Svetlin Alex Bostandjiev

Web-based Strategic Game
'Contested Earth' is a massively multiplayer, web-based, turn-based, pseudo real-time strategy game developed in Adobe Flex (Flash) and the Ruby on Rails framework. The game allows players to compete for real-world territory overlaid on Google Maps. Players can claim territory, build units, and strategically attack and defend against other players to compete for score and overall worldwide ranking. The game is implemented as a load balanced, scalable web service in the cloud that uses RightScale server templates. The setup consists of two front end servers, master and slave MySQL databases, and Rails application server array.

Mobile UI for the Open-source Cloud
A smartphone user interface for Appscale - an open source platform for Google AppEngine apps developed at University of California Santa Barbara

3D Real-Time Plants Modeleing with L-systems
This project involves creating a real-time computer graphics animated simulation for a natural environment. The environment consists of 3D plants modeled with procedural techniques and weather simulation (snow). The generated environment is to be illuminated by image-based lighting techniques, using a HDR environment map which provides the light distribution coming from all directions around the scene.

Augmented Reality for Education
We created an Augmented Reality tool to help teach Physics concepts in the classroom. One part of the project was to create a tracking system for the objects involved in the educational lessons and calculate and overlay physical forces. The other part was to come up with a user interface for the different phases of the experiments.

Automatic Caricature Generator
We developed a program that takes an image of a person"s face as an input and creates a caricature. We developed Computer Vision algorithms that automatically find the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, nose, and hair of the person and create cartoon-like sketches. This is a project from a graduate level Computer Vision class.

Graphics Shaders
These are various small projects from a graduate Graphics class utilizing shaders: Phong Shading, Toon Shading, Reflective Environment Mapping, Water Simulation with Environment Mapping Reflection and Refraction, Projective Texturing, Shadow Mapping.

Automated Calibration for Multi-Projector Curved Displays

We implemented a method for automatically calibrating a multi-projector curved display for seamless projection of a virtual scene. Our method is intended to be used in the Allosphere, a three-story high spherical space at UCSB, in which fully immersive and interactive environments can be experienced, but should work for any uniform and concave display surface. Our approach utilizes a single camera, which views all projections from all projectors. With some basic assumptions, our method computes the camera pose, projector poses, and projection regions for each projector.

Robotics
I spent a lot of my time in college in the robotics lab. With the help of a couple of other people I built a bunch of robots, which involved work in software development for AI, electronics, and mechanical design. The robots were completely autonomous programmed to survive on their own using a number of sensors. The main task of the robots was to navigate a maze, find a candle, and extinguish it. You can see the immediate application that tirggered this kind of work: your house catches fire and no one is home to even notice! The robots entered the Trinity College Robot Contest twice, both times placing in the top 10% most (artificially) intelligent robots.

Virtual Reality
I did an REU (Reseach Experience for Undergraduates) at the Ithaca College VR Lab. There I worked on a fun team to develop the Virtual Occupational Therapy Interview Simulation. This involved programming for the Source® 3D game engine developed by Valve™ that is used in popular games, such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, etc.