Student research opportunities

An empirical investigation of visual motion cues to facilitate safe mobility with a bionic eye

Project Code: CECS_947

This project is available at the following levels:
Summer Scholar
Please note that this project is only for undergraduate students.

Keywords:

bionic eye; biological vision; computer vision

Supervisor:

Dr Chris McCarthy

Outline:

NICTA's "Vision processing for the Bionic Eye" (VIBE) project forms part of a national consortium, Bionic Vision Australia (BVA), seeking to develop a retinal implant for the blind. Vision is restored by transforming camera-captured pixel data into scene representations which are then rendered via electrical stimulation of retinal cells. A primary aim of VIBE (and BVA) is to deliver a system that will enable basic navigation for implantees.

This project aims at evaluating how the use of visual motion cues that allow someone to estimate time-to-contact (in particular, the expansion of the projected image) with a surface may provide advantages as a visual representation for bionic vision. You would be involved setting up and running a small human trial using our wearable bionic vision simulator.

Goals of this project

Design and execute a small pilot study of our proposed time-to-contact based visual representation using simulated prosthetic vision

Contribute to the production of a world-class high-impact journal publication.

Contribute data to Bionic Vision Australia's vision processing development

Requirements/Prerequisites

Basic image processing knowledge.
C/C++ programming
Previous experience with human studies also a plus

Student Gain

Experience running and evaluating a human trial.

Contribute to the production of a world-class high-impact journal publication.

Be part of a high-profile, multi-disciplinary project, with potential ongoing opportunities.

Background Literature

"Time-to-contact maps for navigation with a low resolution visual prosthesis", by C. McCarthy and N. Barnes. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Engineering in Medicine and Biology (EMBC 2012), San Diego, USA, 2012
(PDF on my webpage)

Other references listed on above paper.