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In dem Buch Multimedia-Technologie werden Grundlagen, Komponenten und Systeme multimedialer Datenverarbeitung beschrieben. In diesem Werk werden die integrierte digitale Speicherung, Kommunikation, Verarbeitung und Darstellung kontinuierlicher (z.B. Audio, Video) und diskreter Mediendaten (z.B. Grafik, Text) umfassend erläutert. Schwerpunkte bilden Kompressionsverfahren, optische Speicher, Medienserver, Dienstgüte, Kommunikation, Dokumente, Design und Sicherheitsaspekte bei multimedialen Systemen.Die dritte Auflage ist überarbeitet und aktualisiert.

Die Entwicklung der digitalen Bildverarbeitung im Desktop Publishing hat seit dem Erscheinen der ersten Auflage dieses Buches eine stürmische Entwicklung genommen. Die 4. Auflage dieses Klassikers von Mattias Nyman wurde vom bekannten Fachautor Jan-Peter Homann aktualisiert, um Einsteigern den Umgang mit Scans, Druckdaten und Proofs praxisorientiert und verständlich zu vermitteln. Hierbei sind insbesondere die Richtlinien der Forschungsgesellschaft Druck FOGRA und des Bundesverbands Druck und Medien bvdm berücksichtigt. Diese geben klare Vorgaben für die Separation nach CMYK, die Erzeugung von PDF/X Daten und die Erstellung von farbverbindlichen Digitalproofs. So werden verbindliche Schnittstellen zwischen der Druckvorstufe und der Druckerei geschaffen, die für alle Beteiligten größtmögliche Produktionssicherheit bieten. Das Buch wendet sich an Einsteiger und bietet Repro-Profis ein Update zu aktuellen Standards.

In the last few years multimedia hardware and applications have become widely available on PC and workstations. Moreover, through the tremendous development and the wide usage of the World Wide Web multimedia applications have been brought over the network to many people. This book presents the results of the fourth in a well established series of international workshops on Multimedia organized by the EUROGRAPHICS Association, and held from May 28 to 30, 1996, in Rostock, Germany. The workshop had the special topic Multimedia on the Net and was the follow up of the EUROGRAPHICS Symposium and Workshop on Multimedia held in Graz in June 1994. The workshop program consisted of an invited keynote speech and five technical sessions. The fifteen contributions selected for this volume treat topics of particular interest in current research and address actual problems of the use of multimedia in distributed applications over the network. According to the technical sessions they can be roughly structured in the parts concepts for handling multimedia data, still and motion pictures on the net, WWW and multimedia, collaborative multimedia, and multimedia and education. Concepts for handling multimedia data are addressed in two contributions. The first treats a frame based presentation model for distributed information systems (Kirste), the other one presents a temporal logic formalism for specifying navigational transformation in hypermedia applications (Mere et al.).

People use the word strategy in a variety of different contexts. The term has connotations ranging from statesmanship to economic planning, and has become pervasive in the social sciences. We also talk about'problem solving strategies'and'corporate strategy'in a large business enterprise. The concept of strategy applies whenever a sequence of goal-oriented actions is based on large-scale and long-range planning. This monograph gives a systematic overview of the theory of strategies, a new area of enquiry developed over the past two decades by the author and his team. The projects described have clearly defined research objectives and are based on realistic assumptions about the environments in which the programming systems will work, and about the constraints and requirements they have to satisfy. Applications of the systems range over various aspects of air traffic control, automatic verification and validation of discrete-event simulation models, econometric model building, distributed planning systems for manufacturing, control of traffic lights, and others. The book is aimed at researchers, teachers and students in computer science, management science and certain areas of engineering. The reader should have some maturity in computer science and mathematics, and familiarity with the basic concepts of artificial intelligence.

