Student’s first academic paper judged best at US conference

A University of Waikato engineering student has taken out best paper award at an international conference for his first scholarly publication.

Shane McClure, who’ll be graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in May, won best overall paper at the Image Processing: Machine Vision Applications III conference, held in San Jose, California, earlier this year as part of an international symposium on electronic imaging.

McClure’s paper was based on his final-year undergraduate project which looked at ways to resolve depth-measurement ambiguity using 3D range imaging cameras.

“It’s an impressive achievement,” says his supervisor Dr Adrian Dorrington, who leads the Chronoptics 3D range imaging group at Waikato University’s Department of Engineering. “Not only because it’s a prestigious conference with high calibre international papers, but also because this was Shane’s first conference presentation.”

McClure, a former student of Mt Maunganui College, was one of four Waikato students presenting papers at the symposium.

“3D range imaging is a relatively new technology with huge possibilities for use in medical imaging, robotics and gaming interfaces, but it’s still in the early stages of development,” he says. “Three of us were working on different aspects to improve the cameras – my project focussed on ways to extend the camera’s maximum useable range.”