The Digital Heritage project

I recently attended TechVista — a technical symposium organised by Microsoft Research India in Chennai this conference introduced a brilliant new technology. At the same event, MSRI announced the “Digital Heritage” project. The Digital Heritage (DH) project was a direct consequence of minister Kapil Sibal announcing a collaboration between the Government of India and Microsoft Research.

The goal of the project is to provide a virtual experience which is as close as possible to actually visiting the historical monuments of India in person. DH provides an interactive 3D navigation experience by making use of technologies like Photosynth and HDView.

Photosynth is a technology that stitches together a number of photographs from multiple viewpoints to form a 3D representation of the objects in the images. The Photosynth website has a snippet that explains what it does:

Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.

Photosynth is a topic that deserves a post just for itself. Coming back to the topic of DH, the prototype demoed at TechVista demonstrated a guided demo through the Sri Andal temple at Srivilliputhur. The guys involved in the project made multiple fun trips to the temple and took tons of pictures (over 7000) and “synthed” them together. The end effect of all this hard work was a very effective representation of the temple in virtual space. Wading through the “point cloud” as they called it, was an out of the world experience. The background music and the narrative only added to the splendid effect, as the folks of Tamil Nadu could instantly connect to their beloved monument.

This project was steered by Aditya Sankar and Ajay Manchepalli among others. We are coaxing Aditya to write about his experiences (including anecdotes of gorging on the tasty idlies of murugan idly store and the paal khoa of Srivilliputhur) through the project on this blog. Keep an eye out for the insider view!

[Ed note]: To get a better idea of the experience, click on the thumbnails and make sure that you hit the magnifying glass at the right-top of the image, since resizing causes subsampling which omits quite a few of the points in the point cloud

Tech experts enable virtual walk through heritage sites

DIGITAL TRADITIONS.

Preserving the riches: Mr P. Anandan (left), Managing Director, Microsoft Research India, and Dr Richard F. Rashid, Senior Vice-President, Microsoft Research, at a press conference in Chennai on Wednesday. – Our Bureau

Chennai, Oct. 1 India’s cultural heritage and monuments are to be presented (in an interactive way) and preserved virtually with the Department of Science and Technology, Academia and Microsoft Research coming together in a new venture.

The ‘India Digital Heritage Project’, which will create examples of 2D and 3D visualisations of Indian heritage, was unveiled on Wednesday at TechVista Chennai 2008, Microsoft Research India’s annual research symposium.

A 3D experience of Andal Temple in Srivilliputtur, Tamil Nadu, has been created as the first example of the India Digital Heritage.

A demo feature includes a range of media-photographs, video and voice to provide unique experience for users.

It is like a walkthrough in the temple, Dr P. Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India, told newspersons.

6,000 pictures

In the last two months, a team of eight people were involved in collecting data from the temple. Around 6,000 pictures of the temple were taken and technology applications like Phototype, ICE and Movie Maker were used to make it an interactive visualisation of the temple.

“We have not yet decided the mode of making it available to the public,” he said.

The project consists of three major steps — data collection/archiving, research and creation of tools and technologies and creation of a compelling end-user experience.

The Andal Temple was selected since TechVista was happening in Chennai and the temple tower is the official logo of Tamil Nadu, he said. “It is a challenging job and we used technology to the maximum use,” he said.

Monitoring committee

Dr Anandan said the Department of Science and Technology has constituted a Project Advisory and Monitoring Committee chaired by Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras to evaluate, recommend for support and monitor various projects.

“We have not identified any further sites. They will be recommended by the committee,” he said.

Dr Richard F. Rashid, Senior Vice-President, Microsoft Research, said the company has been supporting this kind of projects globally, such as the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. Microsoft, along with the academia, was also involved in a ‘worldwide telescopic’, a project on astronomy.

Microsoft TechVista 2008 @ Chennai

The Chennai Convention Centre at Nandambakkam near Airport was all set to witness the event. 1500 was the expected audience who were brought to the hall by charted tour buses. MSR indeed took care of each and everyone who showed interest in attending the program. It was a day that answered thousands of questions in the minds of young people who were hesitant to pursue research as a career. It was a day when the field of Computer Science was celebrated like a festival.

