Shape from focus (SFF) reconstructs 3D shape of the scene from a sequence of multi-focus images, and the quality of reconstructed shape mainly depends on the accuracy of image focus volume (FV). Traditional SFF techniques exhibit poor performance in preserving structural edges and fine details while removing noisy artifacts, and mostly they do not incorporate any additional shape prior. Therefore, in this paper, we propose to refine FV by formulating an energy minimization framework that employs a nonconvex regularizer and incorporates two types of shape priors. The proposed regularizer is robust against noisy focus values. The first proposed shape prior is input image sequence and it is a single and static shape prior. While, the second shape prior corresponds to a series of shape priors. These shape priors are FVs which are iteratively obtained on-the-fly. Both of these shape priors constrain the solution space for output FV. We optimize nonconvex energy function through majorize-minimization algorithm which iteratively guarantees a local minimum and converges quickly. Experiments have been conducted to evaluate accuracy and convergence properties of the proposed method. Experimental results of synthetic and real image sequences demonstrate that our method achieves superior results in terms of ability to reconstruct accurate 3D shapes as compared to existing approaches.

Blur detection and segmentation for a single image without any prior information is a challenging task. Numerous techniques for blur detection and segmentation have been proposed in the literature to ultimately restore the sharp images. These techniques use different blur measures in different settings, and in all of them, blur measure plays a central role among all other steps. Blur measure operators have not been analyzed comparatively for both of the spatially-variant defocus and motion blur cases. In this paper, we provide the performance analysis of the state-of-the-art blur measure operators under a unified framework for blur segmentation. A large number of blur measure operators are considered for applying on a diverse set of real blurry images affected by different types and levels of blur and noise. The initial blur maps then are segmented into blurred and non-blurred regions. In order to test the performance of blur measure operators in segmentation process in equal terms, it is crucial to consider the same intermediate steps involved in the blur segmentation process for all of the blur measure operators. The performance of the operators is evaluated by using various qualitative measures. Results reveal that the blur measure operators perform well under certain condition and factors. However, it has been observed that some operators perform adequately overall well or worse against almost all imperfections that prevail over the real-world images.

Traction applications, such as electric and hybrid vehicles, require the electrical motor to be operated at low load conditions during most of their driving cycle. Permanent magnet (PM) motors in this case may not be an optimal choice due to their poor efficiency under low load conditions despite the fact that they exhibit the best output characteristics at the rated load. However, the wound rotor synchronous motor (WRSM) demonstrates the best efficiency at low load conditions due to their controllable excitation. This paper presents an interesting comparison of WRSM and the PM motor in terms of their efficiency over the entire drive cycle of traction applications, which demonstrates that WRSMs are more suitable compared to the apparently best performance PM motor. A WRSM with similar dimensions to the 2010 Toyota Prius interior permanent synchronous motor (IPMSM) was designed and optimized in this regard. The performance comparison of the PM motor and the WRSM was presented using 2-D finite element analysis (FEA) for the WRSM and the performance analysis report of the Toyota Prius IPMSM published by the US department of energies. The FEA analysis shows that the WRSM can achieve wide torque speed characteristics. Moreover, the WRSM exhibits better efficiency under low load conditions at the higher speed or field weakening region.

The neural radiance field (NeRF) has made significant strides in representing 3D scenes and synthesizing novel views. Despite its advancements, the high computational costs of NeRF have posed challenges for its deployment in resource-constrained environments and real-time applications. As an alternative to NeRF-like neural rendering methods, 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) offers rapid rendering speeds while maintaining excellent image quality. However, as it represents objects and scenes using a myriad of Gaussians, it requires substantial storage to achieve high-quality representation. To mitigate the storage overhead, we propose Factorized 3D Gaussian Splatting (F-3DGS), a novel approach that drastically reduces storage requirements while preserving image quality. Inspired by classical matrix and tensor factorization techniques, our method represents and approximates dense clusters of Gaussians with significantly fewer Gaussians through efficient factorization. We aim to efficiently represent dense 3D Gaussians by approximating them with a limited amount of information for each axis and their combinations. This method allows us to encode a substantially large number of Gaussians along with their essential attributes'such as color, scale, and rotation-necessary for rendering using a relatively small number of elements. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that F-3DGS achieves a significant reduction in storage costs while maintaining comparable quality in rendered images. Our project page is available at https://xiangyu1sun.github.io/Factorize-3DGS/.