This course is based on D. Vernon, Machine Vision - Automated Visual Inspection and Robot Vision, Prentice-Hall Internationa, 1991. The book is out of print but is available on-line on this website here and also on the CVonline website.

Introduction.
Illumination and Sensors: Image Formation: Elementary Optics. Camera Sensors. Camera Interfaces and Video Standards. Characteristics of Camera Sensors.
Image Acquisition and Representation: Sampling and Quantisation. Interpixel Distances. Adjacency Conventions. Image Acquisition Hardware. Speed Considerations.
Fundamentals of Digital Image Processing: Local Pixel Operations. Neighbourhood Operations. Geometric Operations. Mathematical Morphology.
The Segmentation Problem: Introduction: Region and Boundary-based approaches. Thresholding. Edge Detection. Region Growing. Boundary Detection.
Image Analysis: Introduction - Inspection, Location and Identification: Template Matching. Decision-Theoretic Approaches. The Hough Transform.
An Overview of Techniques for Shape Description: A Taxonomy of Types of Shape Descriptors. External Scalar Transforms. Internal Scalar Transform. External Space Domain. Internal Space Domain.
Robot Programming & Robot Vision: A brief review of Robot Programming Methodologies. Description of Object Pose with Homogenous Transformations. Robot Programming - A Wire Crimping Task Specification. A simple Robot Programming Language. Two Vision Algorithms for Identifying Ends of Wires. The Camera Model and the Inverse Perspective Transformation. 3D Vision using Structured Light.
Image Understanding: Representations and Information Processing: from Image Objects Models. Organisation of Visual Processes. Visual Representations (The Raw Primal Sketch, The Full Primal Sketch, The 2½D Sketch, 3D Models, Volumetric Representations, Skeletal Representations, Surface Representations, The Extended Gaussian Images). Visual Processes (Stereopsis, Camera Motion, Shading). Concluding Remarks.

1598 Slides, 11 Mb:

Operating Systems

Historical overview: Motivation for operating systems, historical perspective.
OS concepts, functions and structure: Basic functions and components of a general purpose operating system. OS concepts and system calls.
Processes and Threads: process model, process table, and process state diagram. Thread model.
Interprocess communication: race condition and critical regions, mutual exclusion with busy waiting, sleep and wakeup, semaphores, message-passing. Producer/consumer and read/write problems and solutions.
Process scheduling: goals of process scheduling, preemptive and non-preemptive scheduling. Scheduling in batch and interactive system. Round-robin, priority scheduling, starvation and aging.
Memory Management: functions of memory manager, basic management techniques, multiprogramming modeling and issues, swapping. Virtual memory with paging, address translation, page tables, multi-level tables, TLB, page replacement algorithms, page fault handling. Segmentation of memory.
Device management: I/O hardware, role of OS. I/O operations, polling, interrupt-driven, and DMA. I/O software goals and layers. Examples such as disks, clocks, and power management.
File management: file system characteristics; file naming, structure, types, access, attributes, and operations. Directories organization and operations. File system implementation, allocation methods.

230 Slides, 226 kb:

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Principles of Computer Programming

The computer model and representations. Elementary C programming example.
Software development environment and tools: UNIX, CDE, textedit, gcc, and other UNIX commands; more elementary C programming
C programming examples (input, output, types, if-else construct)
Structured problems solving, pseudo-code, program design, and elementary programming (loops, assignments, types)
The C language: types, variables, values, assignment statements, I/O, logical operators, conditional statements, iteration, functions and parameter passing, arrays, structures, file I/O
The software development process and software life-cycle

270 Slides, 1 Mb:

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A Short Introduction to Robotics and AI

Nature of robotics
Types of robots: manipulators, mobile robots, entertainment, education, AI robotics
Robotic applications: Parts handling, Assembly, Painting, Surveillance, Security, Home help.
Principal engineering issues: Mechanical Construction, Control, Manipulation, Task Specification, Sensing, Path planning, Interaction, Reasoning, Autonomy and Adaptive Behaviour
Principal AI issues
The future of robotics

79 Slides, 2 Mb:

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Software Engineering

Software process and project metrics: measures vs. metrics, process improvement, LOC metrics, FP metrics, metrics for quality (correctness, maintainability, integrity, usability, defect removal efficiency).
Software project planning: resources, estimation, decomposition, COCOMO estimation model. Project scheduling and tracking: human resources and effort, task definition, task networks, schedules.
Software quality assurance (SQA): quality attributes, software reviews, statistical quality assurance, software quality standards, McCall’s quality factors, FURPS, metrics for analysis, design, implementation, testing, maintenance.
Object-oriented analysis, design, and testing: OOD concepts, analysis and design issues, classes, inheritance, and polymorphism, testing strategies, metrics.
Social, ethical and professional issues: code of ethics, copyright & security.

289 Slides, 560 kb: 89 Pages, 557 kb:

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Project Manual for Final Year Students

The Importance of Final Year Projects
Choosing Your Project.
Planning, Executing, and Managing Your Project: Problem Identification. Requirements Elicitation. Problem Modelling. Systems Analysis and Specification. System Design. Module Implementation and System Integration. Testing and Evaluation. Documentation. Good Engineering Practice and Safety Regulations. Back to the Beginning – Managing Your Project.
Documenting Your Project: Project Specification. Interim Progress Report. Final Report. Presentations. A Very Short Guide to Good Writing.
Project Assessment and Marking.

25 Pages, 264 kb:

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A Short Guide to Research Methods for M.Sc. and Ph.D. Degrees

Getting Started
Moving Along
Reading
Writing: Good Writing Discipline, Good Writing Style
Writing Scientific Papers
Ph.D. and M.Sc. Dissertations
Looking Forward
Acknowledgements
Further Reading
Appendix I - Some Rules of English Usage
Appendix II - Typical Structure of a Thesis

31 Pages, 324 kb:

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A Short Guide to the System Development Lifecycle

Introduction
The Software Development Lifecycle
Problem Identification
Requirements Elicitation
Problem Modelling
Systems Analysis and Specification
System Design
Module Implementation and System Integration
Testing
Documentation

13 Pages, 111 kb:

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