This volume is a record of the Workshop on Window Management held at the Ruth­ erford Appleton Laboratory's Cosener's House between 29 April and 1 May 1985. The main impetus for the Workshop came from the Alvey Programme's Man­ Machine Interface Director who was concerned at the lack of a formal definition of window management and the lack of focus for research activities in this area. Win­ dow Management per se is not the complete problem in understanding interaction. However, the appearance of bitmap displays from a variety of vendors enabling an operator to work simultaneously with a number of applications on a single display has focussed attention on what the overall architecture for such a system should be and also on what the interfaces to both the application and operator should be. The format of the Workshop was to spend the first day with presentations from a number of invited speakers. The aim was to get the participants aware of the current state of the art and to highlight the main outstanding issues. The second day consisted of the Workshop participants splitting into three groups and discussing specific issues in depth. Plenary sessions helped to keep the individual groups work­ ing on similar lines. The third day concentrated on the individual groups presenting their results and interacting with the other groups to identify main areas of con­ sensus and also a framework for future work.

Computer Graphics through Key Mathematics introduces the mathematics that support computer graphics on a'need to know'basis. Its approach means you don't have to do advanced mathematical manipulation in order to understand the capabilities, scope and limitations of the computer graphics systems that create impressive images. The book is written in a clear, easy-to-understand way and is aimed at all those who have missed out on an extended mathematical education but who are studying or working in areas where computer graphics or 3D design plays an vital part. All those who have no formal training but who want to understand the foundations of computer graphics systems should read this book, as should mathematicians who want to understand how their subject is used in computer image synthesis.

This volume is a record of the first Eurographics Workshop on Multimedia, held at the department of Numerical Analysis and Computing Science (NADA), Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, April 18-19, 1991. Eurographics is the European Association for Computer Graphics. It is a non-profit organization, one of whose activities is organizing workshops to provide an interface between academic and industrial research in the field of computer graphics. The idea of holding a Eurographics workshop on multimedia was put forward at the Eurographics conference in 1989. Following the success of this first workshop, a second workshop has been announced, to take place in Darmstadt, May 4-6, 1992. The Stockholm workshop met with great interest and many good contributions were received by the program committee. There were approximately 40 participants and 23 presentations were given - so many indeed that one might characterize the workshop as a working conference - and there were many discussions focusing on the presentations. The presentations dealt with a range of topics, including the clarification of ideas about the different concepts in multimedia, object-oriented methods for multimedia, multimedia from psychological perspectives, synchronization problems in multimedia, cooperative work using multimedia, and building multimedia interfaces. The presentations were the focus for numerous discussions. There was also a small exhibition of four different multimedia systems, representing the spectrum from research prototypes to commercial products.

• Modeling - creating objects in three-dimensional space. • Animation - assigning a time-varying geometry and behavior to the modeled object. • Rendering - creating a photorealistic image of the modeled object. • Image Manipulation - enhancing rendered images to produce desired special effects. This book is organized to give the reader a clear and concise over­ view of the above basic principles in computer graphics. New concepts introduced in a chapter are illustrated by hands-on projects using the software provided. The chapters are organized as described below: Chapter 1 providesanoverviewofcomputergraphics (CG) andhow it has evolved. It includes an introduction to computer graphics ter­ minology and definitions. Chapter 2 describes what modeling means in CG. The concept of wire frame models is elucidated. Basic models (sphere, cube, cylinder, cone, polygon) are covered and an insight into polygonal representa­ tions of other complex objects is also provided. The projects included in this chapter involve use of modeling concepts leamed in the chapter. Chapter 3 discusses animation in detail. Principles of frame ani­ mation and real time animation are explained. The reader is given the opportunity to animate the modeled objects from Chapter 2. Chapter 4 covers rendering of the wire frame objects created in Chapter 2. The fundamentals oflighting, shading, and texture mapping are discussed. The objects created in Chapter 2 are rendered by the user and the complete animation is seen in a rendered form.

