Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons^™

Super Lidar Intensity For Robotic Perception, Wei Gao, Jie Zhang, Mingle Zhao, Zhiyuan Zhang, Shu Kong, Maani Ghaffari, Dezhen Song, Chengzhong Xu, Hui Kong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Conventionally, human intuition defines vision as a modality of passive optical sensing, relying on ambient light to perceive the environment. However, active optical sensing, which involves emitting and receiving signals, offers unique advantages by capturing both radiometric and geometric properties of the environment, independent of external illumination conditions. This work focuses on advancing active optical sensing using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), which captures intensity data, enabling the estimation of surface reflectance that remains invariant under varying illumination. Such properties are crucial for robotic perception tasks, including detection, recognition, segmentation, and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). A key challenge with …

Learning Feature Inversion For Multi-Class Anomaly Detection Under General-Purpose Coco-Ad Benchmark, Jiangning Zhang, Chengjie Wang, Xiangtai Li, Guanzhong Tian, Zhucun Xue, Yong Liu, Guansong Pang, Dacheng Tao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Anomaly detection (AD) is often focused on detecting anomaly areas for industrial quality inspection and medical lesion examination. However, due to the specific scenario targets, the data scale for AD is relatively small, and evaluation metrics are still deficient compared to classic vision tasks, such as object detection and semantic segmentation. To fill these gaps, this work first constructs a large-scale and general-purpose COCO-AD dataset by extending COCO to the AD field. This enables fair evaluation and sustainable development for different methods on this challenging benchmark. Moreover, current metrics such as AU-ROC have nearly reached saturation on simple datasets, which …

Weakly Supervised Video Anomaly Detection And Localization With Spatio-Temporal Prompts, Peng Wu, Xuerong Zhou, Guansong Pang, Zhiwei Yang, Qingsen Yan, Peng Wang, Yanning Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Current weakly supervised video anomaly detection (WSVAD) task aims to achieve frame-level anomalous event detection with only coarse video-level annotations available. Existing works typically involve extracting global features from full-resolution video frames and training frame-level classifiers to detect anomalies in the temporal dimension. However, most anomalous events tend to occur in localized spatial regions rather than the entire video frames, which implies existing frame-level feature based works may be misled by the dominant background information and lack the interpretation of the detected anomalies. To address this dilemma, this paper introduces a novel method called STPrompt that learns spatio-temporal prompt embeddings …

Semat: Semantic Enhanced Natural Image Interactive Matting, Ruihao Xia, Yu Liang, Peng-Tao Jiang, Hao Zhang, Qianru Sun, Yang Tang, Bo Li, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recent approaches attempt to adapt powerful interactive segmentation models, such as SAM, to interactive matting and fine-tune the models based on synthetic matting datasets. However, models trained on synthetic data fail to generalize to complex and occlusion scenes. We address this challenge by proposing a new matting dataset based on the COCO dataset, namely COCO-Matting. It selects real-world complex images from COCO and converts semantic segmentation masks to matting labels. The built COCO-Matting comprises an extensive collection of 36,980 human instance-level alpha mattes in complex natural scenarios. Furthermore, existing SAM-based matting methods extract intermediate features and masks from a frozen …

Dragging With Geometry: From Pixels To Geometry-Guided Image Editing, Xinyu Pu, Hongsong Wang, Jie Gui, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Interactive point-based image editing serves as a controllable editor, enabling precise and flexible manipulation of image content. However, most drag-based methods operate primarily on the 2D pixel plane with limited use of 3D cues. As a result, they often produce imprecise and inconsistent edits, particularly in geometry-intensive scenarios such as rotations and perspective transformations. To address these limitations, we propose a novel geometry-guided drag-based image editing method—GeoDrag, which addresses three key challenges: 1) incorporating 3D geometric cues into pixel-level editing, 2) mitigating discontinuities caused by geometry-only guidance, and 3) resolving conflicts arising from multi-point dragging. Built upon a unified displacement …

Dreamcs: Geometry-Aware Text-To-3d Generation With Unpaired 3d Reward Supervision, Xiandong Zou, Ruihao Xia, Hongsong Wang, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While text-to-3D generation has attracted growing interest, existing methods often struggle to produce 3D assets that align well with human preferences. Current preference alignment techniques for 3D content typically rely on hardly-collected preference-paired multi-view 2D images to train 2D reward models, when then guide 3D generation — leading to geometric artifacts, such as the Janus face problem and geometric incompleteness, due to their inherent 2D bias. To address these limitations, we construct 3D-MeshPref, the first large-scale unpaired 3D preference dataset, featuring diverse 3D meshes annotated by a large language model and refined by human evaluators. We then develop RewardCS, the …

