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Invited Talks at ICG
2012
March 22nd, 2012, 10:00am, MT 325
Speaker: Michael S. Brown, National University of Singapore, Republic of Singapore
Title: Modeling the Digital Camera Pipeline: From RAW to sRGB and Back
Abstract:
This talk presents a study of the in-camera imaging process through an extensive analysis of more than 10,000 images from over 30 cameras. The goal is to investigate if output image values (i.e. sRGB) can be transformed to physically meaningful values, and if so, when and how this can be done. From our analysis, we show that the conventional radiometric model fits well for image pixels with low color saturation but begins to degrade as color saturation level increases. This is due to a color mapping process which includes gamut mapping in the in-camera processing that cannot be modeled with conventional methods. To address this issue we introduce a new imaging model for radiometric calibration together with an effective calibration scheme that allows us to compensate for the nonlinear color correction to convert non-linear sRGB images to CCD RAW responses.
About the Speaker:
Michael S. Brown obtained his BS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky in 1995 and 2001 respectively. He is currently
an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean (External Relations) in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore. Dr. Brown regularly serves on the program committees for the major Computer Vision conferences (ICCV, CVPR, ECCV and ACCV) and is currently an Associate Editor for IEEE TPAMI. He has served as an area chair for CVPR’09, ACCV’10, CVPR’11, ICCV’11, and ECCV’12 (upcoming). His research interests include Computer Vision, Image Processing and Computer Graphics.
February 9th, 2012, 10:00am, MT 132
Speaker: Hans-Jörg Schulz, University of Rostock, Germany
Title: New Perspectives on Tree Visualization
Abstract:
Many people in the information visualization and graph-drawing communities consider tree visualization a solved problem. Reasonably good tree layouts can be computed efficiently in terms of runtime and screen space utilization. In the course of the search for heuristics to generate ever-tidier tree layouts, the comparatively simple problem of transforming parent-child relationships into graphical representations has been solved over and over many times and is still the subject of information visualization research. Researchers have explored and published almost every way of arranging a tree’s nodes in 2D and 3D; encoding them in different shapes or forms; and folding, unfolding, or otherwise interactively manipulating them. So, it is time to gain new perspectives on tree visualization.
This talk will not only survey existing tree visualizations, but also provide insight in the principles that govern their design and which one should be conscious about when choosing a tree visualization or developing a new one. This comprehensive survey leads to insights about the design space of tree visualization as a whole and the talk will discuss current research endeavors to get a grip on this design space as a whole.
About the Speaker:
Hans-Jörg Schulz received his diploma (2004) and his PhD (2010) from the University of Rostock, Germany. At present, he is a post-doctoral researcher in a project on "Visual Support for the Analysis of hierarchically structured, multiple heterogeneous Data Sources" at the University of Rostock. Furthermore, he is associated with the DFG project “Visual Analytics and Stochastic Spatial Simulation for Cell Biology” in Rostock and an associated researcher at Graz University of Technology, Austria. His main interests concern the visualization of graphs and the adoption of graph visualization and analysis principles for non-graph structured data. In his free time, he maintains the tree visualization survey site at http://treevis.net.
January 17th, 2012, 5:15pm, MT 325
Speaker: Alan Chalmers, International Digital Laboratory, WMG, University of Warwick, UK
Title: Capturing Real World Lighting
Abstract:
High Dynamic Range (HDR) video offers the possibility, for the first time, of capturing, storing, manipulating, and displaying dynamic real-world lighting. This gives a step change in viewing experience, for example the ability to clearly see the football when it is kicked from the shadow of the stadium into sunshine. An HDR video camera now exists which is capable of capturing 20 f-stops at full HD resolution (1920×1080) at 30 frames per second and commercial HDR displays are available. However, there are many significant challenges that still need to be overcome if HDR video is to be widely adopted and move from a niche research area into mainstream use. These include the need for high quality compression algorithms to cope with the enormous amount of data generated, the development of a common interface standard to facilitate widespread uptake, and even a definition of exactly what HDR is and what dynamic range might be considered “enough”.
This talk discusses investigates these challenges and highlights some of the key endeavours being undertaken to ensure HDR is the future of imaging technology.