Kim Halskov Madsen Up until a few decades ago, business administration and science were the primary areas in which computers were applied, but terms like pervasive computing reflect that interactive computing power is becoming an embedded part of people's every­ day environment, not only office buildings and private homes but also art and cul­ At one of the frontiers of multimedia applications computers are used as tural events. part of experimental theatre, puppet theatre, musical performances, museums, entertainment, and learning. In some of these domains, people interact with the computers using a mouse, keyboard and a 17-inch monitor, but present-day inter­ faces take a variety of forms, including motion-capture technology and displays of up to several metres in height and width. The trend of applying computer technologies in the domain of art and culture has been one of the pivots of a Danish research project, Staging of Virtual Inhabited 3D Spaces. The results of the project are presented in a series of four volumes, of which this book is the last one. The three other publications are: Virtual Interaction: Interaction in Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds; Virtual Space: The Spatiality of Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds; and 3D Applications: Applications with Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds.

Macromedia Director 8.5 provides an exciting environment for composing interactive, attractive and media rich movies suitable for the web. Starting with an introduction to the development environment, Fiaz Hussain presents a quick and effective guide to the powerful components that make up Macromedia Director 8.5. Using a hands-on approach, with plenty of illustrations, Essential Director 8.5 fast:- Introduces the panels, windows and tools required for producing attractive and informative movies - Explains the role of casts and sprites in making appealing movies - Shows various ways of designing, developing and publishing animations - Demonstrates how different media types can be integrated to create lively movies - Illustrates the use of behaviours to add interactivity and dynamism in movies - Provides a quick guide to producing Shockwave movies suitable for web delivery Essential Director 8.5 fast gives an easy explanation of the basic tools needed to create dazzling entertainment, interactive product demonstrations and learning applications suitable for corporate web sites. Examples used in the book can be found in the accompanying Essential series web site http://www.essential-series.com

Multimedia'99 covers technological and scientific areas of media production, processing and delivery. 24 contributions from research laboratories and universities worldwide give a broad perspective on multimedia research with a special focus on media convergence. The topics treated in this volume: image and sound content analysis and processing, paradigms and metaphors for multimedia authoring and display, applications such as education or entertainment, and multimedia content authentication and security.

This journal subline serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating innovative research ideas, theories, emerging technologies, empirical investigations, state-of-the-art methods, and tools in all different genres of edutainment, such as game-based learning and serious games, interactive storytelling, virtual learning environments, VR-based education, and related fields. It covers aspects from educational and game theories, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and systems design. The 6th volume in this series represents a selection of 7 contributions from DMDCM 2011, the 5th International Conference on Digital Media and Digital Content Management, held in Chongqing, China, in December 2011, as well as 18 contributions from CASA 2011, the 24th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents, held in Chengdu, China, in May 2011. The topics covered are: pen-based interface, urban heat island simulation, BR-based on-line expo, physically-based tree animation, 3D face texture stitching, chessboard corner extraction, textured-based tracking, motion control, motion capture and retargeting, path planning, physics based animation, image based animation, behavioral animation, artificial life, deformation, facial animation, multi-resolution and multi-scale models, knowledge-based animation, motion synthesis; social agents and avatars, emotion and personality, virtual humans, autonomous actors, AI based animation, social and conversational agents, inter-agent communication, social behavior, gesture generation, crowd simulation; animation compression and transmission, semantics and ontologies for virtual humans and virtual environments, animation analysis and structuring, anthropometric virtual human models, acquisition and reconstruction of animation data, level of details, semantic representation of motion and animation, medical simulation, cultural heritage, interaction for virtual humans, augmented reality and virtual reality, computer games and online virtual worlds.

