This interdisciplinary project, that we have
entitled FLUID, aims at studying and developing new methods for the
estimation, the analysis and the description of complex fluid flows
from image sequences. We propose to devise novel image processing
and computer vision methods by using sound methodological frameworks
incorporating suitable physical models accounting for the observed
phenomena.This domain of research encompasses a wide range of difficult
issues and thus will have a significant impact on several scientific
and application domains including meteorology, oceanography, and flow
visualization in applied fluid mechanics.The first objective of our
proposal consists in studying novel and efficient methods to estimate
and analyse fluid motions from image sequences. The second objective
is to guarantee the applicability of the developed techniques to a
large range of fluid visualization applications. To that end, two
specific areas will be considered: meteorological applications and
experimental fluid mechanics for industrial evaluation and control.
From the application point of view the project will particularly focus
on 2D and 3D wind field estimation, and on 2D and 3D particle image
velocimetry. A reliable description of the fluid flow velocity will
allow us to study techniques for the tracking of turbulent structures
in the flows. Such problem is very important in meteorology to monitor
or to predict automatically displacements of tornadoes and vortices.
