The Specialized Parallel Architecture Laboratory has maintained a commitment to technology transfer throughout its history. In addition to the traditional means of disseminating results (technical reports, conference and journal papers), we have a long history of research collaboration with industry sponsored projects that have involved the transfer of advanced vision technology. Some of the organizations involved in past research collaborations are AAI, Hughes, Martin-Marietta, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Kollmorgen, Litton Industries, A.C. Nielsen, Honeywell, Lincoln Labs, and Boeing Aerospace. We remain open to future collaborations of this sort.
Of most significance is the transfer of technology in IU software environments, where our laboratory has exhibited a serious commitment to the development of software tools for vision researchers. The utility of early versions of laboratory software environments led to the spin-off of a commercial entity, Amerinex Artificial Intelligence Corp. (located in Amherst, MA), for the purpose of commercializing laboratory technology. Its first product was the KBVision System, an experimental environment based on UMass prototypes. It has now been distributed to well over 200 university and industrial sites. A vision course taught by Prof. Hanson has been packaged into an extensive set of overhead transparancies and online excersizes in KBVision as the basis for a university course, or as a self-teaching environment for industrial users. AAI is also the prime contractor for the implementation of the ARPA Image Understanding Environment, an object oriented system designed by representatives from the ARPA research community to facilitate algorithm design and distribution as well as data sharing.
In addition the UMass Computer Science Department has developed a number of formal mechanisms in terms of organized consortiums for transfer of technology, including a non-profit organization, the Applied Computing Science Institute of Massachusetts (ACSIOM), that has been approved by the ethics commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for licensing technology to private corporations on a royalty basis.