Patrick Skinner

Masters graduate from the University of Otago. Software engineer with a focus on computer vision and augmented reality.

About me

I have recently completed a MSc in Computer Science, and I am now seeking employment as a developer in the AR/VR or computer vision fields.

My first experience with augmented reality development was the project I undertook for my postgraduate diploma. This project involved designing an indirect augmented reality browser for pedestrian navigation and sightseeing. This application combined crowd sourced precaptured street level imagery with geospatial data to annotate buildings and landmarks in the users' environment.

For my masters project I investigated the vision and localisation side of AR. I designed a localisation method to be integrated into an AR application for live spectators at rugby games. This project involved designing a localisation pipeline using OpenCV, and the integration of this pipeline into an iOS application built using Unity and Vuforia.

My Areas of Interest

  • Augmented and Virtual Reality
  • Computer vision (Localisation and Scene Reconstruction)
  • Game Development
  • Interaction and Experience Design

Recent Works

Camera localisation for Augmented Reality at live sports events

The aim of this project was to create a method of camera localisation for use at live rugby matches, allowing users to quickly and easily initiate an augmented reality experience. Alongside our pipeline we also developed a proof of concept iOS app to test our localisation on a tabletop pitch model.

The localisation pipeline was written in C++ using OpenCV, then integrated into a Unity AR prototype for iOS that uses Vuforia and ARkit to provide basic AR tracking functionality. To initialise our localisation process we task the user with touching a certain pitch marking on their camera feed , from this point we can generate a set of correspondences between each line in the image and the corresponding pitch line on a simple model of the field. This gives use a spatial mapping between the pitch and the image that can be used to estimate the camera pose.

Indirect Augmented Reality Browser

The Indirect Augmented Reality Browser is a Three.js based application that is designed for navigation and sightseeing. This application combines 360 degree images sourced from street view imaging platform Mapillary with GIS map data sourced from OpenStreetMap.

Building outlines taken from OpenStreetMap are used to create a rough 3D approximation of the surrounding environment. This 3D appoximation is used to align text labels with the faces of the surrounding buildings, accounting for possible occlusion by other buildings and ensuring their is a clear spatial relationship between the label and the corresponding structure.

Live monitoring for aerial camera systems.

My most recent work has been developing a system for monitoring live video feeds (HD and IR) taken from helicopter mounted camera systems. An RTMP server hosted on AWS is used to receive and broadcast the camera feeds. Alongside the livestream an interactive map is displayed, which is shows the location of snapshots taken by the camera operator, allowing users to easily geographically reference these images.

Lets3D - Javascript 3D Library

My current personal project is a 3D rendering library built on top of WebGL. I'm primarily developing this library to further familiarise myself with WebGL and GLSL. The full source code and some example programs can be found on my Github page.
Project Repository

Multiplayer Tactics Game (Unity)

A multiplayer tactics in the style of strategy RPG titles from the 32-bit era. I'm currently taking a break from development on this game, having reached the early playtesting phase. This game is being developed in Unity, and uses MLAPI for networking functionality.

Publications

P. Skinner and S. Zollmann, "Localisation for Augmented Reality at Sport Events," 2019 International Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand (IVCNZ), Dunedin, New Zealand, 2019 (Poster)

P. Skinner, J. Ventura and S. Zollmann, "Indirect Augmented Reality Browser for GIS Data," 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), Munich, Germany, 2018 (Poster)

Contact Me

The best way to contact me directly is at patrickskinner@outlook.com.
Further examples of my work can be found on my Github profile.