Abstract:

Technological advances in science and in engineering in recent years
have resulted in a great explosion of data of all kinds. Recent
scientific research and technological investments have significantly
improved the information retrieval process using textual content.
However, the vast quantity of 3D content available is growing and no
mechanisms are available for users to successfully navigate. The
increasing quantity of 3D data has led to the need for further research
in order to understand, analyze, and perform operations on 3D content
which can further advance discovery and innovation in many fields. This
includes biology, engineering design, medical and computer vision (laser
scanning). Traditional approaches such as keywords, annotating and
navigation are alone insufficient to describe or search on 3D shapes
intuitively. Reusing and sharing the knowledge embedded in 3D shapes is
an important way to accelerate the design process, improve product
quality, and reduce costs.

Two representations for search are presented. The first approach uses a
2.5 d spherical function then employs a fast spherical harmonics
transformation to get a rotation invariant descriptor. The second method
represents the shape of a 2D drawing from the statistics perspective as
a distance distribution between pairs of randomly sampled points. Both
the representations have many valuable advantages: invariant to affine
transformation, insensitive to noise or cracks, simple, and fast. A new
design pattern is introduced in which the highly-interactive
sketch-based user interface and retrieval is combined seamlessly
together with user suggestions. In addition, the interface is also
integrated with a constraint solver for freehand sketches, part-class
suggestion, and navigation of large repositories. An application (FEAsy)
for structural analysis in early design through sketching is
demonstrated. I summarize with recent research in proteomics using least
median of square and inner distance for flexible protein structure/shape
searching.

About the Author:
Karthik Ramani is a Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at
Purdue University. He earned his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Madras, in 1985, an MS from The Ohio State University, in
1987, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1991, all in Mechanical
Engineering. He has worked as a summer intern in Delco Products,
Advanced Composites, and as a summer faculty intern in Dow Plastics,
Advanced Materials. He was awarded the Dupont Young Faculty Award, the
National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Initiation Award, the NSF
CAREER Award, the Ralph Teetor Educational Award from the Society of
Automotive Engineers, Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award
from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, and the Ruth and Joel Spira
Award for Outstanding contributions to the Mechanical Engineering
Curriculum. In 2002, he was recognized by Purdue University through a
University Faculty Scholars Award and won the NSF partnership for
innovation award. In 2005 he won the Discovery in Mechanical Engineering
Award for his work in shape search. In 2006 he won the innovation of the
year award (finalist) from the State of Indiana. He developed many
successful new courses – Computer-Aided Design and Prototyping, Product
and Process Design and co-developed an Intellectual Property course. In
2007 he won the only Research Excellence Award for the College of
Engineering at Purdue University. He also serves as the technology
advisor at Imaginestics, that has launched the worlds first on-line
shape-based search engine for the engineering industry. His interests
are in design of shapes, representation and search of shapes, especially
computer support for early and conceptual design. He serves in the
editorial board of Elsevier Journal of Computer-Aided Design as well as
ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. His current work is supported by the
NSF (CISE), National Institute of Health, NSF-Partnership for
Innovation, and General Electric.

Date: 2009-Jul-27     Time: 11:30:00     Room: FA1 (DEI)

For more information:

• mjf@inesc-id.pt