Bingyao Huang                                                             Haibin Ling

Stony Brook Computer Science PhD student Bingyao Huang and Professor Haibin Ling have been awarded the IEEE TVCG Best Journal Paper Award at IEEE VR 2021 for their paper, "DeProCams: Simultaneous Relighting, Compensation and Shape Reconstruction for Projector-Camera Systems." IEEE TVCG is the premier journal on visualization and computer graphics. The best journal paper awards for TVCG are presented at the annual IEEE VR conference, the world’s premier conference on virtual reality research.

Ling and Huang’s research into projector-camera systems, known as DeProCams seeks to implement an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution to improve ‘projector compensation.’ AI is utilized to learn how the color and shape are distorted by a curved and textured surface, which then inverts this distortion and applies it to the original content before projection. When applied, their research can compensate the color and shape, such that when projected to the curved and textured wall, to cancel color and shape distortion issues.

Besides projector compensation, DeProCams can also create advanced augmented reality (AR) visual effects. Due to the use of a projector, the users can watch AR effects without wearing AR glasses. 

DeProCams has a unique use of AI to empower AR applications, and it opens doors for many other fields, such as traditional AR, computer graphics, visual effects and video gaming. It’s application also expands to other fields that rely on visualization and human computer interaction, such as biologists examining 3D protein structures, 3D films, and the video gaming industry. 

Congratulations to Bingyao and Haibin on this well deserved recognition in IEEE VR 2021 for their influential research.