MIT: Independent Activities Period: IAP

IAP 2013 Activities by Sponsor - Lincoln Laboratory

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3D Manipulation of 2D Images

Dr. Peter L. Cho

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/04
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Laptop with Matlab and digital camera (smart phone okay)

Billions of digital images are being collected each year. But current hardware abilities for gathering electronic pictures far exceed conventional software capacities for organizing and searching these data. In this course, we survey recent advances in computer vision which utilize 3D geometry to manipulate 2D imagery. As we'll see, geometry-based approaches to image processing coupled with internet-scale computing imply many neat, new applications. Each class will begin with a theoretical overview and end with a computer lab. The primary topics for the 4 sessions are multi-view geometry, automatic feature matching, panorama formation and 3D reconstruction. During the computer labs, students will work with open-source and commercial software in order to calibrate cameras, extract SIFT features, form mosaics and generate 3D point clouds from multiple photos. This work is sponsored by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force Contract #FA8721-05-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government.

Sponsor(s): Lincoln Laboratory, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Dr. Peter L. Cho, LIN-S3-300, (781) 981-2802, cho@ll.mit.edu


3D Manipulationn of 2D Images

Jan/08 Tue 12:00PM-01:30PM 4-231, Laptop w/Matlab&digital camera (smart phone ok)
Jan/10 Thu 12:00PM-01:30PM 4-231, Laptop w/Matlab&digital camera (smart phone ok
Jan/15 Tue 12:00PM-01:30PM 4-231, Laptop w/Matlab&digital camera (smart phone ok
Jan/17 Thu 12:00PM-01:30PM 4-231, Laptop w/Matlab&digital camera (smart phone ok

Dr. Peter L. Cho


Build a Small Phased Array Radar System

Dr. Bradley Perry

Enrollment: Advance sign-up Required
Sign-up by 01/11
Limited to 24 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Participants supply their own laptops with MATLAB installed

Are you interested in building and testing your own phased array radar system? MIT Lincoln Laboratory is offering a unique course in the design, fabrication, and test of a laptop-based phased array radar sensor capable of imaging moving targets in real-time, like a ‘radar video camera’. This course will appeal to anyone interested in the following: electronics, amateur radio, physics, electromagnetics, or phased array systems. Teams of three will make a phased array radar system and attend four sessions spanning topics from fundamentals of radar to digital beamforming. You will bring your radar into the field and perform imaging of moving targets around campus. Imaging unusual targets is encouraged; a final radar video competition will determine the most creative radar imagery.    

*This work is sponsored by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force Contract #FA8721-05-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government.

Sponsor(s): Lincoln Laboratory, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Dr. Bradley Perry, LIN-S2-227, (781) 981-0861, radar.course@ll.mit.edu


Build a Small Phased Array Radar System

Jan/22 Tue 01:00PM-03:00PM 4-159, Bring laptop with Matlab installed
Jan/24 Thu 01:00PM-03:00PM 4-159, Bring laptop with Matlab installed
Jan/28 Mon 01:00PM-03:00PM 4-159, Bring laptop with Matlab installed
Jan/29 Tue 01:00PM-03:00PM 4-159, Bring laptop with Matlab installed

Dr. Todd Levy, Dr. Bradley Perry, Dr. Patrick Bell, Dr. Jeffrey Herd


Build a Small Radar System

Dr. Patrick Bell

Enrollment: Advance sign-up Required
Sign-up by 01/11
Limited to 24 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Participants supply their own laptop with MATLAB installed

Are you interested in building and testing your own imaging radar system? MIT Lincoln Laboratory is offering a course in design, fabrication, and test of a laptop-based radar capable of forming Doppler, range, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. This course will appeal to anyone interested in the following: electronics, amateur radio, physics, or electromagnetics. Teams of three will receive a radar kit and will attend four sessions spanning topics from fundamentals of radar to SAR imaging. Experiments will be performed as the radar kit is implemented. You will bring your radar into the field and perform experiments such as measuring the speed of passing cars or plotting the range of moving targets. A final SAR imaging contest will test your ability to form a detailed and creative SAR image of a target scene of your choice. The best image wins. \\*This work is sponsored by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force Contract #FA8721-05-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government.

Sponsor(s): Lincoln Laboratory, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Dr. Patrick Bell, LIN-S2-223, (781) 981-6239, radar.course@ll.mit.edu


Build a Small Radar System

Jan/22 Tue 10:00AM-12:00PM 4-159, Bring your laptop with MATLAB installed.
Jan/24 Thu 10:00AM-12:00PM 4-159, Bring your laptop with MATLAB installed.
Jan/28 Mon 10:00AM-12:00PM 4-159, Bring your laptop with MATLAB installed.
Jan/29 Tue 10:00AM-12:00PM 4-159, Bring your laptop with MATLAB installed.

