A time domain blind source separation algorithm of convolutive sound mixtures is studied based on a compact partial inversion formula in closed form. An L1-constrained minimization problem is formulated to find demixing filter coefficients for source separation while capturing scaling invariance and sparseness of solutions. The minimization aims to reduce (lagged) cross correlations of the mixture signals, which are modeled stochastically. The problem is non-convex, however it is put in a nonlinear least squares form where the robust and convergent Levenberg-Marquardt iterative method is applicable to compute local minimizers. Efficiency is achieved in recovering lower dimensional demixing filter solutions than the physical ones. Computations on recorded and synthetic mixtures show satisfactory performance, and are compared with other iterative methods.

We study sparse blind source separation (BSS) for a class of positive and partially overlapped signals. The signals are only allowed to have nonoverlapping at certain locations, while they could overlap with each other elsewhere. For nonnegative data, a novel approach has been proposed by Naanaa and Nuzillard (NN) assuming that nonoverlapping exists for each source signal at some location of acquisition variable. However, the NN method introduces errors (spurious peaks) in the output when their nonoverlapping condition is not satisfied. To resolve this problem and improve robustness of separation, postprocessing techniques are developed in two aspects. One is to detect coherent and uncertain components from NN outputs by using multiple mixture data, then removing the uncertain portion to enhance signals. The other is to find better estimation of mixing matrix by leveraging reliable source peak

A collaborative convex framework for factoring a data matrix <i>X</i> into a nonnegative product <i>AS</i> , with a sparse coefficient matrix <i>S</i> , is proposed. We restrict the columns of the dictionary matrix <i>A</i> to coincide with certain columns of the data matrix <i>X</i> , thereby guaranteeing a physically meaningful dictionary and dimensionality reduction. We use <i>l</i> _1, regularization to select the dictionary from the data and show that this leads to an exact convex relaxation of <i>l</i> ₀ in the case of distinct noise-free data. We also show how to relax the restriction-to- <i>X</i> constraint by initializing an alternating minimization approach with the solution of the convex model, obtaining a dictionary close to but not necessarily in <i>X</i> . We focus on applications of the proposed framework to hyperspectral endmember and abundance identification and also show an application to blind source separation of nuclear magnetic resonance data.

In geometric modeling and processing, computer graphics and computer vision, smooth surfaces are approximated by discrete triangular meshes reconstructed from sample points on the surfaces. A fundamental problem is to design rigorous algorithms to guarantee the geometric approximation accuracy by controlling the sampling density. This paper gives explicit formulae to the bounds of Hausdorff distance, normal distance and Riemannian metric distortion between the smooth surface and the discrete mesh in terms of principle curvature and the radii of geodesic circum-circle of the triangles. These formulae can be directly applied to design sampling density for data acquisitions and surface reconstructions. Furthermore, we prove that the meshes induced from the Delaunay triangulations of the dense samples on a smooth surface are convergent to the smooth surface under both Hausdorff distance and normal

We describe a high-resolution, real-time 3D absolute coordinate measurement system based on a phase-shifting method. It acquires 3D shape at 30 frames per second (fps), with 266K points per frame. A tiny marker is encoded in the projected fringe pattern, and detected by software from the texture image and the gamma map. Absolute 3D coordinates are obtained from the detected marker position and the calibrated system parameters. To demonstrate the performance of the system, we measure a hand moving over a depth distance of approximately 700 mm, and human faces with expressions. Applications of such a system include manufacturing, inspection, entertainment, security, medical imaging.

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Cooperative dual-crane lifting is an important but challenging process involved in heavy and critical lifting tasks. This paper considers the path planning for the cooperative dual-crane lifting. It aims to automatically generate optimal dual-crane lifting paths under multiple constraints, i.e., collision avoidance, coordination between the two cranes, and balance of the lifting target. Previous works often used oversimplified models for the dual-crane lifting system, the lifting environment, and the motion of the lifting target. They were thus limited to simple lifting cases and might even lead to unsafe paths in some cases. We develop a novel path planner for dual-crane lifting that can quickly produce optimized paths in complex 3-D environments. The planner has fully considered the kinematic structure of the lifting system. Therefore, it is able to robustly handle the nonlinear movement of the suspended target during lifting. The effectiveness and efficiency of the planner are enabled by three novel aspects: 1) a comprehensive and computationally efficient mathematical modeling of the lifting system; 2) a new multiobjective parallel genetic algorithm designed to solve the path planning problem; and 3) a new efficient approach to perform continuous collision detection for the dual-crane lifting target. The planner has been tested in complex industrial environments. The results show that the planner can generate dual-crane lifting paths that are easy for conductions and optimized in terms of costs for complex environments. Comparisons with two previous methods demonstrate the advantages of the planner, including safer paths, higher success rates, and the ability to handle general lifting cases.

