ABSTRACT
The sensory perception of other vehicles in cluttered environments is an essential component of situational awareness for a mobile vehicle. However, vehicle detection is normally applied to visible imagery sequences, while in this paper we investigate how polarized, infrared imagery can add additional discriminatory power. Using knowledge about the properties of the objects of interest and the scene environment, we have developed a polarimetric cluster-based descriptor to detect vehicles using long-wave infrared radiation in the range of 8-12 µm. Our approach outperforms both intensity and polarimetric image histogram descriptors applied to the infrared data. For example, at a false positive rate of 0.01 per detection window, our cluster approach results in a true positive rate of 0.63 compared to a rate of 0.05 for a histogram of gradient descriptor trained and tested on the same dataset. In conclusion, we discuss the potential of this new approach in comparison with state-of-the-art infrared and conventional video detection.
ABSTRACT
The equilibrium molecular structure of Si(8)O(12)(OSiMe(3))(8) has been determined in the gas phase by electron diffraction (GED). With OSi-containing substituents on the cage silicon atoms, this molecule contains a moiety, which would, if reproduced in a periodic manner, yield a zeolite-type structure. Extensive ab initio calculations were used to identify two conformers of this molecule, with D(4) and D(2) point-group symmetries; the D(4)-symmetric conformer was approximately 1.2 kJ mol(-1) lower in energy. With 132 atoms in each conformer, this is one of the largest studies to be undertaken using gas electron diffraction. Semiempirical molecular-dynamics (SE-MD) calculations were used to give amplitudes of vibration, vibrational distance corrections (differences between interatomic distances in the equilibrium structure and the vibrationally averaged distances that are given directly by the diffraction data), and anharmonic constants. The structure of Si(8)O(12)(CHCH(2))(8) has also been determined by GED. Calculations showed that the vinyl groups are fairly unhindered and rotate between three minimum-energy positions. Ultimately, all possible combinations of the vinyl groups in these low-energy positions were accounted for in the GED model.
