Abstract

Diminished Reality (DR) has been considered as a sub-technology of Mixed and Augmented Reality (MAR). While MAR means technologies that add and/or overlay visual information onto images of real scene for providing users to enhance their visual experiences with the added/overlaid information, DR aims the similar enhanced visual experiences by deleting visual information from the images of real scene. Adding and deleting visual information might be considered as same technical issues, but they are actually totally different. In DR, visual information that is hidden by the deleted object should be recovered for filling into the deleted area. This recovery of the hidden area is not required for general adding/overlaying based MAR, but should be one of the typical issues for achieving DR. Camera pose estimation and tracking is a typical issue in MAR, but the condition of the scene and required performance for DR are not always the same as MAR. For example, the object to be diminished/removed should be detected and tracked while the camera is freely moving for DR.

In this tutorial, the topics of interest are challenging technical issues for DR, such as recovery of hidden area, detecting and tracking the object to be removed/diminished, tracking camera poses, illumination matching and re-lighting, etc. In addition to those technical issues for DR, examples of applications of DR, expected futures with DR, and human factors of DR are also included in the topics of interest of this workshop.

Schedule

9:00 - 9:15 Opening (15 min)
9:15 - 10:00 Keynote Talk: Survey of Diminished Reality
10:00 - 12:00 Contributed talks
12:00 - 13:00 Panel discussion and/or interactive session

Instructor Background

Prof. Hideyuki Tamura received B.Eng and the doctorate degrees both in electrical engineering from Kyoto University, Japan. His professional career starting in 1972 includes a Senior Research Official at the Electrotechnical Laboratory, MITI, Japan, the Director of Media Technology Laboratory, Canon Inc., and a member of the executive board of Mixed Reality Systems Laboratory Inc. In 2003, he joined Ritsumeikan University, where he is now an Eminent Professor, Research Organization of Science and Technology.

His research interest and major achievements are in the areas of pictorial pattern recognition, digital image processing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and multimedia systems. His most prominent work is that he planned and conducted the Key-Technology Research Project on Mixed Reality in Japan from 1997 to 2001. He organized the Special Interest Group on Mixed Reality, the Virtual Reality Society of Japan and founded the basic body of the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). Now he is an emeritus member of the ISMAR Steering Committee.

Prof. Tamura served on the executive boards of several academic societies in Japan and received several awards from such societies as IEICE and IPSJ. He is (co)author and (co)editor of ten books, all in the field of computer vision, graphics, and multimedia, including "Mixed Reality -- Merging Real and Virtual Worlds" (Ohmsha & Springer, 1999).

Prof. Hideo Saito received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Keio University, Japan, in 1992. Since then, he has been on the Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University. In 1997 to 1999, he had joined into Virtualized Reality Project in the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University as a visiting researcher. Since 2006, he has been a full Professor of Department of Information and Computer Science, Keio University. He served as program co-chair of ISMAR (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) 2008 and 2009. Now he is a steering committee member of ISMAR. He also served as an Area Chair of ACCV (Asian Conference on Computer Vision) 2009, 2010, and 2012. His research interests include computer vision, mixed reality, virtual reality, and 3D video analysis and synthesis.

Prof. Fumihisa Shibata received the M.E. degree in computer science and the Ph.D. degree in engineering from Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan, in 1996, and 1999, respectively. Since then, he has been a research associate at the Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, Osaka University. In 2003, he joined Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Shiga, Japan, where he was an associate professor at the College of Science and Engineering. In 2004, he became an associate professor at the College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University. Since 2013, he has been a full professor at Ritsumeikan University. His research interests include mobile computing, augmented/mixed reality, and human–computer interaction.

Prof. Maki Sugimoto received his Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering from The University of Electro-Communications. He was a visiting researcher for NTT Communication Science Laboratories, a research fellow at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and a visiting scholar for MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He became a senior assistant professor for Keio University Graduate School of Media Design in 2008. In 2011, he assumed the current position as an assistant professor for Department of Information and Computer Science, Keio University Faculty of Science and Technology. He engaged in Display-based Computing System, Robotic-User Interfaces and Tele-operation interface for search-and-rescue robots at The University of Electro-communications and Keio University. His research interests include human-robot interfaces and Augmented Reality environments with actuated physical interfaces.