Michael Black and his research group received a grant from the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) for their collaboration with the Rhode Island State Police on forensic computer vision. The project explores new methods for tracking people in video and using three-dimensional modeling to estimate important biometric information such as height, weight and arm length.
The team will develop and test video analysis tools that will enable the police to recover 3-D human motion from low-resolution surveillance video, employ new methods for reconstructing an image of a suspect's face from low-quality video footage and provide biometric information about a suspect's height, weight and waist size.
Michael and his students previously received commendations from the Henrico County Division of Police in Virginia for their work on analyzing and enhancing surveillance video of a homicide crime scene. This new collaboration with the Rhode Island State Police will build on these efforts with the goal of establishing Rhode Island as a leader in forensic video analysis.
The project with the Henrico County Division of Police was featured in the Conduit: http://cs.brown.edu/about/conduit/conduit_v15n2.pdf
More information about the 2008 Collaborative Research Award is available here: http://www.riedc.com/riedc/news/