From Spatial To Actions: Grounding Vision-Language-Action Model In Spatial Foundation Priors, Zhengshen Zhang, Hao Li, Yalun Dai, Zhengbang Zhu, Lei Zhou, Chenchen Liu, Dong Wang, Francis E. H. Tay, Sijin Chen, Ziwei Liu, Yuxiao Liu, Xinghang Li, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Existing vision-language-action (VLA) models act in 3D real-world but are typically built on 2D encoders, leaving a spatial reasoning gap that limits generalization and adaptability. Recent 3D integration techniques for VLAs either require specialized sensors and transfer poorly across modalities, or inject weak cues that lack geometry and degrade vision-language alignment. In this work, we introduce FALCON (From Spatial to Action), a novel paradigm that injects rich 3D spatial tokens into the action head. FALCON leverages spatial foundation models to deliver strong geometric priors from RGB alone, and includes an Embodied Spatial Model that can optionally fuse depth, or pose …

Who You Explain To Matters: Learning By Explaining To Conversational Agents With Different Pedagogical Roles, Zhengtao Xu, Junti Zhang, Anthony Tang, Yi-Chieh Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Conversational agents are increasingly used in education for learning support. An application is “learning by explaining”, where learners explain their understanding to an agent. However, existing research focuses on single roles, leaving it unclear how different pedagogical roles influence learners’ interaction patterns, learning outcomes and experiences. We conducted a between-subjects study (N=96) comparing agents with three pedagogical roles (Tutee, Peer, Challenger) and a control condition while learning an economics concept. We found that different pedagogical roles shaped learning dynamics, including interaction patterns and experiences. Specifically, the Tutee agent elicited the most cognitive investment but led to high pressure. The Peer …

Enhancing Low-Light And Noisy Images Using Gaussian Denoising And Clahe (Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization)., Daniel Adesoji

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

Abstract

In digital imaging Low light image improvement is a crucial issue, with applications in medical imaging, surveillance and digital imaging. Images captured under substandard illumination usually appear dark and noisy: contrast is lower, hiding crucial details, while ISO (international Organization for Standardization) settings introduce grainy noise that devalue quality. These issues make images a problem for both human interpretation and automated vision system.

Traditional improvement methods such as histogram equalization and Retinex -based techniques enhance brightness but usually cause artifacts to boost noise. Deep learning approaches achieve strong results but require large datasets, heavy computation, and may fail to …

Invert Your Prompt: Editing-Aware Diffusion Inversion, Yangyang Xu, Wenqi Shao, Yong Du, Haiming Zhu, Yang Zhou, Jiayuan Xie, Ping Luo, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recent advancements in text-guided diffusion models have enabled powerful image manipulation capabilities. However, balancing reconstruction fidelity and editability for real images remains a significant challenge. In this work, we introduce Editing Inversion (EditInv), a novel framework that inverts and edits real images for specific editing tasks by optimizing specific prompt embeddings within the extended  space. By leveraging distinct embeddings across different U-Net layers and time steps, EditInv seamlessly integrates inversion and editing through reciprocal optimization, ensuring both high fidelity and precise editability. This hierarchical editing mechanism classifies tasks into structure, appearance, and global edits, optimizing only those embeddings that are …

Cylindformer: Image-To-Point Cloud Registration With Cylindrical Transformer, Jingtao Wang, Hao Tang, Yanpeng Sun, Shengfeng He, Zechao Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accurate correspondence extraction between distinctive pixel-wise and point-wise features is critical for image-to-point cloud (I2P) registration. Recent efforts leveraging Transformers for I2P feature representation have demonstrated potential, primarily by first capturing intra-modality global contextual dependencies via self-attention, and then learning cross-modality correlations via cross-attention. The strength of vanilla Transformers lies in modeling cross-modality global feature correlations. However, such mechanisms often struggle with the structural disparity between dense image pixels and sparse 3D points, hindering the establishment of fine-grained correspondences. Moreover, global attention may introduce ambiguity, as interactions with many inconsistent regions of intra-modality may degrade feature distinctiveness. To address these …

Designing For Trust In Chat-Based Question Answering Systems: An Exchange-Based Retrieval Approach, Nathan Mccutchen

Master's Theses

Community chat platforms such as Discord and Slack support spontaneous, collaborative communication but make it difficult to retrieve previously discussed information. As conversations accumulate, valuable exchanges become buried, leading to repeated questions and sustained burden on experienced community members.

