Cosmetic research?

Carnival revellers (male and female) recently plastered their faces with lipstick, mascara, facepaint, nail polish, and dozens of other cosmetic products. Few of these wondered about the extensive research needed to overcome the packaging challenges behind these beauty-enhancing devices.

Challenges are numerous and diverse: how can a make-up cosmetic case minimize the chances of the customer opening a dry and flaked product? How can a lipstick container be designed in an elegant and smooth way that opens silently? What functions can make a cosmetic case more useful, secure, and light in a handbag? How can a cosmetic case’s button be improved to prevent broken nails?

A company like Toly Ltd (based in Malta) needs these questions answered to provide a world-class product. To remain competitive and innovative, research and development need support. Chairman and CEO, Andy Gatesy strove to meet these challenges head on by working with the University of Malta (UoM). Toly has forged a long-term joint research collaboration with UoM, in particular the Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering (DIME). Through this collaboration, many undergraduate students had the possibility of applying their theoretical background to real world problems, which results in win-win-win scenarios, for Toly, the student, and DIME. Lippenstifte

Toly also partnered with DIME and other University Departments in nationally funded research initiatives such as the MCST R&I Automate project. This concerned industrial automation and two ERDF projects — one of them intended to amplify innovation in the manufacturing industry and another one on improving energy efficiency in manufacturing.

Toly’s belief in the research potential of the UoM is reflected in regularly sponsored projects. It recruits UoM graduates to help it remain innovative and competitive. It also allows an Associate Professor to spend time from his sabbatical period to follow product development. “We cannot predict the future but we can create it”, said Mr Gatesy. Experience has shown that joint research with UoM is essential for Toly to develop its future growth towards a global market. 

How to become a cosmetic engineer?

Cybersexuality

Relationships have changed hand in hand with society. More couples are living far apart from each other. Marc Buhagiar speaks to Mary Ann Borg Cunen to explore how technology can lend a hand. Illustrations by Sonya Hallett.

Continue reading

Maltish or Engtese

Stick to one language! Was the old maxim. Otherwise, you’ll risk confusing your kids and they will never learn to speak properly. Research by Prof. Helen Grech and her team shows that this is not true: bilinguals usually do better. Teaching your child two languages at a go might delay them initially but helps them in the long run.  Words by Dr Edward Duca.

Continue reading

Cockneys vs Zombies — Film Review

Film Review_NT

At a site in East London, two construction workers inadvertently unearth the tomb belonging to the late King Charles II. Upon entering the crypt, they are assaulted, bitten and unkilled by former plague victims. Meanwhile, brothers Terry (Rasmus Hardiker) and Andy (Harry Tread- away), with their cousin Katy (Mi- chelle Ryan), are planning a bank heist. The trio concoct this heinousness with a noble intent: saving their grandad’s (Alan Ford) retirement home from be- ing demolished by heartless property developers. But of course, everything goes pear-shaped when the entire neighbourhood is invaded by hordes of the undead.

Cockneys and zombies: that’s what the title promises and that’s exactly what it delivers. Given the self-conscious- ly schlocky title, you would expect a crudely-made, amateurish production,

the likes of which litter the internet. The truth is, thankfully, very different. Cockneys has quite a high production value. It’s not World War Z but footage of London enfolded in chaos and may- hem is rendered in good quality CG, as are the close-up shots of carnage.

Still, one problem with comedy zombie flicks is that they will forever be in the shadow of Edgar Wright’s masterful Shaun of the Dead (2004). Shaun was a perfect storm of comedy, horror, excellent production, inspired casting, and fortuitous timing. Just as everybody was trying to get his/her head around the seemingly dubious merits and immense popularity of tor- ture porn horror films (Saw and The Passion of the Christ were both released in 2004), in waltzed Messrs. Wright, (Simon) Pegg and (Nick) Frost who made everybody’s sides split with laughter.

