The PIXel Toolbox

The Argus/CIL PIXel Toolbox

This toolbox has been developed over the last two decades to manage the creation and use of pixel tools for Argus data collections. This toolbox contains routines that allow you to design collections by creating a package of instruments with associated names and types (e.g. "vbar" and "line") and extraction of those instruments by name from the stack data files.

Pixel instruments are defined in real-world coordinates (Argus x/y/z, in meters), and after processing result in U/V pixel pairs for each camera involved in the collection. These pixels are sorted and duplicates are discarded to minimize the amount of data returned to the host from the Argus Station.

The three main steps in using the PIXel Toolbox are:

1. Design the instruments in x/y/z space, build, and then schedule the collection.
2. Transfer of the U/V pixel lists to the Argus Station for collection.
3. Extraction of the instruments from the resulting stack data files.

In some production environments (CIL), there are automated systems in place to split multi-camera stack collections into Matlab format data files, one per instrument.

As a special case for the UAV Processing Toolbox, once a UAV collection has been completed and a geometry calculated for the initial frame, the PIXel Toolbox can be used to create the U/V pairs and save the resulting data in the same format as the Matlab instrument files.

For a full description of the toolbox and its use, see the manual.