Mathematical and Computer Programming Techniques for Computer Graphics introduces the mathematics and related computer programming techniques used in Computer Graphics. Starting with the underlying mathematical ideas, it gradually leads the reader to a sufficient understanding of the detail to be able to implement libraries and programs for 2D and 3D graphics. Using lots of code examples, the reader is encouraged to explore and experiment with data and computer programs (in the C programming language) and to master the related mathematical techniques. A simple but effective set of routines are included, organised as a library, covering both 2D and 3D graphics – taking a parallel approach to mathematical theory, and showing the reader how to incorporate it into example programs. This approach both demystifies the mathematics and demonstrates its relevance to 2D and 3D computer graphics.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. If the print book includes a CD-ROM, this content is not included within the eBook version.This popular book shows readers how to take advantage of the iLife'08 applications that to many are the coolest parts of using a Mac. Through tutorials, tips, and techniques readers will learn how to use each of the powerful applications -- individually and as part of an integrated, interactive suite. Robin and John also cover the features of the immensely popular.Mac Web Gallery, which enables you to share your iPhoto library with family and friends with just a few clicks. Friendly, practical instructions will have new and veteran Mac owners using all that's new in the suite in no time. They'll find everything about getting on the Internet and using email; using the way-cool iChat AV, which adds audio and video to instant messaging; using iTunes, including access to the iTunes Music Store; the new video libary in iMovie; new organization and editing tools in iPhoto; new animated themes in iDVD; and much more!

OpenGL, which has been bound in C, is a seasoned graphics library for scientists and engineers. As we know, Java is a rapidly growing language becoming the de facto standard of Computer Science learning and application development platform as many undergraduate computer science programs are adopting Java in place of C/C++. Released by Sun Microsystems in June 2003, the recent OpenGL binding with Java, JOGL, provides students, scientists, and engineers a new venue of graphics learning, research, and applications. Overview This book aims to be a shortcut to graphics theory and programming in JOGL. Specifically, it covers OpenGL programming in Java, using JOGL, along with concise computer graphics theories. It covers all graphics basics and several advanced topics without including some implementation details that are not necessary in graphics applications. It also covers some basic concepts in Java programming for C/C++ programmers. It is designed as a textbook for students who know programming basics already. It is an excellent shortcut to learn 3D graphics for scientists and engineers who understand Java programming. It is also a good reference for C/C++ graphics vi Preface programmers to learn Java and JOGL. This book is a companion to Guide to Graphics Software Tools (Springer-Verlag, New York, ISBN 0-387-95049-4), which covers a smaller graphics area with similar examples in C but has a comprehensive list of graphics software tools. Organization and Features This book concisely introduces graphics theory and programming in Java with JOGL.

Computer Graphics for Artists: an introduction is an application-independent, reader-friendly primer for anyone with a serious desire to understand 3D Computer Graphics Opening with the first and most basic elements of computer graphics, the book rapidly advances into progressively more complex concepts. Each of the elements, however simple, are important to understand because each is an essential link in a chain that allows an artist to master any computer graphics application. With this accomplished, the artist can use technology to satisfy his goals, instead of the technology being master of the artist. All students wanting to learn more about computer graphics from an artistic viewpoint, particularly those intending to pursue a career in computer game design or film animation, will find this book invaluable

The fruit of many years experience on the creation of synthetic worlds and virtual realities, this book is based on the considerable expertise of the authors, who share their knowledge of mastering the complexities behind the creation of Virtual Reality (VR) applications.The first part of the book reviews the basic theoretical and practical concepts involved in the visual aspect of virtual environments. Part 2 provides more details on the components, structure and types of virtual worlds that can be created, including detailed explanations of the main modeling and animation techniques for virtual characters - one of the most important aspects in a virtual world. A review and discussion of the main types of VR system architectures defines the different alternatives for organizing and designing a VR application.The final part covers the main principles of Virtual Reality hardware using a generic classification of interaction devices based on a human-centered approach (via the five human senses: vision, sound, touch, smell and taste). The book closes with an overview of successful VR systems and applications and gives a glimpse of what lies in the future.This book was conceived as a guided tour and provides practical explanations of each step in the process of creating a Virtual Reality application. It can be used both as textbook for a Virtual Reality course, and as a reference for courses covering computer graphics, computer animation or human-computer interaction topics.

OpenGL Graphics Through Applications is a practical introduction to Computer Graphics with an emphasis on understanding through practice. Throughout the book, theory is followed by implementation using C / C++ and complete programs are provided on the Springer website. A procedural approach has been taken to algorithmic development while taking an object oriented approach when building artefacts from simple objects. The book covers a range of topics including: (1) image processing, (2) artefact construction, (3) introductory animation, (4) texturing, (5) curves surfaces and patterns. Robert Whitrow has taught computing courses from first year undergraduate to postgraduate MSc at a range of different institutions.