This work contributes a set of design requirements for question-answering systems operating over unstructured chat data, a Discord bot prototype implementing those requirements named Echo, and an empirical evaluation of how such a system affects user trust. Rather than encoding discrete question-answer pairs or generating synthetic responses with a language model, Echo indexes conversation topics for semantic retrieval and presents results …

Courts Of New York: A Visual Atlas Of The City’S Public Basketball Spaces, Nathaniel Rattner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Basketball courts in New York City are recreation facilities, community anchors and part of the city’s cultural image. In the basketball capital of the world, New Yorkers are rarely more than a few blocks away from a court. The visual diversity of these courts, however, is not widely documented in systematic ways.

This project makes that diversity visible to the public, combining open data, aerial imagery and computational analysis to document this important public space across the five boroughs. It is a narrative story and digital atlas of New York City’s public basketball courts, using surface color as a way …

Zero-Shot Video Translation Via Token Warping, Haiming Zhu, Yangyang Xu, Jun Yu, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the revolution of generative AI, video-related tasks have been widely studied. However, current state-of-the-art video models still lag behind image models in visual quality and user control over generated content. In this paper, we introduce TokenWarping, a novel framework for temporally coherent video translation. Existing diffusion-based video editing approaches rely solely on key and value patches in self-attention to ensure temporal consistency, often sacrificing the preservation of local and structural regions. Critically, these methods overlook the significance of the query patches in achieving accurate feature aggregation and temporal coherence. In contrast, TokenWarping leverages complementary token priors by constructing temporal …

Lagrangian Motion Fields For Long-Term Motion Generation, Yifei Yang, Zikai Huang, Chenshu Xu, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Long-term motion generation is a challenging task that requires producing coherent and realistic sequences over extended durations. Current methods primarily rely on framewise motion representations, which capture only static spatial details and overlook temporal dynamics. This approach leads to significant redundancy across the temporal dimension, complicating the generation of effective long-term motion. To overcome these limitations, we introduce the novel concept of Lagrangian Motion Fields, specifically designed for long-term motion generation. By treating each joint as a Lagrangian particle with uniform velocity over short intervals, our approach condenses motion representations into a series of "supermotions" (analogous to superpixels). This method …

Cellscout: Visual Analytics For Mining Biomarkers In Cell State Discovery, Rui Sheng, Zelin Zang, Jiachen Wang, Yan Luo, Zixin Chen, Yan Zhou, Shaolun Ruan, Huamin Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cell state discovery is crucial for understanding biological systems and enhancing medical outcomes. A key aspect of this process is identifying distinct biomarkers that define specific cell states. However, difficulties arise from the co-discovery process of cell states and biomarkers: biologists often use dimensionality reduction to visualize cells in a two-dimensional space. Then they usually interpret visually clustered cells as distinct states, from which they seek to identify unique biomarkers. However, this assumption is often this assumption often fails to hold due to internal inconsistencies in a cluster, making the process trial-and-error and highly uncertain. Therefore, biologists urgently need effective …

A Virtual-Reality-Based Dental Simulator For Endodontics With Automated Formative Feedback, Yousef Salah Abo El Ela

Theses and Dissertations

Advancements in virtual reality (VR) and haptic technology are transforming the landscape of medical and dental education, offering new avenues for safe, immersive, and repeatable training experiences. Within dentistry, endodontics presents unique challenges for preclinical education due to anatomical complexity, limited access to extracted teeth, ethical concerns, and the shortcomings of conventional plastic models. Despite endodontics specific plastic teeth being available, they fall short of replicating the hardness of real extracted teeth, are relatively costly compared to generic plastic teeth, and are ultimately a disposable item which makes them inadequate as a sustainable long-term solution. Extracted teeth do a much …

A Macrocognitive Design Taxonomy For Simulation-Based Training Systems: Bridging Cognitive Theory And Human-Computer Interaction, Jessica M. Johnson

Virginia Digital Maritime Center (VDMC) Faculty Publications

Simulation-based training systems are increasingly deployed to prepare learners for complex, safety-critical, and dynamic work environments. While advances in computing have enabled immersive and data-rich simulations, many systems remain optimized for procedural accuracy and surface-level task performance rather than the macrocognitive processes that underpin adaptive expertise. Macrocognition encompasses higher-order cognitive processes that are essential for performance transfer beyond controlled training conditions. When these processes are insufficiently supported, training systems risk fostering brittle strategies and negative training effects. This paper introduces a macrocognitive design taxonomy for simulation-based training systems derived from a large-scale meta-analysis examining the transfer of macrocognitive skills from …