This paper presents a novel scheme for constructing bivariate spline surfaces over triangular meshes which are topologically equivalent to a disk. The core part of the scheme is a set of knot selection rules that define local configurations of a triangulation called the directed-one-ring-cycle (D1RC) configurations and bivariate splines defined over a D1RC configuration that are new non-tensor-product splines and possess many nice properties of a univariate B-spline. Using D1RC splines, we take an input triangular mesh as a control mesh and define a bivariate spline surface from the control mesh, which mimics the standard NURBS modeling. Moreover, we can introduce sharp features into the overall smooth spline surface by simply setting special D1RC configurations. As a result, the proposed scheme can define spline surfaces in a way similar to that of NURBS, but has less restriction on the connectivity of the input control mesh.

Delaunay meshes (DM) are a special type of manifold triangle meshes --- where the local Delaunay condition holds everywhere --- and find important applications in digital geometry processing. This paper addresses the \yongjin{general} DM simplification problem: given an arbitrary manifold triangle mesh M with n vertices and the user-specified resolution m(< n), compute a Delaunay mesh M* with m vertices that has the least Hausdorff distance to M. To solve the problem, we abstract the simplification process using a 2D Cartesian grid model, in which each grid point corresponds to triangle meshes with a certain number of vertices and a simplification process is a monotonic path on the grid. We develop a novel differential-evolution-based method to compute a low-cost path, which leads to a high quality Delaunay mesh. Extensive evaluation shows that our method consistently outperforms the existing methods in terms of approximation error. In particular, our method is highly effective for small-scale CAD models and man-made objects with sharp features but less details. Moreover, our method is fully automatic and can preserve sharp features well and deal with models with multiple components, whereas the existing methods often fail.

In this paper, we introduce a novel method that can generate a sequence of physical transformations between 3D models with different shape and topology. Feasible transformations are realized on a chain structure with connected components that are 3D printed. Collision-free motions are computed to transform between different configurations of the 3D printed chain structure. To realize the transformation between different 3D models, we first voxelize these input models into similar number of voxels. The challenging part of our approach is to generate a simple path --- as a chain configuration to connect most voxels. A layer-based algorithm is developed with theoretical guarantee of the existence and the path length. We find that collision-free motion sequence can always be generated when using a straight line as the intermediate configuration of transformation. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated by both the simulation and the experimental tests taken on 3D printed chains.

We propose a novel framework for reconstructing lightweight polygonal surfaces from point clouds. Unlike traditional methods that focus on either extracting good geometric primitives or obtaining proper arrangements of primitives, the emphasis of this work lies in intersecting the primitives (planes only) and seeking for an appropriate combination of them to obtain a manifold polygonal surface model without boundary. We show that reconstruction from point clouds can be cast as a binary labeling problem. Our method is based on a hypothesizing and selection strategy. We first generate a reasonably large set of face candidates by intersecting the extracted planar primitives. Then an optimal subset of the candidate faces is selected through optimization. Our optimization is based on a binary linear programming formulation under hard constraints that enforce the final polygonal surface model to be manifold and watertight. Experiments on point clouds from various sources demonstrate that our method can generate lightweight polygonal surface models of arbitrary piecewise planar objects. Besides, our method is capable of recovering sharp features and is robust to noise, outliers, and missing data.

Sharp edges are important shape features and their extraction has been extensively studied both on point clouds and surfaces. We consider the problem of extracting sharp edges from a sparse set of colour-and-depth (RGB-D) images. The noise-ridden depth measurements are challenging for existing feature extraction methods that work solely in the geometric domain (e.g. points or meshes). By utilizing both colour and depth information, we propose a novel feature extraction method that produces much cleaner and more coherent feature lines. We make two technical contributions. First, we show that intensity edges can augment the depth map to improve normal estimation and feature localization from a single RGB-D image. Second, we designed a novel algorithm for consolidating feature points obtained from multiple RGB-D images. By utilizing normals and ridge/valley types associated with the feature points, our algorithm is effective in suppressing noise without smearing nearby features.

We present the first computational tool to help ordinary users create transforming pop-up books. In each transforming pop-up, when the user pulls a tab, an initial flat 2D pattern, i.e. a 2D shape with a superimposed picture, such as an airplane, turns into a new 2D pattern, such as a robot, standing up from the page. Given the two 2D patterns, our approach automatically computes a 3D pop-up mechanism that transforms one pattern into the other; it also outputs a design blueprint, allowing the user to easily make the final model. We also present a theoretical analysis of basic transformation mechanisms; combining these basic mechanisms allows more flexibility of final designs. Using our approach, inexperienced users can create models in a short time; previously, even experienced artists often took weeks to manually create them. We demonstrate our method on a variety of real world examples.

Computing centroidal Voronoi tessellations (CVT) has many applications in computer graphics. The existing methods, such as the Lloyd algorithm and the quasi-Newton solver, are efficient and easy to implement; however, they compute only the local optimal solutions due to the highly non-linear nature of the CVT energy. This paper presents a novel method, called manifold differential evolution (MDE), for computing globally optimal geodesic CVT energy on triangle meshes. Formulating the mutation operator using discrete geodesics, MDE naturally extends the powerful differential evolution framework from Euclidean spaces to manifold domains. Under mild assumptions, we show that MDE has a provable probabilistic convergence to the global optimum. Experiments on a wide range of 3D models show that MDE consistently outperforms the existing methods by producing results with lower energy. Thanks to its intrinsic and global nature, MDE is insensitive to initialization and mesh tessellation. Moreover, it is able to handle multiply-connected Voronoi cells, which are challenging to the existing geodesic CVT methods.

