Gainesville, FL

Meeting challenges head-on is nothing new to electrical engineering Ph.D. student Frank Goergen. Whether designing and building robots, or engineering innovative uses for hand-held PDA devices, Frank chooses to excel. He most recently applied his capabilities to the production of a DVD compilation showcasing the work of students enrolled in the CISE's Aesthetic Computing course.

In the spring of 2005, Frank enrolled in CAP 6402, the Aesthetic Computing course taught by Dr. Paul Fishwick. Students enrolled in the course completed various projects which visually portrayed complex computing concepts. Dr. Fishwick felt it would be worthwhile to create a DVD compilation of his students' work. The DVD would provide students with a tangible representation of the work they had completed.

"When courses are finished, students often don't receive anything other than grades and test scores," related Dr. Fishwick. "The DVD compilation is a bit like getting a portfolio back from art class. Students actually have something concrete that represents everyone's work at the end of the semester."

Additionally, because the subject matter of the course was unique, the DVD would serve as a useful tool to demonstrate the nature of the course to potential students and interested faculty.

When Dr. Fishwick asked for a volunteer to oversee the project, Frank jumped at the chance to become involved.

"I immediately volunteered because I figured it would be a fun scripting challenge," said Frank.

"Frank rose to the challenge," added Dr. Fishwick.

The challenges inherent in the project were numerous. The DVD showcases the four project assignments completed by each of 49 students. Frank had to compile almost 200 course projects produced in a variety of formats and sizes, and which utilized various naming conventions. The several thousand student source files alone occupied approximately 8 GB of storage.

"Everything about the project proved challenging, from getting the files from UF to me (in St. Petersburg) to the processing times, to the storage requirements, to format issues," Frank, a distance learning student, explained.

The project was tackled in two major phases - (1) file standardization and (2) video post-production. Once these major tasks were complete, the final step was the actual authoring of the DVD, a process Frank described as "trivial" compared to the rest of the project.

The first phase involved organizing and standardizing "everything about the files" including naming conventions, formats, compression and size. Files were named and organized using regular expressions and file types. Frank accomplished this task by writing scripts that organized, named, and converted the student files according to patterns in the file names and the type of file.

The second phase of the project, video post-production, comprised the bulk of the project work. Images were scaled to a DVD-viewable size, image colors were adjusted and image display time was set. Videos were converted to a size appropriate for viewing and borders were added as needed. Video/audio synchronization issues were resolved and audio levels were set.

To provide for seamless presentation, Frank wrote a script he named DVD Video Transitions (DVDVT). The program facilitates fade-ins and fade-outs in background music between video clips and generates transitions between videos and/or images. He also wrote DVD Motion Menu (DVDMM) to generate animated navigation menus used during viewing. Both scripts will soon be available for download at http://dvdscripts.sourceforge.net/ .

Together, these scripts result in the videos that are referenced in an XML description file which is fed to DVD Author, the primary DVD authoring tool used in Linux.

"These scripts take you from image and video source files and leave you one step shy of authoring a DVD," Frank clarified.

The final result of Frank's work is a DVD compilation of the student project videos playable on a standalone or computer DVD player, and a separate DVD archive of the students' work and source files.

Technical production issues aside, the final product is impressive. The student work contained on the Aesthetic Computing compilation highlights the creative and artistic application of computing theory. The projects often portray complex concepts in whimsical ways which facilitate viewer comprehension. For example, Greg Kuebler represents a toroidal spiral by depicting the children's game "Chutes and Ladders." In another project, associate arrays are represented by Roy Lobosco as frogs preying on insects in a forest scene.

During the course of his academic career Frank has willingly taken the lead role on several challenging projects. Prior to overseeing production of the DVD compilation, Frank excelled in the application of robotic and PDA technology.

Frank began working with robotics during his freshman year of high school. His interest in robotics led him to participate in a Battlebots project in 2001 while enrolled as an undergraduate student at the University of Central Florida (UCF).

Shortly after the Battlebots project Frank organized an undergraduate robotics course at UCF with the goal of designing a robot to compete in the 2002 Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) contest. Though technical problems prevented his team from competing in the contest, Frank soon formed a robotics laboratory at UCF. In 2002 he received the IEEE Outstanding Undergraduate Award, Orlando Section, for his role in getting the school involved in the robotics competitions and for starting the robotics laboratory. He and his lab team subsequently engineered a robot which placed in three of the four challenges at the 2003 AUVSI competition.

While at UCF Frank also completed a project that allowed handheld devices (i.e., PDAs and cell phones) to control a robot his team engineered.

After beginning his graduate studies in electrical engineering at the University of Florida (UF), Frank continued to pioneer new uses for PDAs. In 2003 he and a friend developed a vision-based navigation system which exploited PDA technology to help persons find their way around unfamiliar territory - UF's New Engineering Building.

"I decided I wanted to do something applicable to handheld computing that would be of use to people who were new to the department or new to UF," Frank explained.

A user with an e-mail capable, camera-equipped PDA could take a picture of the door they were standing outside of and then e-mail the picture to Frank's home server. In a matter of seconds the server would determine the room number and then generate a map of the user's location. This information, as well as information about the room, was then relayed back to the user.

Frank is currently enrolled as a Ph.D. student in UF's department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is nearing completion of his master's degree in electrical engineering (with a minor in computer science).

Frank is a member of the Wireless Networks Laboratory and his research emphasis is on wireless sensor networks for medical care. Frank also researches computer and network security and contributes to open source software.

While attending UF via distance-learning (he resides in St. Petersburg, Florida), Frank has maintained a 4.0 GPA. He is a lifetime member of Eta Kappa Nu (the national electrical engineering honor society) and Tau Beta Pi (the national engineering honor society).

Source: Frank Goergen fgoergen@ufl.edu
Writer: Danny Rigby, drigby@ufl.edu