David Robb
PhD Research
I am working on the CDI “Head-Crowd” project. This is an interdisciplinary project in the Schools of Mathematics and Computer Science (MACS) and Textile and Design (TEX). The current focus is on perceptual image browsing, visual communication, and visual summary.
Visual Communication
Part of my work on capturing visual feedback has involved building a perceptually relevant image browser populated with a set of abstract images. The images were screen-scraped from Flickr.com (See project acknowledgements below). Human perceptions of the relative similarity of the images were captured using techniques devised by Fraser Halley (See his PhD thesis).
Abstract image set in the SOM browser
The project abstract image set can be viewed in the Self Organising Map Browser above. (For the origin of each individual image please see the x3D view below).
Abstract image set in a 3D MDS browser
The collective similarity judgements of human observers about the images can, perhaps, be better visualised in 3D “similarity” space. The closer an image is to another; the more similar those images were judged to be by observers. Conversely, the farther away two images are, the less similar they were judged to be. The similarity data was used as input to construct the SOM browser. (To view the MDS browser you will need to install the x3D Octaga Player plugin. Once the plugin is installed you can view it in your web browser. You will have an easier time of it if you use Internet Explorer for this. You might want to try out this very simple Hello World x3D example first, which is a much smaller download than the image set visualisation.) In the visualisation the origin of each image can be found by clicking an image.
Project Acknowledgments
One phase of the project has been to establish a database of images for use in visual feedback. The images in the database have been sourced from Flickr.com and all have a Creative Commons licence. These contributors are acknowledged below.