About the Speaker:
Alan Chalmers is Professor of Visualisation in the International Digital Laboratory, WMG, at the University of Warwick. He has published over 200 papers in journals and international conferences on realistic computer graphics, HDR imaging, parallel processing, multisensory perception and virtual archaeology. He is Honorary President of Afrigraph and a former Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH. In addition, he is Founder and Innovation Director of the spinout company, goHDR, which is developing software to facilitate the wide spread adoption of high dynamic range (HDR) imaging technology. His research is working towards achieving Real Virtuality: high-fidelity, multi-sensory virtual environments.
2011
December 14th, 2011, 1:30pm, MT 325
Speaker: Christian Nitschke, Cybermedia Center, Osaka University, Japan
Title: The Eye and its Environment: Geometric Analysis of Corneal Reflections
Abstract:
An image of the human eye does not only capture its anatomical features, but also the environmental light distribution reflected in the cornea. Recently, it has been shown that the combination of camera and cornea can be modeled as a catadioptric imaging system to extract a person’s view and incident illumination at the eye. We want to go further and discuss that integrating multiple eye and scene images establishes a relation between the individual (eye) and its environment, which naturally overcomes inherent problems and enables novel solutions in eye analysis, scene understanding, and human-machine interfaces. However, this demands for specialized algorithms to handle and exploit the complex geometric and photometric properties of the human eye, leading to various challenges in feature tracking and geometric modeling. This talk will provide a comprehensive overview about the topic of geometric eye modeling and corneal reflections analysis, with a focus on the speaker’s own developments, covering motivation, algorithmic pipeline, novel applications, and promising future directions.
About the Speaker:
Christian Nitschke is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Cybermedia Center, Osaka University. He received a Diplom (M.S.) in Media Systems with Honors from the Bauhaus University Weimar in 2006 and a Ph.D. in Engineering Science from Osaka University in 2011. Meanwhile, he worked for VIOSO GmbH, creating software solutions for multi-projector displays. His research interests include computer vision, computer graphics, and human-machine interfaces, in particular, 3D reconstruction, scene understanding, and projector-camera systems. He currently develops tools and applications for the analysis of information from eye images.
December 7th, 2011, 1:00pm, MT 124
Speaker: Dieter Schmalstieg, Technische Universitaet Graz
Title: Smartphone Augmented Reality: Towards Mass-Market Augmented Reality Technology
Abstract:
The Christian Doppler Laboratory of Handheld Augmented Reality established at Graz University of Technology focuses on research aimed at establishing Augmented Reality (AR) technology on smartphones. AR is a key technology in user interfaces for personalized, situated information delivery, navigation, on-demand instructions and games. The widespread availability and rapid evolution of smartphones enables software-only solutions for AR, where it was previously necessary to assemble custom hardware solutions. However, ergonomic and technical limitations of smartphones as a platform make this a challenging endeveour. In particular, it is necessary to design novel efficient time-critical algorithms for computer graphics and computer vision tasks, and create new lightweight forms of interaction with the environment through small form-factor devices. This talk will present selected technical achievements in this field and highlight some examples of successful application prototypes.
About the Speaker:
Dieter Schmalstieg is full professor of Virtual Reality and Computer Graphics at Graz University of Technology (TUG), Austria, where he directs the "Studierstube" research project on augmented reality. His current research interests are augmented reality, virtual reality, real-time graphics, 3D user interfaces, and ubiquitous computing. He received Dipl.-Ing. (1993), Dr. techn. (1997) and Habilitation (2001) degrees from Vienna University of Technology. He is author and co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications, associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, member of the editorial advisory board of computers & graphics, member of the steering committee of the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, chair of the EUROGRAPHICS working group on Virtual Environments (1999-2010), advisor of the K-Plus Competence Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization in Vienna and member of the Austrian Academy of Science. In 2002, he received the START career award presented by the Austrian Science Fund. Since 2008, he is also director of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Handheld Augmented Reality.
