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Active FOCUS K3D SHALOM AIM@SHAPE Past Surface Analysis FioresII FreeForm surface deformation in industrial design Shape-based meshing techniques High-Quality DTM Fiores Analysis of DTM for environment protection Mediterraneo COWORK Related Arion	FOCUS K3D FOster the Comprehension, adoption and USe of Knowledge intensive technologies for coding and sharing 3D media content in consolidated and emerging application communities http://www.focusk3d.eu FOCUS K3D is a Coordination Action promoting the comprehension, adoption and use of knowledge intensive technologies for coding and sharing 3D media content in application areas that are both consolidated in the massive use of 3D digital resources (like Biomedicine or Product Modelling) and emerging (like Gaming or Archaeology). The projects aims at: building multi-disciplinary communities of researchers, 3D content creators and users; identifying issues that currently inhibit a broader user participation in the production of 3D content, and initiatives acting as catalysts for such a development; promoting and evaluating the results achieved by recent and ongoing projects to identify promising future developments. Keywords: shape, semantics, knowledge, community. Duration: March 2008 - February 2010 Funding Organization: European Commission Funding Programme: IST Information Society Technologies - FP7 - Coordination Action Partners: Coordinator: CNR-IMATI-Ge CNR-IMATI-Ge - Italy CERETETH - Greece EPFL - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Switzerland FRAUNHOFER - Germany INRIA - France MIRALab - Switzerland SINTEF - Norway UU - Utrecht University - The Netherlands SHALOM: SHApe modeLing and reasOning: new Methods and tools Ricerca Italiana - The SHALOM Project The objective of SHALOM project is to study innovative methods for the analysis and synthesis of digital shapes, which constitute the most relevant part of visual media. A shape is any individual object having a visual appearance which exists in a two or higher dimensional space. Pictures, sketches, images, 3D objects, videos, animations are examples of shapes. Digital shapes occur and are used in many different contexts, such as industrial design, biomedical applications, entertainment, environmental monitoring, cultural heritage, and many more. Because of the evolution in hardware and in software technologies for acquiring and visualizing shape information and of the increasing number of applications which require more and more advanced and complex digital shapes, there is a real explosion of models, which cannot be represented with the necessary accuracy and conciseness nor retrieved from existing archives. The new problems related to this issue require efficient and effective solutions for both storing and retrieving information as well as for modelling and analysis, which need transformations among representations, extraction of salient features, reconstruction of complex shapes, etc. The activities proposed by SHALOM are aimed at answering to the previously described requirements by integrating complementary research activities done by the three laboratories involved, in order to propose general solutions to unsolved or partially solved problems. Keywords: shape, modelling, analysis, retrieval. Duration: July 2006 - June 2009 Funding Organization: FIRB Funding Programme: International cooperation Italy/Israel Code: RBIN04HWR8 Partners: CNR-IMATI-Ge - Italy; DISI - Università di Genova - Italy; Technion CGGC - Israel; AIM@SHAPE: Advanced and Innovative Models And Tools for the development of Semantic-based systems for Handling, Acquiring, and Processing knowledge Embedded in multidimensional digital objects http://www.aimatshape.net What are the common characteristics of shapes? They all have a geometry, they can be described by structures (object features and part-whole decomposition), they have attributes (colours, textures, names, attached to an object, its parts and/or its features), they have a semantics (meaning, purpose), and they possibly evolve in time (e.g. shape morphing, animation, video...). AIM@SHAPE is a Network of Excellence aimed at coordinating research on representing, modelling and processing knowledge related to digital shapes. Keywords: shape, semantics. Duration: January 2004 - December 2008 Funding Organization: European Commission Funding Programme: IST Information Society Technologies - Network of Excellence Key Action: 2.3.1.7 Semantic-based knowledge systems Partners: Coordinator: CNR-IMATI-Ge DISI - Università di Genova - Italy; EPFL - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Switzerland; IGD - Fraunhofer - Germany; INPG - Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble - France; INRIA - France; CERTH - Center for Research and Technology Hellas - Greece; UNIGE - Université de Genève - Switzerland; MPII - Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik - Germany; SINTEF - Norway; Technion CGGC - Israel; TUD - Darmstadt University of Technology - Germany; UU - Utrecht University - The Netherlands; WIS - Weizmann Institute of Science - Israel. Surface Analysis http://www.ima.ge.cnr.it/ima/personal/CGG/SurfaceAnalysis.html The Surface Analysis joint project is aimed at the exploration of algorithms for the segmentation, parameterization, and analysis of complex surfaces. Initially, it will focus on triangulation of static surfaces, with the intention to explore the generalization of the developed approaches to time-dependent surfaces models. Keywords: parameterization, segmentation, compression, analysis of complex surfaces. Duration: June 2002 - June 2005 Partners: IMATI-GE CNR