Dr. Patrick Bell, Dr. Shakti Davis, Dr. Alan Fenn, Dr. Bradley Perry


Find a Needle in a Haystack with 3D Imaging Radar

Dr. Bradley Perry

Enrollment: Advance sign-up Required
Sign-up by 01/11
Limited to 24 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Please see second paragragh of course description

Ever wonder if you could really find a needle in a haystack? Here’s your chance to give it a try! MIT Lincoln Laboratory is offering a unique course that will show you how to collect and process data with an ultra-wideband (UWB) imaging radar, and then use it to accurately locate a real needle in a real haystack. This course will appeal to anyone interested in the following: electronics, amateur radio, physics, or electromagnetics. The course will take place over two days. On the first day, students will learn the basic concepts of operation for an UWB radar in a classroom setting, and then form into teams of three. Each team will use an UWB radar unit to perform 2D imaging of objects around campus. On the second day, the teams will present their 2D images to the group, and then use their radars to locate a needle in a full size haystack with 3D imaging. The team that comes closest to finding the actual location of the needle will be the winner.

This course will use concepts and techniques covered in detail by two other IAP courses, ‘Build a Small Radar System’, and ‘Build a Small Phased Array Radar System’, which will be offered just prior to this one during IAP.  Students are encouraged to take one or both of the other courses to get acquainted with radar hardware and signal processing techniques. 

Sponsor(s): Lincoln Laboratory, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Dr. Bradley Perry, LIN-S2-227, (781) 981-0861, radar.course@ll.mit.edu


Find a Needle in a Haystack

Jan/31 Thu 10:00AM-12:00PM 26-168, Please see second paragraph of course description
Feb/01 Fri 10:00AM-03:00PM 26-168, Please see second paragraph of course description

Dr. Bradley Perry, Dr. Allan Fenn, Dr. Raoul Ouedraogo, Glenn Brigham, Joseph McMichael, Dr. Daniel Rabinkin, Dr. Gerald Benitz


Hands-On Holography

Dr. Robert A. Freking

Enrollment: Advance sign-up Required
Sign-up by 01/21
Limited to 24 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Bring laptop with MATLAB installed. Have MATLAB experience

Learn to conceptually appreciate holographic phenomena through hands-on examples and measurements!

Although spatial perception in both living creatures and machines ultimately rests on underlying phase relationships borne on propagating waves, component sensors typically detect only intensity.  While this conversion explicitly discards phase, holography formalizes a means of reversing this loss by recognizing and preserving phase relationships embedded in intensity-profile snapshots of controlled interference patterns.  Phase thereby recovered may be exploited to restore knowledge of an additional un-sampled spatial dimension.  This course will demystify holography by demonstrating how to gather and interpret  recordings to recover spatial information. Course topics examine principles and applications of holographic phenomena and explore both physical and computational techniques for generating and reproducing content.  Participants will practice holography hands-on in both the optical and audio domains through interactive laboratory exercises employing exposed film, computer-generated holography (CGH) and sonic readings.  Measurement devices, supplies and MATLAB starter code will be provided.  \\\*Work sponsored by the Department of the Air Force under Contract #FA8721-05-C-0002, but not necessarily endorsed by the U.S. Government.

Sponsor(s): Lincoln Laboratory, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Dr. Robert A. Freking, LIN-A-281, (781) 981-2098, holographycourse@ll.mit.edu


Hands on Holography

Jan/28 Mon 01:00PM-03:30PM 66-160, Bring laptop with MATLAB installed.
Jan/29 Tue 01:00PM-03:30PM 66-160, Bring laptop with MATLAB installed.
Jan/30 Wed 01:00PM-03:30PM 66-160, Bring laptop with MATLAB installed.
Jan/31 Thu 01:00PM-03:30PM 66-160, Bring laptop with MATLAB installed.
Feb/01 Fri 01:00PM-03:30PM 66-160, Bring laptop with MATLAB installed.

Open Robotics Laboratory

Michael Boulet

Enrollment: Advance sign-up Required
Sign-up by 01/04
Limited to 14 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Please see course description

A hands-on introduction to applied robotics software programming sponsored by MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Thanks to open source robotics libraries and inexpensive robot platforms, creating advanced robot capabilities has never been easier. Learn how to use the popular ROS robotics libraries and a small ground robot equipped with a Kinect sensor to demonstrate behaviors like person following, patrolling, exploration, and map-making. The course will focus on selecting, integrating, and tuning existing software packages with some high-level discussion of the underlying robotics technologies. No robotics experience is necessary, but some familiarity with a Linux/UNIX command line and an interest in programming robots in C++ or Python is required. Teams of two or three will share access to an off-the-shelf robot system throughout IAP. Participants will be challenged to demonstrate a creative or novel robot application in a YouTube-like video.\*This work is sponsored by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force Contract #FA8721-05-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government.

Sponsor(s): Lincoln Laboratory, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Michael Boulet, MITLL, (781) 981-4751, boulet@ll.mit.edu


Open Robotics Laboratory

Jan/08 Tue 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205
Jan/11 Fri 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205
Jan/15 Tue 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205
Jan/18 Fri 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205
Jan/22 Tue 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205
Jan/25 Fri 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205
Jan/29 Tue 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205
Feb/01 Fri 09:30AM-11:00AM 8-205

Michael Boulet, Dr. Aaron Enes, Keith Ruenheck, Nicholas Armstrong-Crews, Kenneth Cole, Michael Carroll, Mark Donahue