A general scenario that has attracted a lot of attention for multimedia information retrieval is based on the query-by-example paradigm: retrieve all documents from a database containing parts or aspects similar to a given data fragment. However, multimedia objects, even though they are similar from a structural or semantic viewpoint, often reveal significant spatial or temporal differences. This makes content-based multimedia retrieval a challenging research field with many unsolved problems. Meinard Müller details concepts and algorithms for robust and efficient information retrieval by means of two different types of multimedia data: waveform-based music data and human motion data. In Part I, he discusses in depth several approaches in music information retrieval, in particular general strategies as well as efficient algorithms for music synchronization, audio matching, and audio structure analysis. He also shows how the analysis results can be used in an advancedaudio player to facilitate additional retrieval and browsing functionality. In Part II, he introduces a general and unified framework for motion analysis, retrieval, and classification, highlighting the design of suitable features, the notion of similarity used to compare data streams, and data organization. The detailed chapters at the beginning of each part give consideration to the interdisciplinary character of this field, covering information science, digital signal processing, audio engineering, musicology, and computer graphics. This first monograph specializing in music and motion retrieval appeals to a wide audience, from students at the graduate level and lecturers to scientists working in the above mentioned fields in academia or industry. Lecturers and students will benefit from the didactic style, and each unit is suitable for stand-alone use in specialized graduate courses. Researchers will be interested in the detailed description of original research results and their application in real-world browsing and retrieval scenarios.

In September 2001 the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling was organized in Avignon, France. This was the?rst international scienti?c event entirely devoted to the new discipline that links the ancient human arts of storytelling to the latest technologies of the virtual reality era. Then, Virtual Storytelling 2003 was held during November 20–21, 2003, in Toulouse, France, and Virtual Storytelling 2005 was held during November 30–December 2, 2005, in Strasbourg, France. Since autumn 2003, there has been a strong collaboration between the two major virtual/digital storytelling conference series in Europe: Virtual Sto- telling and TIDSE (Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Ent- tainment).ThustheconferencechairsofTIDSEandVirtualStorytellingdecided to establish a 2-year turnover for both conferences. Narratives have evolved from their early role in human knowledge tra- mission into the main content of cultural production. With the advent of mass media, they are now at the heart of one of the world's largest industries.

This textbook contains the proceedings from the 3rd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE 2006). The contributions are grouped into six sections, which include subjects like virtual characters, story authoring, narrative systems, and examples of their application. During recent years, Interactive Digital Storytelling has evolved as a prospering - search topic, banding together formerly disjoined disciplines stemming from the arts and humanities as well as computer science. The subject of this book is of course strongly related to the notion of ‘storytelling', which has been used as an effective means for the communication of knowledge and social values, ever since the early history of humankind. It also tries to build a bridge between current academic trends, for example, by investigating and formalizing narrative aspects of computer games, and by its developments for the experience-based design of human–media interaction in general. Starting with a scientific workshop at national level in 2000, the Digital Sto- telling group at ZGDV Darmstadt originated TIDSE, the International Conference for Technologies in Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment. TIDSE 2003, TIDSE 2004, and TIDSE 2006 continued this series, and provided the latest research outcomes and indications for its usage within entertainment applications.

The International Symposium on Smart Graphics 2006 was held during July 23–25, 2006, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. It was the seventh event in a series which originally started in 2000 as an AAAI Spring Symposium. In response to the overwhelming success of the 2000 symposium, its or- nizers decided to turn it into a self-contained event. With the support of IBM, the?rst two International Symposia on Smart Graphics were held at the T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, New York, in 2001 and 2002. The 2003 symposium moved to the European Media Lab in Heidelberg. Since then the conference has alternated between North America and Europe. It was held at Ban? Alberta Canada in 2004 and at the cloister Frauenw¨ orth on the island of Frauenchiemsee in Germany in 2005. The core idea behind these symposia is to bring together researchers and practitionersfrom the?eld of computer graphics,arti?cialintelligence, cognitive science, graphic design and the?ne arts. Each of these disciplines contributes to what we mean by the term “Smart Graphics”: the intelligent process of c- ating e?ective, expressive and esthetic graphical presentation. While artists and designers have been creating communicative graphics for centuries, arti?cial - telligence focuses on automating this process by means of the computer. While computer graphics provides the tools for creating graphical presentations in the?rst place, the cognitive sciences contribute the rules and models of perception necessary for the design of e?ective graphics.