Intrinsic Delaunay triangulation (IDT) naturally generalizes Delaunay triangulation from R^2 to curved surfaces. Due to many favorable properties, the IDT whose vertex set includes all mesh vertices is of particular interest in polygonal mesh processing. To date, the only way for constructing such IDT is the edge-flipping algorithm, which iteratively flips non-Delaunay edges to become locally Delaunay. Although this algorithm is conceptually simple and guarantees to terminate in finite steps, it has no known time complexity and may also produce triangulations containing faces with only two edges. This article develops a new method to obtain proper IDTs on manifold triangle meshes.We first compute a geodesic Voronoi diagram (GVD) by taking all mesh vertices as generators and then find its dual graph. The sufficient condition for the dual graph to be a proper triangulation is that all Voronoi cells satisfy the so-called closed ball property. To guarantee the closed ball property everywhere, a certain sampling criterion is required. For Voronoi cells that violate the closed ball property, we fix them by computing topologically safe regions, inwhich auxiliary sites can be addedwithout changing the topology of theVoronoi diagram beyond them.Given a meshwith n vertices, we prove that by adding at most O(n) auxiliary sites, the computed GVD satisfies the closed ball property, and hence its dual graph is a proper IDT. Our method has a theoretical worst-case time complexity O(n^2 + tn log n), where t is the number of obtuse angles in the mesh. Computational results show that it empirically runs in linear time on real-world models.

We present a real-time approach for acquiring 3D objects with high fidelity using hand-held consumer-level RGB-D scanning devices. Existing real-time reconstruction methods typically do not take the point of interest into account, and thus might fail to produce clean reconstruction results of desired objects due to distracting objects or backgrounds. In addition, any changes in background during scanning, which can often occur in real scenarios, can easily break up the whole reconstruction process. To address these issues, we incorporate visual saliency into a traditional real-time volumetric fusion pipeline. Salient regions detected from RGB-D frames suggest user-intended objects, and by understanding user intentions our approach can put more emphasis on important targets, and meanwhile, eliminate disturbance of non-important objects. Experimental results on real world scans demonstrate that our system is capable of effectively acquiring geometric information of salient objects in cluttered real-world scenes, even if the backgrounds are changing.

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We consider the Stokes conjecture concerning the shape of extreme 2-dimensional water waves. By new geometric methods including a non-linear frequency formula, we prove the Stokes conjecture in the original variables. Our results do not rely on structural assumptions needed in previous results such as isolated singularities, symmetry and monotonicity. Part of our results extends to the mathematical problem in higher dimensions.

Ricci flow deformsthe Riemannian metric proportionallyto the curvature, such that the curvatureevolves accordingto a heat diffusion process and eventually becomes constant everywhere. Ricci flow has demonstrated its great potential by solving various problems in many fields, which can be hardly handled by alternative methods so far. This work introduces the unified theoretic framework for discrete Surface Ricci Flow, including all the common schemes: Tangential Circle Packing, Thurston’s Circle Packing, Inversive Distance Circle Packing and Discrete Yamabe Flow. Furthermore, this work also introduces a novel schemes, Virtual Radius Circle Packing and the Mixed Type schemes, under the unified framework. This work gives explicit geometric interpretation to the discrete Ricci energies for all the schemes with all back ground geometries, and the corresponding Hessian matrices. The unified frame work deepens our understanding to the the discrete surface Ricci flow theory, and has inspired us to discover the new schemes, improved the flexibility and robustness of the algorithms, greatly simplified the implementation and improved the efficiency. Experimental results show the unified surface Ricci flow algorithms can handle general surfaces with different topologies, and is robust to meshes with different qualities, and is effective for solving real problems.

For the purpose of isogeometric analysis, one of the most common ways is to construct structured hexahedral meshes, which have regular tensor product structure, and fit them by volumetric T-Splines. This theoretic work proposes a novel surface quadrilateral meshing method, colorable quad-mesh, which leads to the structured hexahedral mesh of the enclosed volume for high genus surfaces. The work proves the equivalence relations among colorable quad-meshes, finite measured foliations and Strebel differentials on surfaces. This trinity theorem lays down the theoretic foundation for quadrilateral/hexahedral mesh generation, and leads to practical, automatic algorithms. The work proposes the following algorithm: the user inputs a set of disjoint, simple loops on a high genus surface, and specifies a height parameter for each loop; a unique Strebel differential is computed with the combinatorial type and the heights prescribed by the user’s input; the Strebel differential assigns a flat metric on the surface and decomposes the surface into cylinders; a colorable quad-mesh is generated by splitting each cylinder into two quadrilaterals, followed by subdivision; the surface cylindrical decomposition is extended inward to produce a solid cylindrical decomposition of the volume; the hexadhedral meshing is generated for each volumetric cylinder and then glued together to form a globally consistent hex-mesh. The method is rigorous, geometric, automatic and conformal to the geometry. This work focuses on the theoretic aspects of the framework, the algorithmic details and practical evaluations will be given in the future expositions.

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