Studies in Robotic Vision, Optical Illusions and Nonlinear Diffusion Filtering

Preface I have always had a fascination for images, be it the impressionistic masterpieces of late 19th century artists, the beauty of a well composed photograph or the modern art of computer graphics. In view of this, it is not surprising that my interest immediately awoke when I, during the pursuit of my Master's degree in computer science and technology, heard about the course in image analysis given at the Department of Mathematics. This in turn opened my eyes to the subject of mathematics itself and made me realize its value and importance. In the spring of 1998, after focusing my studies in this direction, I presented my Master's thesis on the subject of multi-scale image analysis based on partial differential equations. With my interest in computer vision and image analysis only escalating during the work on my Master's thesis, it felt like a natural step to apply for a PhD position in the Mathematical Imaging Group. I received a position in the project " Dynamic Vision " financed by the Swedish Research Council (for Engineering Sciences). This project has been aimed at investigating different aspects of computer vision when used together with control theory in robotics. My work in the project has come to focus on the task of hand-eye calibration and intrinsic camera calibration in the setting of robotic vision. This research has led to a number of conference papers, [HM9,HM8,HM6,HM4,HM3,HM1]. However, in the beginning of my doctoral work I also partly continued the work on multi-scale image analysis and diffusion methods in image processing and had a rewarding collaboration with Johan Hult and Clemens Kaminski at the Department of Combustion physics which resulted in [HM7]. In the autumn of 2001, I had the privilege to be a guest of Prof. Yiannis Aloimonos was introduced to the world of optical illusions and had a stimulating working companion in Dr. Cornelia Fermüller on this subject. The research that I took part in has resulted in [HM5] and [HM2]. The material presented in this thesis is based on the above mentioned research, conducted during my five years as a PhD student. It has been published or submitted to international journals and presented at a number of international conferences. The papers are listed below in reverse chronological order. Acknowledgments First of all I would like to thank my supervisors Anders Heyden and Gunnar Sparr for their helpful comments and support. I …