Department of Computer Graphics and Multimedia

Department of Computer Graphics and Multimedia (DCGM) deals with research and education in human-computer interaction, multimedia and multimodal data mining, image and video processing, computer graphics, speech data mining, advanced approaches to automatic control, knowledge technologies and big data processing. It builds on fundamentals of mathematics, physics, theoretical informatics, control theory and machine learning. It uses advanced computational architectures - super-computers, computing clusters, GP-GPU accelerators and specialized architectures of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and signal processors (DSP).

At the Brno University of Technology, DCGM is the unit with the highest number of EC-funded projects (for example, 24 projects in the 7th Framework Programme and new projects in Horizon2020), it has projects funded by U.S. agencies DARPA and IARPA and a large number of locally funded projects. DCGM intensively cooperates with both Czech and international industry (for example Honeywell, Škoda Auto, Evektor, Raytheon BBN or Telefónica Móviles). The members of DCGM have founded a number of innovative spin-off companies: Camea, Phonexia, 3DimLaboratory, ReplayWell and AngelCam.

DCGM has specialized equipment for human-computer interaction: two aircraft simulators for the development of R&D in user interfaces and autonomous automatic systems in aviation, a PR2 robot, 3D video-projection equipment, holography lab, terabyte corpora of images, speech, and text and a multichannel audio acquisition equipment.

DCGM organizes prestigious series of seminars VGS-IT, inviting world leading scientists. It also organizes student contests aiming at computer vision, speech and image processing, computer graphics and user interfaces. It co-organizes FIT's student conference and competition Excel@FIT and, together with Charles University in Prague, the annual gathering of graphics and vision community HiVisComp.

Research groups at DCGM:

• BUT Speech@FIT deals with data-mining from speech signals. It is led by Honza Černocký a Lukáš Burget.
• Graph@FIT aims at image and video processing and computer graphics. It is coordinated by Adam Herout a Pavel Zemčík.
• KnoT@FIT deals with knowledge technologies, machine learning and big-data analysis. Its leader is Pavel Smrž.
• Aeroworks@FIT is a group targeting modern automatic flight controls, simulation technologies and human-machine interaction. Its leader is Peter Chudý.
• Robo@FIT is a research group connecting people from several FIT's departments (esp. DCGM, DITS) concentrating on robotics. It deals with image and depth data processing and human-computer interaction in robotics. DCGM's share of work is coordinated by Vítězslav Beran and Michal Španěl.
• CPhoto@FIT deals with research and education of computational photography. Its leader is Martin Čadík.

Examples of our work:

• Signal processing course ISS on superlectures.com with speech and video search.
• Methods of image processing in robotics (in autonomous drives indoor or outdoor)
• Interaction with PR2 robot while gripping objects (visualization and control)
• SLAM++ library for computation with sparse matrices with applications to robotics, 3D reconstruction etc.
• Methods for visual localization in natural environments (video)

Selected projects

• BISON (Big speech data analytics for contact centers) is the only EU Horizon2020 funded project coordinated by a Czech company. It deals with speech analytics for contact centers.
• MixedEmotions is building a platform for big data processing in the area of emotion analysis.
• LOCATE (Visual Localization in Natural Environments) deals with localization of photographs in natural environments. It is funded from Marie Curie Actions and South Moravian SoMoPro program.
• V3C - Visual Computing Competence Centre is the only center of competence funded by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic oriented towards computer vision and computer graphics. It is the only IT-oriented center of competence coordinated at BUT.
• EUREKA! CEPTIS - Computing Embedded Platforms for Traffic, Industry, and Surveillance, is coordinated by CAMEA, and includes FIT, goHDR (UK) a RTS (Switzerland) as partners.
• Integrated Simulation Platform aims at a simulation system with high level of simulation authenticity in order to prevent the danger of negative training. It is funded by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic. BUT cooperates with the VR Group a.s.

We are proud of (selection):

• excellent results in NIST (U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology) evaluations of technologies for speech data mining.
• ICT Alliance prize in the competition "Best cooperation of the year 2013" for BUT's and Phonexia's proposal "Technologies for information mining from speech
  for security and commercial applications",
• Golden medal of the 55th International Engineering Fair in Brno for the exhibit "Smart autopilot", in cooperation with Evektor.