268 results about "Energy minimization" patented technology

The invention provides techniques for wrapping a two-dimensional texture conformally onto a surface of a three dimensional virtual object within an arbitrarily-shaped, user-defined region. The techniques provide minimum distortion and allow interactive manipulation of the mapped texture. The techniques feature an energy minimization scheme in which distances between points on the surface of the three-dimensional virtual object serve as set lengths for springs connecting points of a planar mesh. The planar mesh is adjusted to minimize spring energy, and then used to define a patch upon which a two-dimensional texture is superimposed. Points on the surface of the virtual object are then mapped to corresponding points of the texture. The invention also features a haptic/graphical user interface element that allows a user to interactively and intuitively adjust texture mapped within the arbitrary, user-defined region.

The invention provides a system and method for percutaneous energy delivery in an effective, manner using one or more probes. Additional variations of the system include array of probes configured to minimize the energy required to produce the desired effect.

The invention provides a system and method for achieving the cosmetically beneficial effects of shrinking collagen tissue in the dermis or other areas of tissue in an effective, non-invasive manner using an array of electrodes. Systems described herein allow for improved treatment of tissue. Additional variations of the system include array of electrodes configured to minimize the energy required to produce the desired effect.

The invention provides a system, and method for achieving the cosmetically beneficial effects of shrinking collagen tissue in the dermis or other areas of tissue in an effective, non-invasive manner using an array of electrodes. Systems described herein allow for improved, treatment of tissue. Additional variations of the system include array of electrodes configured to minimize the energy required to produce the desired effect.

Object segmentation and tracking are improved by including directional information to guide the placement of an active contour (i.e., the elastic curve or ‘snake’) in estimating the object boundary. In estimating an object boundary the active contour deforms from an initial shape to adjust to image features using an energy minimizing function. The function is guided by external constraint forces and image forces to achieve a minimal total energy of the active contour. Both gradient strength and gradient direction of the image are analyzed in minimizing contour energy for an active contour model.

A method for human face detection that detects faces independently of their particular poses and simultaneously estimates those poses. Our method exhibits an immunity to variations in skin color, eyeglasses, facial hair, lighting, scale and facial expressions, and others. In operation, we train a convolutional neural network to map face images to points on a face manifold, and non-face images to points far away from that manifold, wherein that manifold is parameterized by facial pose. Conceptually, we view a pose parameter as a latent variable, which may be inferred through an energy-minimization process. To train systems based upon our inventive method, we derive a new type of discriminative loss function that is tailored to such detection tasks. Our method enables a multi-view detector that can detect faces in a variety of poses, for example, looking left or right (yaw axis), up or down (pitch axis), or tilting left or right (roll axis). Systems employing our method are highly-reliable, run at near real time (5 frames per second on conventional hardware), and is robust against variations in yaw (±90°), roll (±45°), and pitch (±60°).

The invention discloses an edge information-based multi-scale blurred image blind restoration method, which comprises the following steps of: circularly and gradually restoring an image from a small scale layer to a large scale layer, setting self-adaptive parameters at different scales, and processing each scale layer, namely bilaterally filtering the restored image to obtain an image of which the noise and ripple are removed; performing shock wave filtering to obtain an image with high-strength contrast edges; solving the edges, and combining a fuzzy core initial value and a fuzzy graph to obtain an accurate fuzzy core; restoring a fuzzy image at the current scale to obtain a clear restored image by using the solved fuzzy core; sampling and amplifying in the current scale layer to obtain the restored image and a fuzzy core initial value of an adjacent large scale layer, and performing cycle operation on the adjacent large scale layer. The edge information-based multi-scale blurred image blind restoration method can effectively converge various images in different fuzzy degrees, and compared with a general blind restoration method which directly solves the energy minimization, the blurred image blind restoration method has the advantages of low computational complexity and high noise suppression capacity.

The invention provides a system and method for achieving the cosmetically beneficial effects of shrinking collagen tissue in the dermis or other areas of tissue in an effective, non-invasive manner using an array of electrodes. Systems described herein allow for improved treatment of tissue. Additional variations of the system include array of electrodes configured to minimize the energy required to produce the desired effect.