Micro-Behavioral Analysis Of Online Shopping Patterns For Blind Users, Yash Prakash, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Nithiya Venkatraman, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

While online shopping platforms provide convenience and autonomy to blind users, their non-visual interactions remain underexplored at a micro-behavioral level. Existing studies have primarily emphasized accessibility and usability challenges but have overlooked how fine-grained, screen reader-driven keystroke-level behaviors reflect users’ cognitive strategies. In this paper, we present the findings of a longitudinal study with 25 blind participants to examine their micro-behavioral patterns, using keyboard activity and screen reader logs on both familiar and unfamiliar e-commerce websites. We complemented this study with semi-structured interviews to contextualize the uncovered micro-behavioral patterns. Our results revealed patterns in how blind users draw upon cognitive …

Modeling Joint Visual Attention In Naturalistic Dyadic Interactions, Kuushini Thennakoon, Yasasi Abeysinghe, Bhanuka Mahanama, Vikas Ashok, Sampath Jayarathna

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Joint visual attention (JVA) provides important insight into how individuals coordinate attention during social interaction. Egocentric eye tracking enables the study of JVA in natural, multi-user settings. This work presents a multi-stage framework to identify and analyze JVA using egocentric video and gaze data. The approach consists of three steps: spatiotemporal tube-based visual similarity, gaze-guided object detection, and attention pattern analysis using the ambient–focal coefficient K. Results show that object-focused collaborative activities exhibit high JVA, with object detection capturing higher joint attention than visual similarity, whereas conversation-based or independent activities show lower and more fragmented joint attention. Analysis of K …

Lost In Instructions: Study Of Blind Users' Experiences With Diy Manuals And Ai-Rewritten Instructions For Assembly, Operation, And Troubleshooting Of Tangible Products, Monalika Padma Reddy, Aruna Balasubramanian, Jiawei Zhou, Xiaojun Bi, Iv Ramakrishnan, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

AI tools like ChatGPT and Be-My-AI are increasingly being used by blind individuals. Although prior work has explored their use in some Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tasks by blind individuals, little is known about how they use these tools and the available product-manual resources to assemble, operate, and troubleshoot physical/tangible products – tasks requiring spatial reasoning, structural understanding, and precise execution. We address this knowledge gap via an interview study and a usability study with blind participants, investigating how they leverage AI tools and product manuals for DIY tasks with physical products. Findings show that manuals are essential resources, but product-manual instructions …

Memebuddy: Dialog-Style Audio Representations For Engaging Non-Visual Meme Experiences, Chirag Bhansali, Vikas Ashok, Hae-Na Lee

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Image memes are a pervasive form of online communication, widely used to convey humor, opinions, and cultural references. Prior work has explored making memes accessible to blind users, primarily through auto-generated descriptive captions. While these approaches improve comprehensibility and sometimes incorporate prosodic or emotional cues, they often fail to capture the humor, narrative structure, and contextual nuances that make memes engaging. We present MemeBuddy, a system that models memes as dialog, generating structured, multi-turn audio representations using role-based speakers. MemeBuddy reinterprets a meme as a conversation between two speakers, integrating extracted meme text with contextual knowledge implicitly inferred by a …

Shaping The Future: Emerging Technologies And Their Role In Industry 4.0 And Beyond, Liuliu Qin

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper provides a comprehensive review of emerging technologies driving the transition from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0. It examines the foundational concepts and pillars of Industry 4.0 and explores the transformative roles of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Extended Reality (XR), Collaborative Cobots (Cobots), Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs), quantum technologies, and next-generation connectivity (5G/6G). By integrating technological, human-centric, and sustainability perspectives, the study outlines how these emerging technologies reshape industrial systems and enable intelligent, adaptive, and inclusive futures.

