Pixel-Level and Robust Vibration Source Sensing in High-Frame-Rate Video Analysis

Real-Time Vibration Visualization Using GPU-Based High-Speed Vision

In this study, we developed a real-time vibration visualization system that can estimate and display vibration distributions at all frequencies in real time through parallel implementation of subpixel digital image correlation (DIC) computations with short-time Fourier transforms on a GPU-based high-speed vision platform. To help operators intuitively monitor high-speed motion, we introduced a two-step framework of high-speed video processing to obtain vibration distributions at hundreds of hertz and video conversion processing for the visualization of vibration distribution at dozens of hertz. The proposed system can estimate the full-field vibration displacements of 1920 × 1080 images in real time at 1000 fps and display their frequency responses in the range of 0–500 Hz on a computer at dozens of frames per second by accelerating phase-only DICs for full-field displacement measurement and video conversion. The effectiveness of this system for real-time vibration monitoring and visualization was demonstrated by conducting experiments on objects vibrating at dozens or hundreds of hertz.

HFR Projector Camera Based Visible Light Communication System for Real-Time Video Streaming

This study develops a projector-camera-based visible light communication (VLC) system for real-time broadband video streaming, in which a high frame rate (HFR) projector can encode and project a color input video sequence into binary image patterns modulated at thousands of frames per second and an HFR vision system can capture and decode these binary patterns into the input color video sequence with real-time video processing. For maximum utilization of the high-throughput transmission ability of the HFR projector, we introduce a projector-camera VLC protocol, wherein a multi-level color video sequence is binary-modulated with a gray code for encoding and decoding instead of pure-code-based binary modulation. Gray code encoding is introduced to address the ambiguity with mismatched pixel alignments along the gradients between the projector and vision system. Our proposed VLC system consists of an HFR projector, which can project 590 × 1060 binary images at 1041 fps via HDMI streaming and a monochrome HFR camera system, which can capture and process 12-bit 512 × 512 images in real time at 3125 fps; it can simultaneously decode and reconstruct 24-bit RGB video sequences at 31 fps, including an error correction process. The effectiveness of the proposed VLC system was verified via several experiments by streaming offline and live video sequences.

Real-Time Monocular Three-Dimensional Motion Tracking Using a Multithread Active Vision System

In this study, we developed a monocular stereo tracking system to be used as a marker-based, three-dimensional (3-D) motion capture system. This system aims to localize dozens of markers on multiple moving objects in real time by switching five hundred different views in 1 s. The ultrafast mirror-drive active vision used in our catadioptric stereo tracking system can accelerate a series of operations for multithread gaze control with video shooting, computation, and actuation within 2 ms. By switching between five hundred different views in 1 s, with real-time video processing for marker extraction, our system can function asJvirtual left and right pan-tilt tracking cameras, operating at 250/Jfps to simultaneously capture and processJpairs of 512 × 512 stereo images with different views via the catadioptric mirror system. We conducted several real-time 3-D motion experiments to capture multiple fast-moving objects with markers. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of our monocular 3-D motion tracking system.

A High-Speed Vision System with Multithread Automatic Exposure Control for High-Dynamic-Range Imaging

In this study, we develop a real-time high-frame-rate vision system with frame-by-frame automatic exposure (AE) control that can simultaneously synthesize multiple images with different exposure times into a high-dynamic-range (HDR) image for scenarios with dynamic change in illumination. By accelerating the video capture and processing for time-division multithread AE control at the millisecond level, the proposed system can virtually function as multiple AE cameras with different exposure times. This system can capture color HDR images of 512 × 512 pixels in real time at 500 fps by synthesizing four 8-bit color images with different exposure times at consecutive frames, captured at an interval of 2 ms, with pixel-level parallel processing accelerated by a GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) board. Several experimental results for scenarios with a large change in illumination are demonstrated to confirm the performance of the proposed system for real-time HDR imaging.

Motion-Blur-Free High-Speed Video Shooting Using a Resonant Mirror

This study proposes a novel concept of actuator-driven frame-by-frame intermittent tracking for motion-blur-free video shooting of fast-moving objects. The camera frame and shutter timings are controlled for motion blur reduction in synchronization with a free-vibration-type actuator vibrating with a large amplitude at hundreds of hertz so that motion blur can be significantly reduced in free-viewpoint high-frame-rate video shooting for fast-moving objects by deriving the maximum performance of the actuator. We develop a prototype of a motion-blur-free video shooting system by implementing our frame-by-frame intermittent tracking algorithm on a high-speed video camera system with a resonant mirror vibrating at 750 Hz. It can capture 1024 × 1024 images of fast-moving objects at 750 fps with an exposure time of 0.33 ms without motion blur. Several experimental results for fast-moving objects verify that our proposed method can reduce image degradation from motion blur without decreasing the camera exposure time.