NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)
Summer 2010 - Computer Vision and Multi-Agent Systems
Department of Computer Science, Utah State University

Robert Qualls

Name:

Robert Qualls

Major:

Computer Science

Home Town:

Florence, Alabama

School:

University of North Alabama

Email

rlqualls (at) una.edu

About Me

I am a senior at the University of North Alabama. I generally spend my time playing video games, writing code, and reading programming books.

Logan, Utah turned out to be a very nice place. The skies are almost always clear, and the weather is usually not too hot. The people are nice, and traffic is never a problem. There are mountains to climb within walking distance of the dorms. If you live in the city or deep in the country, you will probably find Logan a nice change.

Tips

1. You probably won't get any use out of a computer vision textbook while you are up here. I paid $100+ for one and did not touch it after the first week.

2. It's a good idea to have some research papers in mind a week or more before arrival. If you think you are interested in doing content-based image retrieval (CBIR), then do some reading on relevance feedback, neural networks, linear discriminant analysis, and support vector machines.

3. Lee's is a good grocery store and a shorter walk than walmart if you are in the main dorm area (San Juan, Morgan, Rich, etc). It has a pharmacy, too.

4. The gas station on the corner on the way to Lee's has drinks that are not much more expensive than at the grocery store.

5. There is a rock climbing gym near Walmart.

6. Bringing or buying a backpack will come in very handy - and not just for mountain climbing. Groceries are heavy after 30 minutes. I only borrowed one a couple of times, but it would've been nice to own one.

7. The wired broadband here is about 25Mbps down. The wireless internet sucks, so bring an ethernet cable.

8. Acquiring a "copy" of matlab "off the internet" will come in handy. There's nothing better than goofing off all day so that you can go back home and stay up until 2AM working on homework. It's just like school!

9. There is a personal fitness center near the main dorms. All you need is your room key to get in. There's also a real gym that requires money or an ID card. Don't pay for it. Have Dr. Qi send them an email.

10. Don't pay for your room until housing tells you to (HINT: They don't.)

11. Aggie Ice Cream also sells sandwiches and yogurt. They also sell ice cream.

12. If you plan on doing computer vision, LEARN MATLAB.

Project

This summer, I implemented a system to classify digital images between established categories. The system works by taking a query image and returning the top 30 images that it calculates to be the most similar. The returned images are then marked as relevant or irrelevant, and the system uses this information to place the images into groups. Last, the group information is used to modify the feature matrix associated with the images such that the system can return better results on the next retrieval.