Trustworthy Multimodal Ai For Medical Imaging: Enhancing Diagnosis, Reasoning, And Human-Agent Interaction In Extended Reality, Jai Prakash Veerla

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

The transition from traditional microscopy to digital pathology has digitized diagnostic data, yet clinical workflows remain constrained by two-dimensional screens and passive, opaque analysis tools that fail to capture the spatial complexity of biological systems. While Foundation Models now promise to reason across histology and genomics, a critical disconnect persists between the richness of this data and the limited cognitive bandwidth of clinicians, who currently lack the immersive interfaces and trustworthy agents necessary to utilize it effectively. This dissertation presents a unified framework for "Embodied Agentic AI," establishing a pipeline that augments physician capabilities through immersive visualization, robust security, and …

Contextual Scaffolding And Self-Efficacy: Supporting Computer Skill Development Among Blind Learners In India, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Yash Prakash, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Inclusive computer literacy education efforts, broadening the participation of blind or visually impaired (BVI) individuals, have gained traction in recent years. Existing literature investigating these efforts primarily draws evidence from affluent Global North contexts, where accessibility resources and legal frameworks are relatively more mature. Little is known about the in-situ teaching and learning challenges faced by trainers and BVI students, respectively, in resource-constrained, multicultural Global South countries like India. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a four-month contextual inquiry at two computer training centers catering to 94 BVI students in India. We notably observed a rigid, experience-driven training environment …

A Novel Lightweight Framework For Low-Light Image Enhancement Via Gaussian Denoising And Clahe, Daniel Oluwaseun Adesoji

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Low-light image enhancement is a major challenge in digital imaging, especially in medical imaging, surveillance, and autonomous vision systems. Images captured under poor illumination often appear dark, noisy, and low in contrast, which makes it hard to observe important details. Traditional enhancement methods can improve brightness but usually introduce artifacts or increase noise. Although deep learning methods have shown strong performance, they usually require large datasets, and high computational resources. This creates a need for simpler and more efficient enhancement techniques. This study proposes a lightweight framework that incorporates Gaussian denoising with Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) to enhance …

From Physical Correlation To Emotional Connection: The Role Of Passive Haptics On Empathy In Virtual Reality, Jemely Robles

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Virtual reality is increasingly explored as a tool for cultivating empathy, and haptic feedback as a tool for enhancing immersion. This paper investigates the effects of combining the two.  Fifty-two participants experienced a custom-built VR scene in which a character was shown packing up a room. Participants were assigned to either a haptic condition, receiving passive haptic feedback corresponding to the character's actions, or a non-haptic control condition that did not receive any haptic input. Trait empathy was measured beforehand, and state empathy and engagement were measured after the experience. Thematic analysis was conducted on post-study interviews, and headset recordings …

Learning Design To Advance Human-Ai Collaboration In K-12 Education, Wing Sha Chan, Jinhee Kim, Seongryeong Yu, Rita Kay Detrick

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This chapter explores key components for designing effective Human-AI Collaboration (HAC) in K–12 education, addressing the current lack of theoretical and conceptual frameworks for structuring and implementing HAC in teaching and learning. It examines four essential areas: curriculum design, student and teacher–AI interaction, learning environments, and the evolution of HAC over time. The chapter introduces the concept of HAC in K–12 contexts, highlighting how humans and AI can leverage each other's strengths through co-evolutionary processes that foster mutual learning and collaboration. It reviews current HAC practices in schools and discusses their contributions to both teaching and learning. Finally, it presents …

Impacts Of Segmenting Principle On Learner Performance And Attitude In A 3d Environment: A Mixed-Method Multiple Case Study, Kristin Herman, Mohan Yang, Jim Shifflet, Noah Glaser

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This study presents a conceptual replication of Moreno’s (Appl Cogn Psychol 21:765–781. 10.1002/acp.1348, 2007) study on the benefits of adhering to the segmentation principle when utilizing multimedia learning objects. Furthermore, this study expands upon the original by taking place in a low-immersive virtual reality environment, allowing for further understanding on the extent to which multimedia principles are still relevant. Both a synchronous and an asynchronous case are presented. Results indicate benefits for both cases in far transfer of learning. Furthermore, synchronous learners indicated a significant reduction in cognitive load and increased overall attitudes towards learning due to segmented instruction.

Wearable Sensor-Based Phase Segmentation Analysis Of Front Crawl Swimming: A Scoping Review, Jonathan Simoes, Samuel Aylward, Daniel Hamze, Daniel James Goble, Daniel M. Russell, Joshua Haworth

Exercise Science Faculty Publications

Front crawl swimming stroke phase segmentation has historically relied on video analysis, but the development of wearable sensor technology has created new opportunities for automated phase segmentation. This scoping review mapped the available evidence on wearable sensor-based stroke phase segmentation methods in front crawl swimming, following PRISMA-ScR guidelines. A systematic search of SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore conducted from January to June 2026, identified 15 eligible peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2024. The review revealed an emerging field of research that has converged methodologically around inertial measurement units (IMUs) and the Chollet phase segmentation framework while remaining …