The thesis titled “Hand Gestures Recognition using Thermal Images” done by the master student, Daniel Skomedal Breland under the supervision Prof. Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi has been awarded the best master thesis in ICT for the year 2021.
Hand Gestures Recognition using Thermal Imaging.
The goal of this project is to develop a robust and reliable hand gesture recognition system using a thermal camera. Hand gestures are an important communication tool for many practical scenarios. It is used in a variety of applications, including medical, entertainment, and industrial settings. The use of human-robot interactions is growing, and there exists several methods. It is possible to gain access to tight and harsh places by using gestures. The majority of gesture recognition is done with RGB cameras, which has the disadvantage of not being able to recognize gestures in low-light situations. Thermal cameras can operate in low-light environments because they are unaffected by external light.
2019 – Indo-Norwegian collaboration in Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems (INCAPS): The Research Council of Norway (NFR) under the INTPART program; Project Manager and PI: Professor Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi,ACPS Research Group, Department of ICT, UiA Grimstad, Project duration: 2019-2023. Partners and/or collaborators: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc); Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH); International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH); Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Hyderabad (BITS); Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA)
The INTPART (International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research) Program, from the Research Council of Norway, funds partnerships between Norwegian higher education and research institutions and other excellent research partners in prioritized countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, USA, and Canada. The ACPS Group at the University of Agder was granted funding to collaborate with highly reputed Indian Universities in the field of Autonomous Cyber-physical Systems
Fig. 1. Indo-Norwegian collaboration, partners, activities and main areas of expertise.
The ACPS Research Group (https://acps.uia.no/) at the University of Agder collaborates with highly reputed and top Indian Universities and leads the INTPART project Indo-Norwegian collaboration in Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems (INCAPS), with funding of around 6 MNOK from the Research Council of Norway. This project establishes a long-term collaboration between several top-ranked Indian Universities, including the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH), International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Hyderabad, BML Munjal University (Through Prof. M.B.Srinivas) and several Norwegian Universities and institutes, including University of Agder (UiA), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) in world-class research and education.
Key active participants from the University of Agder are researchers from the ACPS Group, Prof. Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi, Prof. Ajit Jha, and Prof. Jing Zhou. Other key researchers involved in the project are Prof. Kimmo Kansanen from NTNU, Dr. Christopher Harman from NIVA, Prof. Phaneendra K. Yalavarthy from the Department of computational data sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Prof. Abhinav Kumar from Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, Prof. Soumya J. from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Hyderabad, Prof. M B Srinivas from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Hyderabad (Presently at BML University, Founded by Hero Group) and Prof. Lalitha Vadlamani from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. Søren Kragholm at UiA will participate in the administrative coordination of the INCAPS project.
Major goals are to strengthen competitiveness and innovation capacity, solve major societal challenges, and develop high-quality academic environments. This project considers broad areas of research which include smart sensing for autonomous systems, mmWave sensors-based system design, analog, digital, and mixed signal circuit design, prototyping of wireless communication systems, low-altitude UAVs tracking and communications, de-centralized wireless communications, in-network processing and intelligence for heterogeneous wireless sensor and communication networks, machine learning and deep learning for autonomous systems, data analytics, energy harvesting based smart electronic systems, smart water networks and inference methods for timely detection and prediction of events, cognitive control and adaptive learning in autonomous cyber-physical systems.
The key objectives of the INCAPS project are the following: I). Strengthening collaborative network between industry (both public and private enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, and multi-national companies) and academia. II). Increased value creation and enhanced innovation by using smart sensing, machine, and deep learning techniques in autonomous cyber-physical systems. III). Facilitate education and knowledge sharing through better mobility for students and researchers. IV). Create an arena for the generation of research and innovation projects. V). Increased utilization of research and educational infrastructure both in Norway and India. VI). Integrate professionals from industries and academics through workshops, seminars, webinars, and summer/winter schools.