Welcome to the proceedings of the 5th Paci?c Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM 2004) held in Tokyo Waterfront City, Japan, November 30–December 3, 2004. Following the success of the preceding conferences, PCM 2000 in Sydney, PCM 2001 in Beijing, PCM 2002 in Hsinchu, and PCM 2003 in Singapore, the?fth PCM brought together the researchers, developers, practitioners, and educators in the?eld of multimedia. Theoretical breakthroughs and practical systems were presented at this conference, thanks to the support of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, IEEE Region 10 and IEEE Japan Council, ACM SIGMM, IEICE and ITE. PCM2004featuredacomprehensiveprogramincludingkeynotetalks,regular paperpresentations,posters,demos,andspecialsessions.Wereceived385papers andthenumberofsubmissionswasthelargestamongrecentPCMs.Amongsuch a large number of submissions, we accepted only 94 oral presentations and 176 poster presentations. Seven special sessions were also organized by world-leading researchers. We kindly acknowledge the great support provided in the reviewing of submissions by the program committee members, as well as the additional reviewers who generously gave their time. The many useful comments provided by the reviewing process must have been very valuable for the authors'work. Thisconferencewouldneverhavehappenedwithoutthehelpofmanypeople. We greatly appreciate the support of our strong organizing committee chairs and advisory chairs. Among the chairs, special thanks go to Dr. Ichiro Ide and Dr. Takeshi Naemura who smoothly handled publication of the proceedings with Springer. Dr. Kazuya Kodama did a fabulous job as our Web master.

1 Introduction Imagine a virtual world with digital creatures that looks like real life, sounds like real life, and even feels like real life. Imagine a virtual world not only with nice three dimensional graphics and animations, but also with realistic physical laws and forces. This virtual world could be familiar, reproducing some parts of our reality, or unfa miliar, with strange “physical” laws and artificial life forms. As a researcher interested in the sciences of complexity, the idea of a conference about virtual worlds emerged from frustration. In the last few years, there has been an increasing interest in the design of artificial environments using image synthesis and virtual reality. The emergence of industry standards such as VRML [1] is an illustra tion of this growing interest. At the same time, the field of Artificial Life has ad dressed and modeled complex phenomena such as self organization, reproduction, development, and evolution of artificial life like systems [2]. One of the most popular works in this field has been Tierra designed by Tom Ray: an environment producing synthetic organisms based on a computer metaphor of organic life in which CPU time is the “energy” resource and memory is the “material” resource [3]. Memory is or ganized into informational patterns that exploit CPU time for self replication. Muta tion generates new forms, and evolution proceeds by natural selection as different creatures compete for CPU time and memory space.

Image-based rendering, as an area of overlap between computer graphics and computer vision, uses computer vision techniques to aid in sythesizing new views of scenes. Image-based rendering methods are having a substantial impact on the field of computer graphics, and also play an important role in the related field of multimedia systems, for applications such as teleconferencing, remote instruction and surgery, virtual reality and entertainment.The book develops a novel way of formalizing the view synthesis problem under the full perspective model, yielding a clean, linear warping equation. It shows new techniques for dealing with visibility issues such as partial occlusion and'holes'. Furthermore, the author thoroughly re-evaluates the requirements that view synthesis places on stereo algorithms and introduces two novel stereo algorithms specifically tailored to the application of view synthesis.

