Visual Information Processing (VIP) Laboratory
The VIP Laboratory belongs to the Information Systems and Sciences (ISS) Group at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. Its three main objectives are sponsored research, student training, technology transfer, in the broad area of image, video and multimedia processing. It has been home to graduate and undergraduate students working on various aspects of visual information processing, such as visual surveillance, 3-D video or human-computer interfaces.
The most recent research thrust in the VIP Laboratory is directed towards the development of next-generation user authentication methods to replace pass-codes, key-cards, RFID tags, etc. The focus is on gesture-based authentication where a user performs, for example, a unique arm swing, allowing the system to recognize him or her. The advantage of such authentication over today’s fingerprint or iris scans is that once such a scan is compromised it cannot be recovered, whereas a gesture can be changed. You can read more about motivation for this work in a BU Today article and watch the video below. For research results, please see Projects/HCIs section.