GVU, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA FIORES II: Character Preservation and Modelling in Aesthetic and Engineering Design http://www.fiores.com FIORES-II aims at building CAD tools which are capable to capture and preserve the product aesthetic character and make it accessible in a multi criteria approach for styling and engineering design optimisation. This will be achieved by reaching the following objectives: Finding a formal structure in aesthetic properties and terms to capture the design intent and the styling character, basing on interviews and analyses of psychologists. Finding a mapping of styling character descriptions on aesthetic properties. These properties should be objectively describable by computable and measurable parameters. Developing methods for the extraction of aesthetic shape properties (algorithms). Developing methods to optimise the design due to aesthetic and geometric respectively engineering requirements. IMATI will contribute in particular to the definition and formalisation of the aesthetic properties that contribute to the shape character and of the relations among them. Keywords:CAD, CAS, Aesthetic design, Design intent, Styling workflow, Engineering in reverse. Duration:2000 - 2003 Partners:   University of Kaiserslautern, Germany (Coordinator) Alessi , Italy BMW Technik GmbH , Germany CAxOPEN product development technology GmbH , Germany Centre de Recherche de Psychologie Coginitive , France Eiger S.L., Spain FORMTECH AB, Sweden IMATI-GE CNR Italy Pôle Universitaire Léonard de Vinci, France Saab Automobile AB, Sweden Samtech SA , Belgium think3 SPA , Italy UDK Utvechling, Sweden FreeForm Deformation for Aesthetic and Engineering Design http://www.ima.ge.cnr.it/ima/personal/FFF/FFDeformation.html The research includes the study of deformation methods for free-form surfaces inside the design process of products, subjective to aesthetic and engineering requirements. In the study of deformation methods the specification and identification of geometric features forms the basis of a free form surface modification process. The mentioned features designate data structures, the operators, the properties of deformation methods that fit into the requirements and constraints expressed by the designer. Keywords:free form modelling, free form features, surface deformation, industrial design. Duration: 2001 - 2003 Partners:   IMATI-GE CNR Italy Laboratory 3S- Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Hydraulique et de la Meécanique, Grenoble, France http://www.3s.hmg.inpg.fr Shape-based Meshing Techniques Depending on the application, a triangulation can be treated in order to improve its behavior under particular circumstances; the typical example is the Delaunay Triangulation which usually optimizes the numerical robustness, however other kinds of optimization may be more suitable in different cases. When an application deals with models of well known shape, for example, it could be preferable to maintain some characteristics of the represented object rather than optimize everything using the Delaunay criterion; moreover, these meaningful characteristics, or features, can be exploited for a wide range of goals, like high-level description of the shape, model compression, construction of levels of detail for multiresolution and so on. Shape reasoning can give an extensive help for the development of a comprehensive conceptual model for the representation of semantic and topological properties of structural surface feature classes, and the automatic feature extraction from various data structures (grid, TIN, lines, etc.). Such tools can be used in order to improve the polygonization process and to construct more semantically detailed meshes. The research topics which we planned to tackle in this research agreement will cover: Shape modeling and analysis Shape-based Polygonization Techniques Error evaluation for polygonization processes Multiple representation of 3D surfaces Keywords: Shape modeling and analysis,Shape-based Polygonization Techniques Error evaluation for polygonization processes, Multiple representation of 3D surfaces. Duration: 2000 - 2003 Partners:   CNR-IMATI Ge Italy Department of Computer Science,University of Otago, New Zealand http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz FIORES: Formalization and Integration of an Optimized Reverse Engineering Styling workflow http://rkk.mv.uni-kl.de/FIORES/home.html Obiettivo di questo progetto è l'introduzione di soluzioni innovative nel processo di progettazione assistita da calcolatore per quanto riguarda la fase di disegno estetico. A questo scopo, vengono proposti una nuova interfaccia utente e un nuovo insieme di strumenti per verificare la qualità morfologica del disegno, al fine di agevolare l'accettazione degli strumenti informatici di progettazione da parte dello stilista. Viene inoltre fornita all'utente la possibilità di specificare in maniera oggettiva le proprietà della forma del prodotto, in modo da potenziare le tecniche di Reverse Engineering per la costruzione di un modello con le caratteristiche volute. Keywords: Computer-Aided Styling, Engineering in reverse, Feature-based modeling, working with properties. Duration: 1997 - 2000 Partners:   University of Kaiserslautern, Germany (Coordinator) BMW AG, Munchen, Germany IMATI-GE CNR PININFARINA Studi e Ricerche, Torino, Italy MATRA DATAVISION, Paris, France SAMTECH SA, Liège, Belgium Centro Internationel de Métodos Numéricos (CIMNE), Barcelona, Spain Eiger S.L., Barcelona, Spain Taurus Electrodomesticos, Oliana, Spain FORMTECH AB, Torslanda, Sweden Saab Automobile AB, Trollhattan, Sweden UDK Utveckling, Savedalen, Sweden High-Quality