The range of issues considered in graph drawing includes algorithms, graph theory, geometry, topology, order theory, graphic languages, perception, app- cations, and practical systems. Much research is motivated by applications to systems for viewing and interacting with graphs. The interaction between th- retical advances and implemented solutions is an important part of the graph drawing eld. The annually organized graph drawing symposium is a forum for researchers, practitioners, developers, and users working on all aspects of graph visualization and representations. The preceding symposia were held in M- treal (GD'98), Rome (GD'97), Berkeley (GD'96), Passau (GD'95), Princeton (GD'94), and Paris (GD'93). The Seventh International Symposium on Graph Drawing GD'99 was or- nized at Sti r n Castle, in the vicinity of Prague, Czech Republic. This baroque castle recently restored as a hotel and conference center provided a secluded place for the participants, who made good use of the working atmosphere of the conference. In total the symposium had 83 registered participants from 16 countries.

The purpose of this book is to develop a generative theory of shape that has two properties we regard as fundamental to intelligence –(1) maximization of transfer: whenever possible, new structure should be described as the transfer of existing structure; and (2) maximization of recoverability: the generative operations in the theory must allow maximal inferentiability from data sets. We shall show that, if generativity satis?es these two basic criteria of - telligence, then it has a powerful mathematical structure and considerable applicability to the computational disciplines. The requirement of intelligence is particularly important in the gene- tion of complex shape. There are plenty of theories of shape that make the generation of complex shape unintelligible. However, our theory takes the opposite direction: we are concerned with the conversion of complexity into understandability. In this, we will develop a mathematical theory of und- standability. The issue of understandability comes down to the two basic principles of intelligence - maximization of transfer and maximization of recoverability. We shall show how to formulate these conditions group-theoretically. (1) Ma- mization of transfer will be formulated in terms of wreath products. Wreath products are groups in which there is an upper subgroup (which we will call a control group) that transfers a lower subgroup (which we will call a?ber group) onto copies of itself. (2) maximization of recoverability is insured when the control group is symmetry-breaking with respect to the?ber group.

Industrial robots carry out simple tasks in customized environments for which it is typical that nearly all e?ector movements can be planned during an - line phase. A continual control based on sensory feedback is at most necessary at e?ector positions near target locations utilizing torque or haptic sensors. It is desirable to develop new-generation robots showing higher degrees of autonomy for solving high-level deliberate tasks in natural and dynamic en- ronments. Obviously, camera-equipped robot systems, which take and process images and make use of the visual data, can solve more sophisticated robotic tasks. The development of a (semi-) autonomous camera-equipped robot must be grounded on an infrastructure, based on which the system can acquire and/or adapt task-relevant competences autonomously. This infrastructure consists of technical equipment to support the presentation of real world training samples, various learning mechanisms for automatically acquiring function approximations, and testing methods for evaluating the quality of the learned functions. Accordingly, to develop autonomous camera-equipped robot systems one must?rst demonstrate relevant objects, critical situations, and purposive situation-action pairs in an experimental phase prior to the application phase. Secondly, the learning mechanisms are responsible for - quiring image operators and mechanisms of visual feedback control based on supervised experiences in the task-relevant, real environment. This paradigm of learning-based development leads to the concepts of compatibilities and manifolds. Compatibilities are general constraints on the process of image formation which hold more or less under task-relevant or accidental variations of the imaging conditions.

In 1998, SC24, the subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC 1 concerned with computer graphics and image processing, completed work on a new standard for multimedia presentation; the PREMO standard (Presentation Environment for Multimedia Objects) is published under the official reference ISO/IEC 14478. PREMO essentially provides a middleware specification for multimedia programming - more generally it also serves as a reference model for distributed multimedia. This book does not attempt to replace the official standard but provides a readable version of the basic concepts, presents some features of the PREMO objects in detail, highlights the reasons for specific design decisions, and gives simple examples and motivation claryfying the underlying concepts. A particularly helpful feature is that the authors provide detailed specifications of the PREMO objects in Java. Mainly for students and professionals who need to improve their understanding of the issues involved in distributed multimedia.