Ingersoll Visualization of Hummingbird Flight · EE368/CS232 Project Proposal Winter 2014 Ingersoll Visualization of Hummingbird Flight Rivers Ingersoll Stanford University [email protected]

EE368/CS232 Project Proposal • Winter 2014 • Ingersoll

Visualization of Hummingbird Flight

Rivers Ingersoll

Stanford [email protected]

I. Motivation

Hummingbirds are one of nature’s most fascinating creatures. They have been shown to flap theirwings over 40 times a second [1] and quickly perform areal maneuvers while drinking nectarfrom flowers. Their swiftness is far too fast for the human eye to capture in real time, but withthe use of high speed video cameras, we can slow down and view their movement on a differentscale. In my research, I am currently studying the time resolved forces generated by a hoveringhummingbird. While I enjoy building my experiment and unraveling the fundamental principlesthese birds rely on to fly, I also would like to highlight the beauty and elegance of their flight.Partial inspiration for this project is from Dennis Hlynsky on Vimeo [3] [4] who filmed birds flyingin the air at standard frame rates and used Adobe After Effects to display the paths of the birdsover time as shown below:

II. Goals

I hope to take high speed (2000 fps, Phantom Miro LC310) color videos of hummingbirds in theirnatural habitat feeding from flowers. I plan to use image processing techniques to separate thebirds from the background and create a visually appealing time lapse of their movement. The finalgoal will be to create a MATLAB GUI that allows the user to import a high speed video of a bird,specify desired parameters, then the program will use those parameters to process and outputa unique video file containing the visually appealing time lapse. Below are some screenshots ofhigh speed hummingbird video I have shot in the past year. I plan to test my algorithm on thesevideos as well as new videos I will shoot over the next few weeks specifically for this project.

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EE368/CS232 Project Proposal • Winter 2014 • Ingersoll

III. Objectives

My first objective will be to create a ghosting effect where the image of the bird in the previousframes is still visible but becomes slightly more transparent as the video continues. I will alsoimplement an anti camera shake algorithm to stabilize the video. Depending on how much time isremaining in the quarter, I might be able to incorporate other features using image processing suchas tracking the wing tips over time and displaying that on the final outputted video using objecttracking algorithms [2]. I could also implement a feature that displays the previous bird image ina different color tint depending on the type of motion detected during that instant. Maruyama etal. showed that they could distinguish flapping and gliding behavior using a tracking window[5]. Overall I plan to develop an easy method for anyone to create visually appealing movie clipsusing image processing techniques from high speed video. This project will not use an Androiddevice.

References

[1] Altshuler, D.L., Quicazan-Rubio, E.M., Segre, P.S. & Middleton, K.M. Wingbeat kinematics andmotor control of yaw turns in Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna). Journal of ExperimentalBiology (2012).

[2] Cika, P.; Zukal, M.; Libis, Z.; Dutta, M.K., "Tracking and speed estimation of selected objectin video sequence," Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP), 2013 36th InternationalConference , vol., no., pp.881,884, 2-4 July 2013 doi: 10.1109/TSP.2013.6614066

[3] Hlynsky, D. Starlings at Sunset Vimeo [video]. Retrieved January 31, 2014 fromhttp://vimeo.com/78737089 (2013).

[4] Hlynsky, D. Black Vultures Vimeo [video]. Retrieved January 31, 2014 fromhttp://vimeo.com/78188069 (2013).

[5] Maruyama, K.; Saitoh, T.; Konishi, R., "Bird tracking and flapping motion recognition formonitoring system," ICCAS-SICE, 2009 , vol., no., pp.3613,3618, 18-21 Aug. 2009

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