Digital Terrain Modelling The project addresses the frequent requirement of scientists, engineers, decision makers, to access, process and visualize vast amount of surface data. Moreover, special care has to be devoted to uncertainty handling: traditional modelling techniques are unable to explicitly represent uncertainty which may derive from the surface sampling process, and are also insufficient to support the users with quality assessment tools for validating the surface model and related analysis processes. In the described scenario, the IMA-CNR will develop for the Monolith co. an advanced system for modelling and processing surface data which integrates traditional techniques (e.g. triangulation, grids or contours) with tools for the analysis of shape features (e.g. critical point and line extraction, curvature analysis). Shape features are essential for defining high-level representations of surface data which capture the main structure of surfaces (conceptual modelling). Special emphasis will be put on the definition of simplification and compression tools for both for data and models (e.g. decimation, vertex or edge collapse, fuzzy-like data clustering). Keywords: Digital terrain modelling, data simplification, topographic feature extraction, conceptual modelling. Duration: 1998-2001 Partners:   IMATI-GE CNR Monolith co. Ltd., Tokyo Analysis of Digital Terrain Model for the detection of topographic features of interest for the environment protection The objective of the project is to study methods of geometric reasoning for the analysis of digital terrain models to detect morphological information of interest in the environment study. The main aim is to construct a computational module to automatically detect relevant topographical features from the ambient point of view, such as: mountain mounts, mountains and gutters of rivers. The modules is integrated in the Geographic Information System SPRING developed by the Brazilian team. Keywords: Digital terrain model, Surface characterisation, Geographic Information System. Duration: 2001 Partners:   INPE - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Sao Josè dos Campos, Brazil IMATI-GE CNR Mediterraneo: Enhancing Product Development Through Physical prototype Rapid e-Delivery The primary aim of the network is to increase the awareness of e-business advantages for product development, taking advantage of the existing technologies independently of their physical location, thus allowing a better exploitation of production capabilities and collaboration of remote countries. The network will share the parteners' competencies in order to increase the knowledge in distributed collaboration shape recognition rapid prototyping technologies and requirements and to coordinate current research activities of the partners to enforce research collaboration. Keywords: geometric modelling, distributed product development. Duration: 2001 - 2002 Partners:   IMATI-GE CNR (Coordinator) Department of Manufacturing EngineeringUniversity of Malta (Coordinator) Technimold S.r.l.V. Genova, Italy FhG-IPA: Fraunhofer-Institut fuer Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung Manufacturing Engineering and Automation Technische Informationsverarbeitung Stuttgart - Germany European Project ESPRIT "COWORK: COncurrent project development IT tools for small-medium enterprises netWORKs" http://www.tekniker.es/cowork The COWORK project is targeted at developing a new software tool enabling Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), working in the mechanical sector, to cooperate in a distributed engineering environment to dramatically save time and reduce products engineering costs. This objective may be reached by encouraging SMEs enterprises to systematically apply Concurrent Engineering and Co-design techniques, duly supported by a new specially-conceived software. Keywords: Concurrent Engineering, Co-design. Duration: 1997-2000 Partners:   FUNDACION TEKNIKER Spain (Coordinator) FATRONIK SYSTEM Spain Tkm XXI Spain GORATU Spain DEMOCENTER Italy CNR-IMATI Genova ZGDV Germany Fraunhofer IGD Germany PROSTEP Germany AMCO VEBA Italy ELLETTARI Italy TECNOMET Italy SPEED AUTOMAZIONE RMT Germania ARION: An Advanced Lightweight Architecture for Accessing Scientific Collections http://www.arion-dl.org ARION is aiming to provide a new generation of Digital Library services for the searching and retrieval of digital scientific collections that reside within research and consultancy organisations. These collections contain data, programs and tools in various scientific areas and incorporate applications of different domains of knowledge. ARION advances the findings of previous studies in areas, such as, management of networked scientific repositories and metacomputing. It consolidates the work of international interoperability standard development to provide a system that is complementary to established scientific practices in these organisations. ARION will be a federated open system and will be developed in association with national data providers, scientific researchers and SME’s to ensure that the project meets their needs. Keywords: Digital Scientific Library. Duration: 2001-2003 Partners: Foundation for Research and Technology, Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion, Greece (Coordinator) HR Wallingford Ltd, Wallingford, Great Britain Joint Research Center, Space Application Center, Marine Environment Unit, Ispra, Italy National Technical University of Athens,Greece Oceanographic Company of Norway ASA, Trondheim, Norway University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece IMATI-GE CNR
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