New centre supports Austrian image processing

17 Jun 2002

Digital image processing in Austria is receiving a boost with an ATS 153 million (about USD 11 million) programme to establish a competence centre in Vienna.

The four-year Advanced Computer Vision initiative receives 60% of its funding from the Austrian ministry of science. Six Austrian science institutes are involved, including Austrian Research Centers Seibersdorf (ARCS) and the Technology University of Vienna, with 12 Austrian businesses and three German companies.

Heinrich Garn, head of the electronics division of ARCS, is organizing the centre and said that it aims to autonomously understand and interpret the complex, three-dimensional contents of images.

The planned technologies will allow the automatic, three-dimensional surveying and mathematical analysis of structures from microchips to cityscapes, and the automatic generation of three-dimensional maps. Applications will be in medical diagnosis, microelectronics, material processing, surveying and construction, virtual reality and industrial quality control.

Computers will also be educated to interpret fast sequences of images on-line on the millisecond scale, and to react automatically to danger, such as in transport situations.