that is similar to those previously produced by hand. No other system can capture and index material presented on both computer and white board. Also, no white board capture system has been shown to be as robust in accommodating poor lighting, changes in lighting conditions, and other variables.

Previous Work
The previous project I worked on was the design of an Under Vehicle Inspection System (UVIS). This project involved taking large numbers of images of the undercarriages of vehicles and mosaicing them together in order to create multiple 2D images that together allowed viewing of 3D information. Details about this project can be found at UVIS.

In college I was a part of the Swarthmore robotics team that won a pair of hors d'oeuvre serving competitions at the AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition. Details on this project can be found on my publications page.

Teaching Philosophy

The large number of courses I have taught while in graduate school has enabled me to develop, and in some cases implement, a philosophy of teaching. I believe that students do better in a course if they feel that the course is somehow their own. In some classes this can be done by initiating discussions and allowing students to present their ideas and make the material their own. Although discussions can be hard to foster in programming classes, centering the course on a project of individual choosing can get the students more interested because everything that they are learning is geared toward their interests. In the course Problem Solving with the Internet, I taught students html and JavaScript and always focused the course on a final project, the design of a Web page on a topic of their choice. The final project usually pushed the boundaries of what my students knew how to do, but they chose to push those boundaries because they were building Web pages about something they loved. For this project students turned in Web pages ranging from online portfolios for an art major, to a greeting card generator, and even to a Web page that was a piece of artwork with the page as the medium. My students went well beyond what they would normally have done for a 100-level course because they were able to make the course their own.

Another aspect of my teaching philosophy is to make students feel like they are a part of something special. This can be done by bringing something new into the classroom and involving students in testing itmost easily done by introducing some new technology. My Ph.D. dissertation relates directly to this. My research focuses on the design of a system that can automatically record a lecture given in a properly equipped classroom and turn it into an indexed review of the lecture that includes a video of the lecturer and an enlargement of material presented on a computer or white board. I believe that introducing technology like this into the classroom and involving students in the testing can make the students feel like they are part of a special group. What I have seen in class and read in papers suggests that when students feel special they tend to put forth greater effort and excel in class.

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