NetSpeak - ss2006
supervised by Professor Benno Stein, Sven Meyer zu Eisen and Martin Potthast

Netspeak is a web-based service for people who want to compose an English text. The service is for people who are not native speaker or not firm with the use of words or phrase in the common language. The Netspeak project offers, depending on your input query, a set of options how to write or combine different words and phrase supported by examples – it can also find the missing part, e.g. preposition.

Wie sage ich es - wie sagen es andere?
Ziel des Projektes ist die Entwicklung eines webbasierten Werkzeugs, welches dem Benutzer bei der Erstellung und der Kontrolle von Texten behilflich ist. Hilfe bedeutet für einen Benutzer oder Autor, der einen wissenschaftlichen Texten erstellt, schon die syntaktische und sematische Kontrolle von Texten bzw. Wortgruppen, sowie deren Ausdrucks.
Das World Wide Web und hier insbesondere die Pull-Technologien zur Kommunikation wie Newsgroups, Blogs, oder Wikis stellen hierfür einen riesigen Vorrat an vergleichbaren Daten zur Verfügung. Das Internet, aber auch Bibliotheken, bieten eine Vielzahl von sprachlichen Möglichkeiten (auch innerhalb einer Sprache), welche zum Vergleich dienen können. Für Menschen ist die hierfür notwendige Textanalyse intellektuell keine Hürde, jedoch stellt die Menge der Dokumente, das Problem dar - für Rechner ist es umgekehrt.
Das Projekt Netspeak versucht dem Benutzer einen intuitiven, maschinelle Lösungsansatz zu bieten und stellt gegebenfalls sprachliche Alternativen bereit, für Satz- und Wortgruppen.

TIRA - Text-based Information Retrieval Architekture - ws2005/06
supervised by Professor Benno Stein and Sven Meyer zu Eisen

There are many opportunities where data is being created and many private and public institutions do gather data. An example from the private sector is internet-research whereas another example from the public sector is the registration of data at a check-out in a supermarket. The evaluation of such data on high level is realized by methods of Information Retrieval (IR) and Machine Learning and is based on iterative processing of input-data. However, the use of such applications requires a lot of experience and substantial pre-processing. This project is supposed to explore and to put into practice techniques to support both problematic natures: the goal is the development of a software-framework based on java that supports the simple modelling of IR-processes which itself can be easily adapted to some given source of data. The basis is formed by IR-process components provided by the system that can be connected to more complex IR-processes by using a graphical interface.
The prototype is an entirely web-based application: The User-Interface is realized as a java-applet that supports the simple modelling of IR-processes and the execution of such a model on the server with the help of a Petri net implementation. The server stores all necessary information about IR-process components and controls the evaluation of an IR-process. Furthermore he ensures the scalability by facilitating the distribution of the processing of process components to other servers.
An IR-process is executed by the server starting the different process components employed as web services. The input- and output-data of the corresponding process component is modelled in XML and is being communicated via XMP-RPC calls over HTTP. The XML-data is java-internally processed using JAXB. The visualisation of the data is implemented by using the XSLT-technology and XHTML.

Holographics - ss2005
supervised by Jun. Professor Oliver Bimber

Just like computer graphics, holograms are being applied as tools to solve individual research, engineering, and presentation problems within several domains. Up till today, however, these tools are applied separately. The overall goal of this project is to combine both technologies to create a powerful tool for science, industry and education.
We investigate the possibility of integrating computer-generated graphics into holograms. Our goal is to combine the advantages of conventional holograms (i.e., extremely high visual quality and realism, support of all depth queues and of multiple observers at no computational cost, space efficiency, etc.) with the advantages of today's computer-graphics capabilities (i.e., interactivity, real-time rendering, simulation and animation, stereoscopic and autostereoscopic presentation, etc.).
Several engineering and computer science topics will be addressed throughout the project: The potentials of different hologram types with respect to the project's goal have to be investigated. New three-dimensional displays that combine computer graphics and holography will be engineered. New real-time rendering algorithms, registration methods, and human-computer interaction techniques that are adequate for the proposed metaphor will be developed. The outcome will be a three-dimensional display concept whose application is envisioned in areas such as scientific visualization (e.g., paleontology, pathology, density, medicine, biomedicine, orthopedics or archeology), industrial simulation (e.g., design, manufacturing and quality assurance), and education (e.g., medical training or public museums).

Human-Computer Interaction Techniques for Handheld Devices - ws2004/05
supervised by Professor Steven Feiner and Gábor Blaskó (Columbia University, New York City)

In the last 20 years computers have been becoming smaller and smaller - from huge room filling mainframe computers over desktop personal computing to small integrated chips. Nowadays computer chips are so tiny and embedded into the everyday environment, that sometimes it is impossible to identify them as computer. Today, you can have your own multifunctional computer in just a wristwatch or mobile phone.
The same trend takes place for projection systems. If you compare projectors with normal display screens, the main advantage of projectors are the viewable area - it doesn't depend on the size of the unit. A good example are Laser Projection Displays (LPD) - their unit can have a size of just 16x10x28mm, but the projected image is much larger.
The goal of this research project is to combine handheld/wearable devices with small Laser Projection Displays (LDP) and develop new interaction methods to take advantage of these combined devices.

4d-CAD - ss2004
supervised by Professor Bernd Fröhlich and Hans-Friedrich Pabst

Today complex architectural projects request qualified experts of all work areas to plan and realize such tasks. Therefore it is essential to create a field overlapping schedule such that work of all different experts is organized. Thereby the challenge consists of combining different workflows with different ways of visualization. In this case the problem consists in different experts using different applications to visualize and plan their work.
With 4d-CAD we provide a multi user visualization and planning tool, which enables architects to plan and visualize their building over time and space and give them the opportunity to share their material with other participants in real time.

Superimposing Pictorial Artwork with Projected Imagery - ws2003/04
supervised by Jun. Professor Oliver Bimber

Pictorial artwork, such as paintings and drawings, can tell interesting stories. The capabilities of museums to communicate such and other information, however, are clearly limited. Text legends and audio guides can mediate facts, but offer little potential for presenting visual content, such as embedded illustrations, pictures, animations, and interactive elements. Also due to the difficult economic situation, edutainment is becoming an important factor for museums. By applying new media technologies – such as computer graphics, virtual reality and augmented reality– exhibit oriented information might be communicated more effectively, but certainly in a more exciting way. We describe a novel technological approach, a mathematical model, a real-time rendering algorithm and examples of presentation techniques for integrating almost any kind of visual information directly into pictorial artwork. It allows displaying such information while keeping the observers’ attention on the original artifact, and does not require additional screens.

Unix-based Project Server - ss2003
supervised by Professor Bernd Fröhlich and Jan Springer

This project was no real research project - it was a so called "lab project". The aim of these "lab projects" for undergraduate students is to learn how to do and document an academic work.
We set up a new Unix/Linux infrastructure of a project server based on the well known "SourceForge" services. Beside this "GForge" software, we set up a WikiSystem and a CMS for our department. We also learned how to install, setup and maintain Unix/Linux computers with all there available services.

Raytracer - ws2002/03
supervised by Professor Bernd Fröhlich, Jan Springer, Henrik Tramberend and Marko Meister

This project was part of the lecture "Programming Languages and Software Engineering". The main goal (after some exercises with the programming languages Scheme and C++) was to program a object-oriented raytracer in C++ with the following properties:

• read a scene from a file (SDF format)
• unlimited number of objects
• objects are at least sphere and cube
• every objects can have its own material
• unlimited number of lights

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