The Advanced Digital Sciences Center is located at Fusionopolis, Singapore
In an ambitious and far-sighted move, A*STAR Singapore and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, opened the Advanced Digital Sciences Center (ADSC) in Singapore in 2009. The Center is the culmination of many years of collaboration between the two institutions. A*STAR granted S$75 million to open ADSC — the first affiliated center outside the USA for the University of Illinois — with the aim of leading the race in computing research and promoting signature technology projects in the digital age.
“At ADSC, we want to transform the way society uses and interacts with information technology,” explains Marianne Winslett, director of ADSC. “Our two research programs, interactive digital media and the smart grid, are University of Illinois specialties and are important areas for Singapore, which would like to grow those sectors of its expanding knowledge-based economy.”
The researchers based at ADSC are involved in developing virtual reality interfaces which will allow seamless interaction between humans and the digital world. “We are working on realistic immersive telepresence using just ordinary cameras, low-cost microphones, personal PCs or laptops, and the public internet,” describes Winslett.
“Our smart grid projects are about understanding, controlling, and securing the power grid. For example, finding low-cost, non-intrusive ways to get real-time information about how consumers are using power at home and at work means we can help avoid black-outs and power surges during periods of high demand.”
Changing scenes
A new piece of virtual reality software developed by Jiangbo Lu and colleagues at ADSC has recently been licensed through Exploit Technologies, the technology transfer arm of A*STAR. Lu’s team have developed a way of allowing online chat users a choice of different video backgrounds which can be altered during real-time chat.
CuteChat offers users the chance to alter the background during live online chat feeds, protecting the privacy of the user’s real location. Presentation slides can also be placed in the background, and slides changed simply by the user waving an arm.
© Jiangbo Lu, 2012
“In our research, we like to see whether one’s ordinary laptop can be turned into something magical,” explains Lu. “Our new program — CuteChat — allows the chat background behind the user to be changed easily at will, without any special equipment needed.”
The CuteChat algorithm works by ‘cutting out’ the foreground objects (namely, the person) in a video feed and placing them into a different backdrop.
“A key challenge for us was how to make sure the vision algorithm was intelligent enough to reliably delineate the foreground objects from live video feed,” explains Lu. “Also we had to stay within the limits of real-time processing speed, keeping it affordable on an ordinary laptop.”
Through these technologies, CuteChat can heighten online privacy by allowing users to transport their online self to any chosen location, thus concealing where they really are. In addition, slides can be posted behind the user as they work through a presentation. With the addition of a depth camera, CuteChat employs gesture recognition to allow the user to page through presentation slides or online photo albums with a wave of the arm. (For further information, see the video below.)
Image recognition in medical science
ADSC has another group of researchers dedicated to the field of image recognition, teaching computers to ‘see’. In a second project licensed by Exploit Technologies, Gang Wang and co-workers have developed a novel way of using image technology to recognise medical pills and capsules. This helps to verify that the correct drugs are being administered to patients.
Different pharmaceutical companies produce the same drugs in different forms, leading to confusion if the packaging is lost or mis-labeled. ADSC-developed image software can correctly identify pills and capsules by matching photographs of pills to a carefully prepared database.
© iStockphoto.com/ShutterWorx
“The project is inspired by the fact that there can be errors in hospital packaging, and different companies produce the same drugs in different forms,” explains Wang. “It is very hard for humans to manually input information such as exact size, shape, and color, which some online pill verification programs require.”
All that the user has to do is take a photograph of the pills. The program then searches through hundreds of thousands of images in a database to find the closest match.
“The main challenge was the variation of pill appearance due to changes in lighting, perspectives, rotation, scale, and color,” describes Wang. “We overcame these difficulties by developing advanced image features in the software to represent pills of all varieties.”
Wang hopes to continue developing the software to work with the different computer systems in hospitals and may develop a mobile phone application for use by the general public at home.
A unique PhD program
Perhaps one of the highlights of the collaboration between A*STAR and the University of Illinois over the years has been the development of their unique PhD program. The two institutions allow Singaporean students to study for a PhD split between them — two years spent in the USA followed by two years spent at an appropriate A*STAR research institute in Singapore. The result is a PhD from the University of Illinois for Singaporean students, with their high levels of skills and research returning to their home country.
This popular PhD program has expanded with the opening of ADSC, allowing A*STAR-funded top students from Singapore onto the AUIP program, splitting their time between Urbana-Champaign and ADSC. Xinqi Chu is a current PhD student on the AUIP program studying computer vision and machine learning.
“The University of Illinois has a set of eminent researchers and an excellent faculty in which to work,” describes Chu. “The support provided by the AUIP program is good enough for me to concentrate on my work and worry less about living expenses. I also have access to other funding initiatives that might not be available elsewhere.”
Further, international students are now able to apply for scholarships through the Singapore International Graduate Award (SINGA) PhD program, allowing them to work towards a PhD from the National University of Singapore or Nanyang Technological University whilst conducting research at ADSC. Shin Hwei Tan, originally from Malaysia, is one such international student due to start her PhD in the fall:
“I obtained my BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from the University of Illinois,” Tan explains. “The SINGA program provides a good platform for students from around the world to communicate with leading researchers and professors from top Singaporean universities.”
The bright future for ADSC
Due to the importance of digital technology in today’s world, ADSC is certain to go from strength to strength in terms of developing commercial projects from their research in future.
“The gap between basic research and commercial potential is narrow for interactive digital media,” explains Marianne Winslett. “We have a number of results in the pipeline that we expect to head toward commercialization in the near future, in telepresence, video analytics, web mining, and energy usage monitoring.”