November 16th, 2011, 3:30pm, MT 325
Speaker: Gordon Wetzstein, MIT Media Lab, USA
Title: Computational Light Field Displays
Abstract:
With the invention of integral imaging and parallax barriers in the beginning of the 20th century, glasses-free 3D display has become
feasible. Today -more than 100 years later- glasses-free 3D displays mostly remain a niche product. Hope is not lost! Nintendo recently
introduced the 3DS - the first attempt to push glasses-free 3D displays into the mass market. While successful in generating interactive 3D
content, the underlying display technology in the 3DS has not fundamentally changed in the last century. In this talk, we explore
modern approaches to glasses-free 3D display using dual and multi-layer light field displays. In contrast to conventional display technology,
these systems aim at a joint design of the display optics and computational processing - a concept that has been exploited in
computational photography for about a decade.
About the Speaker:
Gordon Wetzstein is a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Media Lab. His research interests include light field and high dynamic range displays,
projector-camera systems, computational optics, computational photography, computer vision, computer graphics, and augmented reality.
Gordon received a Diplom in Media System Science with Honors from the Bauhaus-University Weimar in 2006 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in 2011. His doctoral dissertation focuses on computational light modulation for image acquisition and display. He served on the program committee of IEEE ProCams 2007 and won a best paper award for “Hand-Held Schlieren Photography with Light Field Probes” at ICCP 2011, introducing light field probes as computational displays for computer vision and fluid mechanics applications.
October 19th, 2011, 1:00pm, MT 325
Speaker: Kiyoshi Kiyokawa, Cybermedia Center, Osaka University, Japan
Title: Trends and Vision of Head Mounted Display Technologies for Augmented Reality
Abstract:
Head mounted displays (HMDs) used for Augmented Reality (AR) have unique characteristics that handheld displays and spatial displays do not offer. HMDs are head-worn, and used near receptors of special senses such as visual, auditory, and olfactory sensations. This is convenient to modulate (augment) sensations a user perceives, and thus suitable for AR applications. HMDs are designed for personal use, and the information they present is hidden from others. They have no impact to others’ sensations. HMDs are wearable, hands-free, and available in a wide mobile environment. In this talk, introduced are research trends and future visions of HMDs for AR. Specifically, studies on head mounted visual displays, head mounted multi-modal displays, and head mounted sensing technologies for augmented reality are introduced, and challenges and visions are discussed for the realization of better AR experience. During this talk, introduced are both milestone research projects of the world, and speakers' past and current research projects. The latter includes an occlusion-capable optical see-through display, a super wide view head mounted projective display with semi-transparent retroreflective screen, and a super wide view parallax-free eye camera. Speaker's related work on context awareness will also be introduced in the context of sensing technologies.
About the Speaker:
Kiyoshi Kiyokawa is an Associate Professor at Cybermedia Center, Osaka University, since 2002. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in information systems from Nara Institute of Science and Technology in 1996 and 1998, respectively. He was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1998. He worked for Communications Research Laboratory (current National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) from 1999 to 2002. He was a visiting researcher at Human Interface Technology Laboratory of the University of Washington from 2001 to 2002. His research interests include virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D user interface, CSCW, and context awareness. He has been involved in organizing IEEE and ACM conferences, such as IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces (3DUI), IEEE Virtual Reality and ACM Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST). He is a board member of the Virtual Reality Society of Japan.
Summer Break: no talks in July, August, and September
June 9th, 2011, 8:00pm, Ars Electronica Center (AEC), Deep Space
Speaker: Maurizio Seracini, CISA3 Director, University of California, San Diego, USA
Title: A FUTURE FOR THE PAST: Engineering Sciences to Safeguard and Rediscover Cultural Heritage
A reservation can be made in advance at center@aec.at or via 0732.7272.51 (place cards have to be picked no later than 20 minutes before the talk). Without reservation seats will be provided on a first come, first served basis.
Abstract:
Engineering Sciences are playing an increasing role in conservation, preservation and rediscovery of Cultural Heritage. A survey of some of the most significant and ground breaking contributions of science and technology to Art, Architecture and Archaeology will be presented. New discoveries on Leonardo’s masterpieces and the latest developments on the search for the “Battle of Anghiari" in the Hall of the 500 in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence will be shown.
Finally, some unique technologies to improve our interaction with works of art and a novel scientific methodology to guide and manage conservation issues, both developed by the Center of Interdisciplinary Sciences for Art, Architecture and Archaeology, at UCSD, will be introduced.