Luckily, even though Cockneys vs Zombies is nowhere near as brilliant as Shaun, it still can hold its head high. Director Matthias Hoene and writers James Moran (Severance, 2005) and Lucas Roche touch upon, but don’t expand much, on the zombie-as-meta- phor angle. They just want to play it for laughs and get more hits than misses. The scene in which poor old Hamish (Richard Briers) is being chased by the notoriously slow-moving zombies is pure gold and West Ham United sup- porters can put their mind at rest that, even after death, the feud with Millwall still rages on. In an inspired scene, we are at last shown that even infants are not immune to a zombie infestation.

Cockneys is no (early) George A. Romero and does not aspire to be. It just wants you to relax, pop some corn, sip on soda, and enjoy a zombie-tour around the streets of East London.

Insects in Malta

Insects are vital. Insects also cover the planet, with local research showing that there might be over 6,000 species — a wonderful world awaits. Find out about the incredible world of insects in Malta!

Continue reading

Immersive 3D Experience

Carldebono

Comfortably sitting in seat 3F, John is watching one of his favourite operas. This close he can see all the details of the set, costumes, and the movements of the music director as he skilfully conducts the orchestra by careful gestures of his baton. He is immersed in the scene, capturing all the details. Then all of a sudden, the doorbell rings. Annoyed, John has to stop the video to see who it is. This could be the mainstream TV experience of the future.

This scene is called free-viewpoint technology that is part of my research at the University of Malta (UoM). Free-viewpoint television allows the user to select a view from which to watch the scene projected on a 3D television. The technology will allow the audience to change their viewpoint when they want, to where they want to be. By moving a slider or by a hand gesture, the user can change perspective, which is an experience currently used in games with their synthetically generated content ­— synthetically generated by a computer game’s graphics engine.

“For free-viewpoint to work, a scene needs to be captured using many cameras”

Today we are used to seeing a single viewpoint. If there are multiple perspectives we usually don’t have any control over them. Free-viewpoint technology will turn this idea on top of its head. The technology is expected to hit the market in the near future, with some companies and universities already experimenting with content and displays. New auto-stereoscopic displays do not need glasses (pictured next page), these displays ‘automatically’ generate a 3D image depending on which angle you view them. A clear example was the promise made by Japan to deliver 3D free-viewpoint coverage of all football games as part of their bid to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022. The bid was unsuccessful, which might delay the technology by a few years.

Locally, my research (and that of my team) deals with the transmission side of the story (pictured). For free-viewpoint to work, a scene needs to be captured using many cameras. The more cameras there are, the more freedom the user has to select the desired view. So many cameras create a lot of data. All the data captured by the cameras has to be transmitted to a 3D device into people’s homes, smartphones, laptops and so on. This transmission needs to pass over a channel, and whether it is fibre cable or wireless, it will always have a limited capacity. Data transmission also costs money. High costs would keep the technology out of our devices for decades.

My job is to make a large amount of data fit in smaller packages. To fit video in a channel we need to compress it. Current transmission of single view video also uses compression to save space on the channel so that more data can be transmitted and save on price. Note that, for example for high definition we have 24 bits per pixel and an image contains 1280 by 720 pixels (720p HD standard), that’s nearly 100,000 pixels for every frame. Since video is around 24-30 frames per second the amount of data being transmitted every minute starts escalating to unfeasible amounts.

Popupology - double 3d / 3d squared my first attempt at an anaglyph photo of a paper structure. you will need those red/blue glasses to view it properly.
Popupology –
double 3d / 3d squared
my first attempt at an anaglyph photo of a paper structure. you will need those red/blue glasses to view it properly.

Free-viewpoint technology would be another big leap in size. Each camera would be sending their own video, which is the same amount of data as we are now getting. If there are ten cameras, you would need to increase channel size by a factor of ten. This makes it highly expensive and unfeasible. For the example above, the network operator needs ten times more space on the network to get the service to your house, making it ten times more expensive than single view. Therefore, research is needed to drastically reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted while still keeping high quality images. These advances will make the technology feasible, cheaper, and available for all.

So the golden question is, how are we going to do that? Research, research, and more research. The first attempts by the video research community to solve this problem were to use its vast knowledge of single view transmission and extend it to the new paradigm. Basic single view algorithms (an algorithm is computer code that can perform a specific function, like Google’s search engine) compress video by searching through the picture and finding similarities in space and in time. Then the algorithms send the change, or the error vector, instead of the actual data. The error vector is a measure of imperfections and how it is used by computer scientists to compress data is explained below.

