Two research  findings of the USC Media Communications Lab were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), which was held from January 9th to 12th 2015, in Las Vegas .

Auto exposure (AE) control is an important function of modern digital cameras. Simple AE algorithms are designed for a specific type of camera sensors. Advanced AE techniques have been developed to tackle a wider class of camera sensors and/or high contrast lighting conditions, yet they are computationally intensive and, thus, difficult to implement in a resource-constrained environment such as phone cameras. Besides, none of existing solutions provides robust performance if erroneous exposure occurs. To address the aforementioned shortcomings, a fast and robust AE algorithm is  in need. The first paper entitled with “Fast and Robust Camera’s Auto Exposure Control Using Convex or Concave Model”, co-authored by Yuanhang Su and C.-C. Jay Kuo, proposed a concave/convex function model for the luminance characteristics of a camera. Based on such a model, a proper parameter value can be computed using a modified secant algorithm with fast convergence. This paper was presented by an MCL member, Joe Lin.

The second paper entitled with “Uncalibrated Multiview Synthesis based on Epipolar Geometry Approximation”, co-authored by Young Ju Jeong, Hyoseok Hwang, Dongkyung Nam and C.-C. Jay Kuo, was mainly conducted in Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) with the input from Professor Kuo. This paper proposed an  efficient multiview rendering algorithm that takes uncalibrated stereo as the input. First, the epipolar geometry of multiple viewpoints is analyzed for multiview display. Then, the camera pose for an arbitrarily selected viewpoint is estimated by algebraic approximation. Finally, by exploiting rectification homographs and disparities of rectified stereo, one can determine multiview images with their estimated camera poses. This work was presented by Ms. Young Ju Jeong. Ms. Joeng is a full-time employee at the SAIT while pursuing her PhD degree at USC under the supervision of Prof. Kuo.