Computer Science and Information Technology in Malta

On one of the sites we were mapping, we had the pleasure of meeting the head of the Engineering Department from the University of Malta and two students in order to let them view our data collection process. Erik and I got to interview them about our cultural research projects for our ethnic studies class.

My cultural research project is on the role of Computer Science and Information Technology in Malta. The idea of my project came from the startling fact that Malta has very few natural resources. One of the papers I was reading reported that there are "four extractive industries on which manufacturing might be built-- mining,forestry, fishing, and agriculture"[1]. It concluded that Malta has an insufficient environment for any of these industries[1]. Having few local resources for manufacturing severely limits what Malta's economy can do.

This challenged me to think of possible major industries for Malta. I came up with the idea that if the country couldn't base it's economy on making physical products then why can't it make information based products?

Upon talking to the students and the department head, I was informed that unlike Cal Poly, Computer Science is not part of Engineering but is part of their relatively new department of Information and Communication Technology. This didn't affect the quality of the information that they gave me.

They told me that there is heavy investment in Computer Science and Information Technology. In the latest Business Research and Innovation report from the National Statistics Office of Malta, they reported that 29.47% of all intramural research and development expenditures in 2004 were in computer and related activities[2].

Also, Maltese government research and development expenditures have increased from €4.1 million to €15.7 million in 2010[3]. Research and development specifically in Engineering and Technology has doubled since 2008 making it the most funded major field of science in Malta. This can be seen in the graph below.

The idea of heavy investment in Computer Science and Information Technology wasn't only reaffirmed by them but was also mentioned by Timmy Gambin who has been helping coordinate our research in Malta. He informed me that the University is constructing a building dedicated to Information and Communication Technology. Upon further research I found that the University was awarded a sum of €17.3 million for the project from the European Regional Development Fund[4]. It was said to be built because of the high demand for Information and Communication Technology graduates[4].

This is some of the information I have come across and I will be reporting on more very soon.

Works Cited

1. Young, B. S. "SocietyThe Maltese Islands: Economic Problems and Prospects for Industrial Development." Geographical Review 53.2 (1963): 263-86. Print.

2. Malta. National Statistics Office. Business Research and Innovation 2004-2006. 2008. Print.

3. Malta. National Statistics Office. Expenditure on Research and Development in the General Government Sector: 2008-2010. 2011. Print.

4. "New ICT Facilities Building at University of Malta." Gozo News. 17 May 2009. Web. 17 Mar. 2012 .

Tech Update

It's been a busy week here. Yesterday we packed up early in the morning and took a ferry from Valletta, Malta to Pachino, Sicily. From there we hopped a few buses and took a beautiful ride through the country, passing by the world's most active volcano (Mount Etna) along the way. We reached our hotel in Carini (in the province of Palermo, Sicily) in the afternoon and got situated for deployment. Billy will talk about that, so I will cover the other things that have been going on. Despite the nagging fatigue that we are all feeling, there have been some really great project improvements. Since these will also be addressed in similar blog posts, I will give a little update on mine: the archaeologist graphical interface.

I have already put together a majority of the framework for the interface, and recently began loading in cistern meshes. Due to the fact that Billy and Jeff have their code complete (aside from per-cistern fine tuning), the three of us can pump out a cistern model and have it online in about an hour. We will be doing this for each new cistern that we deploy the robot into. My project is still running into some choppiness which will be sorted out in 2-3 days.

Here is a sample of my progress as of today.

Note: If you are running Linux, you may run into difficulty with the Unity3D plugin.

I am still working on the textures/lighting of the cistern and water, the spherical linear interpolation of the rotational trackball (should be a quick fix!), and the photo selection on the right hand side of the interface. It may not be very easy to see, but right now all that the photo selection does is highlight a region on the wall that the selected picture shows. Once the photo selection is complete the model will rotate so that the highlighted area that the picture displays will be more visible and a frustrum with the robot's position and angle of view will be shown. I also intend to use Tim's higher quality go-pro pictures, rather than these stills from the video stream from last year. I might end up adding a big pop-up version of the photo as well. We'll see what happens. Aside from that, it's time to start rapidly uploading and spitting out cisterns as we deploy into them!

Technical Update - Mapping and Image Processing

Departure is nearly upon us! We have been doing a great deal of work the last few weeks getting everything ready. Erik and I had an opportunity recently to drive the ROV in the pool and perform a full mapping run. We positioned the ROV in strategic locations throughout the pool and captured a series of sonar scans. These were fed through Billy's mapping program to generate a map of the pool.

It was an excellent opportunity for us to practice the teamwork and processes necessary for a full deployment, including setup, un-boxing, deployment, scanning, assembly, and take-down. After the session I feel a great deal more comfortable with the equipment and software we will be using in Malta.

In addition, I have been doing further research on the topic of image processing. In particular, I need to smooth the back-scatter out of the cistern photos, then sharpen the images and equalize their appearance for texturing. Smoothing will be done using a median filter, as shown below. Notice how an increasing filter size greatly reduces the noise in the picture. However, it also blurs the subject of the image. This effect may be reversed using a laplacian mask to re-sharpen the transitions of the image. Once this process is complete, I hope to have a clear, sharp picture ready for texturing. The final step will be to equalize the gamma across all images so they blend smoothly together on the final mesh.

Tim is also doing some image processing work with his 3D imaging project. I am hoping that the research I have done for texture smoothing will also be able to help him in generating his bump and disparity maps.