Crowdsourcing

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Project Overview

This project has created an experimental software platform, using the API of a commercial Crowdsourcing platform (Amazon's mechanical turk, http://mturk.com/), to support the systematic investigation of the system's performance for various types of CAD/CAM tasks.

Micro-outsourcing, or crowdsourcing, is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor,and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing]. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine an algorithm or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data. In MTurk these tasks are referred to as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs). These are problems that humans find simple, but computers find extremely difficult. For example a HIT related to a photograph could be: "Is there a dog in this photograph?"

Recently the use of Crowdsourcing to deliver HITs has demonstrated a feasible way of providing cheap, robust, content based, Image analysis. This proposal's objective is to investigate if a similar approach can be used to solve the geometric reasoning problems found in Mechanical CAD/CAM.



Investigators

Dr. Ananda Prasanna Jagadeesan

Research Assistant, DMEM

Strathclyde University

Glasgow

ananda.jagadeesan@strath.ac.uk

 

Prof. Jonathan Corney

Head of the Department, DMEM

Strathclyde University

Glasgow

jonathan.corney@strath.ac.uk

 

Mr. Jan Wanzel

Edinburgh University

Edinburgh

wenzel.jan@gmx.net


 
 

Dr Andrew Lynn

Online learning courseware developer, DMEM

Strathclyde University

Glasgow

andrew.lynn@strath.ac.uk


Dr. Xiu Yan

Senior lecturer, DMEM

Strathclyde University

Glasgow

x.yan@strath.ac.uk

 
 

Dr. Carmen Torres-Sanchez

Research Fellow, DMEM

Strathclyde University

Glasgow

carmen.torres@strath.ac.uk



 

Dr. William Regli

Drexel University

Philadelphia , USA

regli@drexel.edu



 

Dr. Andrew Sherlock

ShapeSpace Ltd

Edinburgh

www.shapespace.com

a.sherlock@shapespace.com


 



Crowdsourcing Publications

Crowdsourcing Canonical Views of 3D Models

Paper  Virman


Validation of Purdue Engineering Shape Benchmark clusters by Crowdsourcing

Paper plm paper

Appendix  plm0-appendix-A

PLM09 Conference presentation slides PLM09_ppt_Perdue_Crowdsourcing


Techrep08-01.pdf: "Feasibility Study for the “Crowdsourcing” of geometric reasoning  in mechanical CAD", Jan Wenzel, 2008


About Crowdsourcing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mturk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickworkers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxyzoo


Funding

http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/F067291/1



Crowdsourced HITs

CrowsdSourced HITs (under construction)

  1. Canonical views of parts
  2. Group most similar parts
  3. Cluster parts
  4. Packing 2D shapes
    a) Regular shapes
    b) Irregular shapes


Additional Crowdsourcing Images referred to in publications

HIT Screenshot

Packing HIT Screenshot

Similarity HIT Screenshot

Additional similarity HIT Screenshot




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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