Dr. P.Anandan from MSR, started the show by speaking in Tamil and telling the audience that he is a person from Chennai and it was great for him to have TechVista hosted in Chennai. Chennai is indeed privileged to have such great researchers who have given their life for the betterment of life of others to come down and talk to the novice Academic crowd. Dr. Anandan gave a brief introduction to the program and gave us an insight of TechVista that have happened in the past. This is the first time this event is happening in Chennai and it witnessed a huge turn over. It was launched by the Director of IITM.

During the inaugural function, Mr. Adithya Sankar demonstrated the power of Photosynth, a Research product that was developed by Live Labs. In this process, the MSR wanted to have a native touch and demonstrated the technology with the Srivilliputur, Sri Andal Temple. The technology was an eye opener for most of the audience and was indeed the right way to kick start the day.

Session 1: The Session 1 consisted of lectures by Prof. John Hopcroft, Richard Szeliski and Prof. Shafi Goldwasser.

Talk by Prof. John Hopcroft:

It was indeed a pleasure to listen to his talk. Datas are present all around us be it in the web, satellite information etc. But how to tame these data was the glimpse given to the audience by his inspirational talk. He did throw light on a lot of youngsters who were craving to pursue research. It was a seed for me to take up my higher studies to sharpen my knowledge. He gave a real time example of how a bird’s location is tracked in the world and its applications in the field of Weather forecasting, hurricane direction prediction etc.

Talk by Dr. Richard Szeliski:

Dr. Richard’s presentation was speaking about the field of Computer vision and it was indeed a pleasure to listen to him. He made all our blind folded thoughts reach a clarity by speaking about how the technology of photosynth came to shape and how it works internally. This was indeed a beautiful presentation and it became the darling of all masses as it podcasted some of the un seen content which were soothing to the eyes too.

Talk by Prof. Shafi Goldwasser:

Security is not just a need today but has become a science by itself. How to improve security by the method of obfuscation was discussed in this mind blowing session which people can understand provided they have domain knowledge of what security and Cryptography actually is. This was a sizzling talk for those who aspire to be an expert in information security. Her talk gave us an insight of what all should not be done when considering security as an issue. Obfuscation means making things complex but resulting in the same output without changing the functionality of the code.

Dr. P. Anandan, MSR India         Prof. John Hopcroft

Dr. Richard Szeliski        Prof. Shafi Goldwasser

Session 2: The Session was a series of talk given by Richard Rashid, Prof. Shree K Nayar and Vijay Chandru.

Talk by Rick Rashid:

Rick’s talk was showcasing the various research products from Microsoft Research labs across the world. The masterpiece was World wide telescope that allows us to have the entire view of the galaxy like the view from the telescope. His talk also included a research product Boku – Simplified programming for Kids in which they can create their own games without having much of computer knowledge. This was really attractive too. He also spoke about the live traffic suggestion system that is a brilliant product by itself.

Talk by Prof. Shree K Nayar:

What you see is different from What you like to see? This was clearly explained to us by the inspirational talk by Prof. Shree Nayar. A lot of us understood the fact that Camera isn’t just a device that captures still photographs but the one that can be taken as a challenge and re engineered to make experience reach better shape. The Wide angle camera that was used for the video conferencing in which 4 people can do the conf with one camera was really attractive. Design of 4π camera that is considered as a challenge was also explained in this speech. This was an eye opener for a lot of the audience.

Talk by Vijay Chandru:

Strand’s life sciences is a company that deals with the field of Computational biology. Vijay Chandru Sir delivered a brilliant Session that would have inculcated a feeling in the mind of the listeners that Computers were invented to facilitate the biological problems that we are facing today. Its applications in the field of Medicine, Surgery and cure of Cancer, HIV were all discussed in this talk.

Richard Rashid            Prof. Shree K Nayar

Vijay Chandru

TECHVISTA 2008, is a day to remember and is a day that is meaningful in the life of those who are interested in celebrating Computer Science. It was a god’s gift for me to be present there.