Visual Computing Laboratory

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of visual information in current computer systems. Visual computing, which embraces processing, interpreting, modeling, assimilating, storing, retrieving, and synthesizing visual information, now plays a crucial role in many fields. These include multimedia, virtual reality, robotics, scientific visualization, and communications systems. And the demand for further integration of visual information into these areas shows every sign of continuing unabated. Under the direction of Ramesh Jain, the Visual Computing Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, was established as a center for innovative visual computing research to address the requirements of these applications in next-generation computer technologies. As such, the Visual Computing Lab hosts a group of researchers working in a variety of areas, notably multimedia databases, information assimilation, interactive video, and visual interaction through gesture recognition. This article presents a high-level overview of activities in the Visual Computing Laboratory and provides some details on prototype systems that we are currently developing