Anbumani Subramanian

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

Virginia Tech

This page is an archive version and not updated after Dec. 2006. [Go to Anbu's current webpage]

In Dec. 2006, Anbu moved to HP Labs in India, as a Research Scientist.

Earlier, he was a postdoctoral associate in the ECE department at Virginia Tech from Sep. 2005 to Nov. 2006. He got his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2005 and 2001 respectively.

Before coming to Virginia Tech, he worked for IBM from 1996 to 1999. In the summer of 2001, he worked as a Member of Technical Staff (Intern) in the Human Computer Interaction Group at Rockwell Scientific (formerly Rockwell Science Center).

His research interests include computer vision, signal and image processing, biomedical image analysis and pattern recognition.

Research

In his post-doctoral work, Anbu was involved in the design of a new omni-directional vision based navigation, localization and mapping (SLAM) system for aquatic environments (river, lake, sea) using an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV). Images on the right show the ASV used in his work, sample image from the omni-directional camera, result of the image analysis and a local map built and overlaid on the corresponding topographic map. He worked with Dr. Chris Wyatt and in collaboration with the Autonomous Systems and Control group at Virginia Tech. Some applications of this work are autonomous navigation, surveillance and environment mapping.

In his Ph.D. research, Anbu created a prototype of a novel layer extraction and image compositing system. The system he developed can extract a matte for image compositing, from planar image layers of a stationary scene using only two-dimensional (2D) images from a single, stationary camera. Parallax present in the images is exploited in the layer extraction and segmentation process. Potential applications of this reseach include image compositing (video matting), passive range estimation, video content manipulation and video compression. He also completed a study on robust statistical methods for circle and ellipse fitting. His advisor was Prof. A. Lynn Abbott, director of the Computer Vision Group at Virginia Tech.

The research towards his M.S. focussed on developing a novel method of image segmentation and range estimation, from 2D images using a single camera. More information is available in his paper published in ICCV 2001.

Anbu's research in his M.S. and Ph.D. led to the creation of two intellectual properties (IP) for Virginia Tech. In 2005, the Graduate School at Virginia Tech recognized him with an Honorable Distinction for Innovation in research and an award for Outstanding Research Achivements in the Annual Research Symposium of Virginia Tech. Earlier in 2001, he received an award in Honor of Outstanding Research Achievements, also in the Annual Research Symposium.

Teaching

Anbu taught undergraduate labs in the Physics department for five semesters. In Spring 2004, he taught the Foundations of Physics lab, for undergraduate Physics and Engineering major students. Earlier, he was a lab instructor for the undergraduate Physics labs for students in biology and non-Physics majors for two years, from Fall 2001 to Spring 2003.

The labs he taught every semester, comprised of more than 80 students in four sections. He says he enjoyed being an instructor for the labs. In particular, he says he liked the challenge of invoking interest in Physics, among students who may not necessarily specialize in it. He has compiled a list of tips to write better lab reports to help students in his class.

Publications / IP

Selected list

(The downloadable paper is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. Anyone copying this information is expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. The work may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.)

Conference:

A. Subramanian, X. Gong, C. L. Wyatt, "Shoreline Detection in Images for Autonomous Boat Navigation", Proceedings of the 40th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, Systems and Computers, 2006.

A. Subramanian, X. Gong, J. N. Riggins, D. J. Stilwell, C. L. Wyatt, " Shoreline Mapping using an Omni-directional Camera for Autonomous Surface Vehicle Applications", Proceedings of the IEEE/MTS OCEANS Conference, 2006.

A. Subramanian, L. R. Iyer, A. L. Abbott, A. E. Bell, "Segmentation and Range Sensing using a Moving-aperture Lens", Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), vol. 2, pp. 500-507, 2001. PDF [418 KB]

Journal:

A. Subramanian, L. R. Iyer, A. L. Abbott, A. E. Bell, "Segmentation and Range Sensing using a Moving-aperture Lens", Machine Vision and Applications, vol. 15(1), pp.46-53, Oct. 2003.

Other:

A. Subramanian, "Layer Extraction and Image Compositing using a Moving-aperture Lens", Ph.D. Dissertation, Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, July 2005.

A. Subramanian, "Image Segmentation and Range Estimation using a Moving-aperture Lens", Master's Thesis, Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, May 2001.

Intellectual Properties:

A. L. Abbott, A. Subramanian, "Algorithm and Software for Image Segmentation and Compositing using a Moving-aperture Lens", Virginia Tech IP Disclosure, 05-014, 2005.

A. L. Abbott, A. E. Bell, A. Subramanian, L. R. Iyer, "Image Segmentation and Range Sensing using a Moving Aperture Lens", Virginia Tech IP Disclosure, 01-041, 2001.

Bibliography

The bibliography collection of Anbu, on selected topics related to his research like optical flow, motion, robust statistical methods, etc., are sorted by topic and year.

The topicwise list was generated using a bibtex style file created by Anbu, based on David Hull's bib2html package. The original package is licenced under GPL and you are free to use this modified version of bib2html package, also under GPL. This package includes the new style file (html-tcr.bst), which sorts topics (using a 'topic' field in bibtex entries) and the modified perl script (bib2html.pl).

Personal

Anbu is a native of Tiruvannamalai, a town located 200 kilometers from Chennai (earlier Madras), in the state of Tamilnadu, in South India.

Since 1999, he has been a volunteer in the Virginia Tech (Blacksburg) chapter of Association for India's Development (AID). AID is a voluntary, non-profit organization working for social development in India.

He is highly interested in Tamil Computing on Linux through the Tamilinix Group. Way back in 2000, he wrote a Tamil How-to for Linux (and Unix). This how-to is presently not maintained and is superseded by FAQs and tutorials at Tamil Linux.

In 2001, he wrote a Tamil interface to the Cologne Tamil Lexicon. This interface allows one to search for words in the Tamil dictionary or find Tamil words related to an English word. He presented a paper [PDF] on this wrapper at the Tamil Internet Conference in 2002. He wrote another Tamil interface to the Cologne Tamil Text Search.

He is a volunteer in Project Madurai, an electronic Tamil library project and also helps to maintain its Distributed Proofreading website. In 2003, he helped to proof-read Ponniyin Selvan for Project Madurai. Some day, he hopes to complete the Tamil OCR, which he began in 2000.

He is a Black belt (First degree) in Mudokwan style of Tae Kwon Do (TKD), the martial arts system of Korea.

His old (outdated) webpage has some more information.

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