Field Trip

So Greg does some programmingy researchy stuff in one of the computer science labs on campus. Today they had a little demo to test their equipment for the real demo next week.  I hear so much about this project that I decided to come out with and see what it was all about.  We left at 8:00 in the morning and headed out to the middle of no-where and found a nice field for our "field" trip.

So what is this research?  It's meant for use with search and rescue!

They have this remote controlled airplane...

The airplane has a camera attached to so it flies around and surveys the area.

And this is where the real computer science fun comes in, inside the trailer.

Yes, they have 6 computer monitors in here.

On these computers they run the software they've been programmin.  It takes the video and does all sorts of cool playback things, like zooming tracking items of interest in the video, play live feed, play/pause and Tivo like things of those sorts and also making mosaics out of the video frames to make a big  image of the combined images.  I'm sure it does more, but don't ask me what it is.  They had a few bugs today (like the pause button not working) that need fixed, but hopefully they'll get those fixed up for the real demo next week.

So when they finished up with the plane some one came with and nice big 6' Subway sub. Every one was read to eat, so we gathered and somebody of course blessed the food...

"...We are grateful for the nice whether we've had to fly the plane..."

Immediately the winds picked up and it started to snow and snow and snow and snow...

After that lunch got put on hold for a minute while it was mad rush to get all of the electronics safe inside the trailer.

Fortunately, before the weather got awful I got some nice pictures of the mountain scenery in the background.

All  in all, it wasn't bad trip. Now, I guess I get to do my homework again, which of course made me car sick on the hour ride home.