First let us look at the space component. When looking at a picture, it is quite clear that some areas are very similar. The similar areas can be linked and the data grouped together into one reference point. The reference point has to be transmitted with a mathematical representation (vector) that explains to the computer which areas are similar to each other. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be sent.

Secondly, let us analyse the time aspect. Video is a set of images placed one after another and run at 25 or 30 frames per second that gives the illusion of movement and action. To make a video flow seamlessly images that are right after each other are very similar. If we have two images the second one will be very similar to the first, with only a small movement of some parts of the image. Like we do for space, a mathematical relationship can be calculated for the similar areas from one image to the next. The first image can be used as a reference point and for the second we transmit only the vector that explains which pixels have moved and by how much. This greatly reduces the data that needs to be transmitted.

The above techniques are used in single view transmission, with free-viewpoint technology we have a new dimension. We also need to include the space between cameras shooting the same scene. Since the scene is the same there is a lot of similarity between the videos of each camera. The main difference is that of angle and the problem that some objects might be visible from one camera and not from another. Keeping this in mind, a mathematical equation can be constructed that explains which parts of the scene are the same and which are new. A single camera’s video is used as a reference point while its neighbouring cameras only transmit the ‘extra’ information. The other camera can compress their content drastically. In this way the current standard can be extended to free-viewpoint TV.

Compressing free-viewpoint transmissions is complex work. Its complexity is a drawback, mobile devices simply aren’t fast enough to run computer power intensive algorithms. Our research focuses on reducing the complexity of the algorithms. We modify them so that they are faster to run, need less computing power, and still keep the same quality of video, or with minimal losses.

“The road ahead is steep and a lot of work is needed to bring this technology to homes”

We have also explored new ways of reconstructing high quality 3D views in minimum time, using graphical processing units (GPUs). GPUs are commonly used by high-end video games. Video must be reconstructed with a speed of at least 25 pictures per second. This speed must be maintained if we want to build a smooth continuous video in between two real camera positions (picture). A single computer process cannot handle algrothims that can achieve this feat; instead parallel processing (multiple simultaneous computations) is essential. To remove the strain off a main processing unit in a computer processing can be offloaded to a GPU. Algorithms need to be built that use these alternative processing powers. Ours show that we can obtain the necessary speeds to process free-viewpoint 3D video even on mobile devices.

The autostereoscopic display techinique without glasses. Depending on the position of the viewer, the filter directs the left image to the left eye and the right image to the right eye.
The autostereoscopic display techinique without glasses. Depending on the position of the viewer, the filter directs the left image to the left eye and the right image to the right eye.

Since free-viewpoint takes up a large bandwidth on networks, we researched whether these systems can feasibly handle so much data. We considered the use of next generation mobile telephony networks (4G). Naturally they offer more channel space, we wanted to see how many users they can handle at different screen resolutions. We showed that the technology can be used only using a limited number of cameras. The number of users is directly related to the resolution used, with a lower resolution needing less data and allowing more views or users. This research came up with design solutions for the network’s architecture and broadcasting techniques needed to minimise delays.

The road ahead is steep and a lot of work is needed to bring this technology to homes. My vision is that in the near future we will be consuming 3D content and free-viewpoint technology in a seamless and immersive way in our homes and mobile devices. So for now sit back and imagine what watching an opera or football match on TV would look like in a few years’ time.

Through the Looking Glass

What’s your favourite game? Pacman? Doom? World of Warcraft? Most of us have spent hours immersed in video games, many still do. Prof. Gordon Calleja studies why and how we get so involved in games. Science writer Dr Sedeer El-Showk found out about Calleja’s latest book and game that are gaining worldwide fame.

Continue reading

To drive or not to drive

Rush hours, feasts, festivals, beaches in summer, Paceville on Saturday night, all have one thing in common: traffic. Malta has one of the largest traffic problems in the world. Researchers at the University of Malta are trying to figure out what can be done to ease road rage and reduce drivers’ lost time.

Continue reading