About the Speaker:
CISA3 Director Maurizio Seracini is a pioneer in the use of multispectral imaging and other diagnostic as well as analytical technologies as applied to works of art and structures. He joined Calit2 at UC San Diego in 2006, more than thirty years after graduating from UCSD with a B.A. in bioengineering in 1973. Seracini returned to Italy for graduate school and received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering from the University of Padua, where he went on to study medicine. From 1975-77, he participated in the “Leonardo Project,” to locate the long-lost fresco, “The Battle of Anghiari” (a project sponsored by the Armand Hammer Foundation, Kress Foundation and Smithsonian Institute). In 1977, Seracini established Editech, a Florence-based company that was the first to provide art and architectural diagnostic services, and in 1979 he co-founded the Interdisciplinary Center for Ultrasonic Diagnostics in Medicine, also in Florence.
He has studied more than 2,500 works of art and historic buildings, ranging from Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper” and Botticelli's "Allegory of Spring", to Da Vinci's "Adoration of the Magi". In 1983, he investigated 19 paintings by Raphael on the 500th anniversary of the artist’s birth, and in 1991 he analyzed 19 paintings by Caravaggio in his role as scientific director of an exhibition in Florence and Rome.
Since 1980, Seracini has lectured at institutions in Italy and abroad, including Argentina and the United States. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of Florence in its School of Engineering, School of Architecture, and School of Natural, Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He has also lectured at the International University of Art in Florence; the University of Ca’Foscari (Venice); and the University of Calabria (Cosenza), where he remains an adjunct Research Professor in the School of Engineering and School of Arts and Humanities.
Seracini – whose work was exhibited as part of "The Mind of Leonardo Da Vinci" at Florence's Uffizi Gallery in 2006, and later at the U.S. Library of Congress – believes the Renaissance artist-scientist-inventor would be among the first to appreciate scientific analysis in the cause of understanding art. "We do justice to Leonardo," says Seracini. "We are using technology to understand his masterpieces. I think he would have been happy about that."
May 25th, 2011, 5:15pm, room MT325
Speaker: Roberto Scopigno,CNR-ISTI, Visual Computing Lab, Pisa, Italy
Title: Sampled 3D models for Cultural Heritage: which uses beyond visualization?
Abstract:
Digital technologies are now mature for producing high quality digital replicas of Cultural Heritage (CH) artifacts. CNR-ISTI has a long experience with technologies for acquiring high-quality digital 3D models (3D scanning) and for rendering those models at interactive speed.
Technology is mature enough to go beyond the plain visualization of those assets, devising new tools able to extend our insight capabilities and to revise the current consolidated procedures for CH research and management.
I will present a few recent experiences where high-quality 3D models have been used in CH research, restoration and conservation, to give a broad review of different uses of those digital assets in the CH domain.
About the Speaker:
Roberto Scopigno is a Research Director at ISTI-CNR, an Institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). He leads the Visual Computing Lab of ISTI-CNR. He is currently engaged in research projects concerned with multiresolution data modeling and rendering, 3D scanning, surface reconstruction, scientific visualization and applications to Cultural Heritage. Most of these activities have been funded by EU grants. He published more than one hundred fifty papers in international refereed journals/conferences and gave invited lectures or courses at several international conferences.
He was Co-Chair of international conferences (Eurographics 1999, Rendering Symposium 2002, WSCG 2004, Geometry Processing Symp. 2004, Eurographics 2008, Afrigraph 2010). He served as Co-Editor in Chief of the Computer Graphics Forum Journal (2001-2010). He is now member of the Editorial Board of the ACM J. on Computers and Cultural heritage and Elsevier J. on Cultural Heritage.
He has been elected member of the Eurographics Executive Committee since 2001, and appointed Chair of the Eurographics association (2009-2010).
