[Swistrack-users] Newsletter October 18, 2006.

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Contents:

1. Public presentation of SwisTrack in Beijing
2. New features in SwisTrack 3.0b
3. SwisTrack documentation as WikiBook
4. New SwisTrack developers and projects

1. Public presentation of SwisTrack in Beijing
----------------------------------------------

SwisTrack was presented to the robotics community at the International 
Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems from October 9-15 in 
Beijing, China, by a paper and an accompanying video. IROS is currently 
the largest conference in robotics with 1002 accepted papers and 32 videos.

SwisTrack: A Tracking Tool for Multi-Unit Robotic and Biological Systems
Correll, N., Sempo, G., Lopez de Meneses, Y., Halloy, J., Deneubourg, 
J.-L., and Martinoli, A.
Paper: http://infoscience.epfl.ch/search.py?recid=85929&ln=en
Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6191467557059762009

2. New features in SwisTrack 3.0b
-----------------------------------

The new release of SwisTrack has undergone major modifications, 
including several new segmentation routines, support for various 
cameras, and an enhanced user interface:

- Segmentation routines improved (thanks to Pierre): thresholds can now 
be adaptive to changing
   lighting conditions. Also, it is possible to track specific colours 
in the image.
- Panels added for most functional blocks: impact of parameter change 
can be seen at runtime
- Multi-threading (thanks to Clement): touching the GUI does not stop 
the tracking process
- XML description defining most of the GUI's features
- XML data structure for passing parameters within SwisTrack
- Networking functionalities: SwisTrack can serve trajectories to 3rd party
  software via TCP/IP, clients for Matlab, Java (thanks to Gregory), C++ 
are available
- Possibility to save BMP files
- Improved error handling / user feedback using C++ exceptions
- VfW camera (USB) support added
- GUI upgraded to WxWidgets 2.6.3
- core upgrade to Intels OpenCV library 0.99 which fixes many OpenCv 
related bugs
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 runtime libraries shipped with the 
installer to avoid compatibility problems

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=161258&package_id=181643&release_id=436769 

3. SwisTrack documentation as WikiBook
-------------------------------------------

The user documentation has been setup as a WikiBook and is currently 
evolving. The Wiki system allows everyone to change and add content with 
an easy to use, web-based interface.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Swistrack

4. New SwisTrack developers and projects
--------------------------------------------

SwisTrack's segementation routines have been recently improved (see 
above) by PIERRE RODUIT, a PhD student within the Swarm-Intelligent 
Systems Group and the Laboratory for Production Engineering,  EPFL. 
Pierre used SwisTrack for tracking an E-Puck robot within an enclosed 
arena and analyzed its trajectory by means of Principal Component 
Analysis, leading to a publication at ICRA 2007 (submitted).

CLEMENT HONGLER, currently an intern with the Swarm-Intelligent Systems 
Group working with JULIEN NEMBRINI (Postdoctoral fellow), uses SwisTrack 
for tracking a swarm of up to 35 E-Pucks equipped with markers and 
sending the robots's position back to them using a custom developed Java 
tool in real-time. He improved SwisTrack's networking capabilities and 
implemented multi-threading, which allows taking advantage of 
multi-processer architectures and is necessary for online tracking. A 
video of his work is available at http://www5.epfl.ch/swis/page16070.html.

THOMAS LOCHMATTER (SWIS Phd student) and VINCENT SALZGEBER (semester 
project) will extend SwisTrack for handling multiple cameras at the same 
time for extending the field of view of SwisTrack. Their approach will 
take into account overlapping regions as well as optical deformations.

Please let me know of your research!

Best regards,
Nikolaus

 ---
 Nikolaus Correll
 http://swis.epfl.ch/people/nikolaus
 EPFL IC ISC GR-MA (Swarm-Intelligent Systems Group)
 Building BC, Room  242
 Station 14
 CH-1015 Lausanne
 Phone: +41 21 69 36890
 Fax: +41 21 693 67 00