The invention provides a system and method for achieving the cosmetically beneficial effects of shrinking collagen tissue in the dermis or other areas of tissue in an effective, non-invasive manner using an array of electrodes. Systems described herein allow for improved treatment of tissue. Additional variations of the system include array of electrodes configured to minimize the energy required to produce the desired effect.

The invention relates to the field of point cloud processing, and specifically discloses a three-dimensional point cloud road boundary automatic extraction method. The method comprises the steps of S1, screening seed points for the whole acquired three-dimensional point cloud data set P so as to perform super voxel classification; S2, extracting boundary points between adjacent non-coplanar super voxels by using an alpha-shape algorithm; S3, extracting road boundary points by using a graph cut based energy minimization algorithm; S4, removing outliers based on an Euclidean distance clustering algorithm; and S5, fitting the extracted road boundary points into a smooth curve. The method can directly operate on the large-scale three-dimensional point cloud, can be applied to different scenes, is high in calculation speed and good in algorithm robustness, and can extract road boundaries quickly.

A method of operating a drive train of a motor vehicle with a hybrid drive having an internal combustion engine, an electric motor, an automatic transmission. The drive train also having a clutch between the internal combustion engine and the electric motor, and a clutch or a torque converter between the electric motor and the automatic transmission. This arrangement enabling the internal combustion engine to be started by engaging the clutch arranged between the internal combustion engine end the electric motor, when the drive train is powered exclusively by the electric motor. The braking power, generated during an upshift in response to a drop in the rotational speed of the drive train components, is used to start the internal combustion engine, such that the energy required from the electric motor for starting the combustion engine is minimized.

An image processing module performs efficient image enhancement according to a multi-scale energy minimization process. One or more input images are progressively downsampled to generate a pyramid of downsampled images of varying resolution. Starting with the coarsest downsampled image, a label map is generated that maps output pixel positions to pixel positions in the downsampled input images. The label map is then progressively upsampled. At each upsampling stage, the labels are refined according to an energy function configured to produce the desired enhancements. Using the multi-scale energy minimization, the image processing module enhances image via hole-filling and/or super-resolution.

The invention provides a video image optimization-based style transformation method. The method mainly comprises style transformation in a still image, optimization-based coherent video style transfer and training. According to the process of the method, random Gaussian noises are adopted to perform initialization, a content loss function and a style loss function are defined, and therefore, the energy minimization problem of the video style transfer method can be solved, long-term consistency and image quality during the movement of a camera can be improved; and a network with parameters is adopted as input frames, previously generated frames are distorted and masked by blocking masks, output is generated, and the function is adopted to obtain a video recursively. With the method of the invention adopted, the loss functions of the short-term consistency and long-term consistency of the stylized video and the multi-channel mode of the stylized video can be realized, namely, and a stable result is generated under fast motion and intensive blocking conditions; operating time is greatly reduced; and the quality of images can be improved.

Embodiments of the invention relate to a method and system for magnetic self-assembly (MSA) of one or more parts to another part. Assembly occurs when the parts having magnet patterns bond to one another. Such bonding can result in energy minima The magnetic forces and torques—controlled by the size, shape, material, and magnetization direction of the magnetic patterns cause the components to rotate and align. Specific embodiments of MSA can offer self-assembly features such as angular orientation, where assembly is restricted to one physical orientation; inter-part bonding allowing assembly of free-floating components to one another; assembly of free-floating components to a substrate; and bonding specificity, where assembly is restricted to one type of component when multiple components may be present.

The invention provides a system and method for percutaneous energy delivery in an effective, manner using one or more probes. Additional variations of the system include array of probes configured to minimize the energy required to produce the desired effect.

An LED lighting device includes an auxiliary power supply that supplies power to a control circuit of the LED lighting device that receives an input from a terminal of a light-emitting diode (LED) string of the lighting device that has a substantially lower voltage than the line voltage to which the lighting device is connected. The terminal may be within the LED string, or may be an end of the string. A linear regulator may be operated from the voltage drop across a number of the LEDs in the string so that the energy wasted by the auxiliary power supply is minimized. In other designs, the auxiliary power supply may be intermittently connected in series with the LED string only when needed. The intermittent connection can be used to forward bias a portion of the LED string when the voltage supplied to the LED string is low, increasing overall brightness.