Danette Allen's Ph.D. Research Progress

I am a member of the UNC Tracker Research Group.  I helped develop and present a course at SIGGRAPH 2001:   Tracking: Beyond 15 Minutes of Thought (Course 11) with Gary Bishop and Greg Welch.

The 15 Minute Paper

When describing the problems of tracking, the typical listener requires approximately 15 minutes to reach an epiphany.  His or her level of confidence in the solution to the problem rises quickly.  Eventually, the subtleties of the problem begin to appear and at about the fifteen minute mark, the first time listener begins to realize how difficult the problem of tracking is.  This observation was put forth by Gary Bishop (who also coined the colorful phrase) and has become the name of a paper that will offer several things:

• a survey of today's tracking approaches/techniques
• an analysis of tracking approaches given a taxonomy to tentatively include, but not limited to:
• degrees of freedom
• inside out vs. outside in
• absolute vs. relative reference
• passive vs. active
• resolution
• bandwidth
• signal to noise ratio
• response/latency/update rates
• accuracy/reliability/repeatability
• required infrastructure
• an information theory with which to analyze and compare tracking techniques

WFOV-HiBall

The Wide Field of View HiBall, "WFOV-HiBall", is the second generation of the HiBall designed and developed at UNC-CH.  We hope to develop a similar system that reduces the the infrastructure requirements (fewer LEDs, etc.) and shrinks the sensor unit by 1/3 to 1/2.

Path to the Dissertation Proposal

During Fall 2000, my time will be split between two related research areas, The 15 Minute Paper and Mini-HiBall, as described above.  If all proceeds as planned, the "15 minute Paper" will yield an analysis tool (or at least some insight into the theory) which will enable us to predict the performance of the to-be-designed Mini-HiBall.  My dissertation proposal should emerge from this effort.
 

Proposal
        First Draft January 21, 2001.
        Second Draft February 09, 2001.
        Third Draft
        Fourth Draft
        Final Draft and Proposal Meeting June 11, 2001.

My  Integrative Paper (IP) , "A Tracker Performance Analysis Tool" (final draft November 24, 2001).

Daily Progress Fall 2000

Daily Progress Spring 2001