April 6th, 2011, 4:00 pm, room MT325
Speaker: Nassir Navab, Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures (CAMP), TU Munich, Germany
Title: Advance Imaging and Visualization for Computer Assisted Interventions: motivation, state-of-art and future challenges
Abstract:
In this talk, I will focus on the problem of design and development of advance imaging and visualization solutions for computer assisted interventions. One major scientific challenge is the recovery and modeling of surgical workflow. The second one is the analysis of large amount of heterogeneous data and their intelligent real-time fusion. The third one is the advanced visualization of such data during focused, high-intensity surgical procedures. In particular, I review the state of art in Medical Augmented Reality, and discuss challenges faced by scientific community in the upcoming years. Throughout this presentation, I use clinical applications and our recent results, obtained in our real-world laboratories within several clinics in Munich, to demonstrate the issues and to provide exemplary paths towards possible solutions. Such examples include real-time Ultrasound/CT registration, Free-Hand SPECT reconstruction, Camera-Augmented Mobile C-arm (CAMC) and HMD based AR for intra-operative visualization and medical training.
About the Speaker:
Nassir Navab is a full professor and director of the institute for Computer Aided Medical Procedures (CAMP: http://campar.in.tum.de) at Technical University of Munich (TUM) with a secondary faculty appointment at its Medical School. In 2001, while acting as distinguished member of technical staff at Siemens Corporate Research (SCR) in Princeton, he received the prestigious Siemens Inventor of the Year Award for the body of his work in interventional imaging. He had received his PhD from INRIA and University of Paris XI and enjoyed two years postdoctoral fellowship at MIT Media Laboratory before joining SCR in 1994. In November 2006, he was elected as a member of board of directors of MICCAI society. He has been serving on the Steering Committee of the IEEE Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality since 2001. He is the author of hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers and over 40 US and international patents. He is currently serving as Program Chair for MICCAI 2010 and as Area Chair for ECCV and ACCV 2010. He is on the editorial board of many international journals including IEEE TMI, MedIA and Medical Physics. Nassir is also the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer for SurgicEye (http://www.surgiceye.com). He is proud of his PhD students, who have received many prestigious awards including MICCAI young investigator awards in 2007, 2009 and 2010, best paper award at IEEE ISMAR 2005, IBM best paper award at VOEC-ICCV 2009, best paper award AMDO 2009, best demonstration BMVC 2009 and IPMI Erbsmann award in 2007.
March 16th, 2011, 5:00 pm, room MT325
Speaker: Paul Debevec, USC ICT
Title: From Spider-Man to Avatar: Achieving Photoreal Digital Actors
Abstract:
Somewhere between "Final Fantasy" in 2001 and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" in 2008, digital actors crossed the "Uncanny Valley" from looking strangely synthetic to believably real. This talk describes some of the key technological advances that have enabled this achievement. For an in-depth example, the talk describes how high-resolution face scanning, advanced character rigging, and performance-driven facial animation were combined to create "Digital Emily", a collaboration between our laboratory and Image Metrics. Actress Emily O'Brien was scanned in Light Stage 5 in 33 facial poses at the resolution of skin pores and fine wrinkles. These scans were assembled into a rigged face model driven by Image Metrics' video-based animation software, and the resulting photoreal facial animation premiered at SIGGRAPH 2008. The talk also presents a 3D teleconferencing system that uses live facial scanning and an autostereoscopic display to transmit a person's face in 3D and make eye contact with remote collaborators, and a new head-mounted facial performance-capture system based on photometric stereo.
About the Speaker:
Paul Debevec is a research associate professor at the University of Southern California and the associate director of graphics research at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. Debevec's Ph.D. thesis (UC Berkeley, 1996) presented Façade, an image-based modeling and rendering system for creating photoreal architectural models from photographs. Using Facade he led the creation of virtual cinematography of the Berkeley campus for his 1997 film The Campanile Movie whose techniques were used to create virtual backgrounds in The Matrix. Subsequently, Debevec pioneered high dynamic range image-based lighting techniques in his films Rendering with Natural Light (1998), Fiat Lux (1999), and The Parthenon (2004); he also leads the design of HDR Shop, the first high dynamic range image editing program. At USC ICT, Debevec has led the development of a series of Light Stage devices for capturing and simulating how objects and people reflect light, used to create photoreal digital actors in films such as Spider Man 2, Superman Returns, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Avatar. He received ACM SIGGRAPH's first Significant New Researcher Award in 2001 and co-authored the 2005 book High Dynamic Range Imaging; he chaired the SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival is a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee, the Visual Effects Society, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He recently received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award® for his work on the Light Stage systems.
Winter Break: no talks in February
January 19th, 2011, 5:00 pm, room MT325
Speaker: Hong Hua
Title: Near-eye displays for augmented reality applications
Abstract:
We at the 3D Visualization and Imaging systems Lab in the University of Arizona have been developing various 3-D display technologies, human-computer interface techniques in virtual and augmented reality environments, and innovative imaging systems. In this talk, I will present our work in developing and assessing various near-eye displays for augmented reality applications. I will start with a brief overview of the recent advancements in near-eye displays, then will focus on the development and results of two emerging technologies aiming to address two critical issues related to near-eye displays: a freeform optical technology promising near-eye displays a very compact form factor, close to a pair of eyeglasses rather than a traditional helmet style; and a multi-focal plane technologies promising more accurate rendering of depth cues than conventional stereoscopic displays, with the hope of uncovering the mystery of depth under- or over-estimation in virtual or augmented reality systems.
About the Speaker:
Hong Hua is an Associate Professor in the College of Optical Sciences (joint faculty with the Department of Computer Sciences and department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Director of 3D Visualization and Imaging Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Hong received her Ph.D. in Optical Engineering from Beijing Institute of Tehcnology, China, in 1999. Prior to joining the faculty of University of Arizona in December 2003, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Central Florida from February to December in 1999, was a Beckman Fellow in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from December 1999 to December 2002, and was was an Assistant Professor in Department of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawaii in 2003. Hong's current research interests include: 3-D display technologies, advanced imaging systems, virtual and augmented environments, 3-D human computer interfaces, and optical engineering. Her research group has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Defense, and industrial sponsors.
January 12th, 2011, 5:15pm, room MT124
Speaker: Andrew Straw
Title: Combining Virtual Reality and Genetics to Understand the Fruit Fly Brain
Abstract:
A fundamental question in neuroscience is how simultaneous, distributed activity across the nervous system orchestrates animal-environment interaction to produce adaptive behavior. The visual system of the fly has been intensively studied for six decades from computational, behavioral, physiological, developmental, genetic, and optical perspectives and is perhaps the best understood system of any brain. Despite this wealth of knowledge, our understanding of the behavioral capabilities of flies, and consequently how this well-studied part of the nervous system is involved in these tasks, remains rudimentary. To address this limitation, I and my colleagues have developed a realtime computer vision system for tracking freely flying flies. Combined with a virtual reality system built on computer games technology, we are using this automated system to ask how the fly perceives its world and structures its movement through it. In this talk, I will describe a recent study using this apparatus in which we discovered that fruit flies use nearby horizontal edges for regulating their altitude. We are now extending this system to investigate high level visual behavior in flies. Furthermore, by utilizing modern molecular genetic techniques, we can inactivate small sets of neurons in the fly brain, and by correlating these manipulations with behavioral deficits measured using the VR system, we can establish a correspondence between particular brain circuits and their role in behavior.
About the Speaker:
Andrew Straw received his Ph.D. in Physiology in 2004 from the University of Adelaide, Australia studying motion vision in the hoverfly using electrophysiological approaches. He then moved to the California Institute of Technology where he was a postdoc and then senior research fellow, and studied visually guided flight behavior of the fruit fly. In November, 2010 he began his own laboratory at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), Vienna, where he is combining realtime fly tracking and visual stimulus generation with modern molecular genetic tools to elucidate the function and structure of the fly brain.
2010
December 15th, 2010, 1:00pm, room MT325
Speaker: Hideo Saito, Department of Information and Computer Science, Keio University, Japan
Title: 3D Visual Media Synthesis and Analysis for Auto-Stereoscopic Display and Aerial 3D Display
Abstract:
3D visual media takes much attention in recent years. 3D cinemas and 3D TV have already been getting popular in recent few years. One of the most significant issues for practical use of such 3D visual technologies is the method for creating contents which are suitable to 3D display system. Without contents to be displayed, the 3D display cannot show anything.
In this talk, I would like to talk about 3D visual media synthesis and analysis using multiple viewpoint cameras for auto-stereoscopic display. 3D geometrical structure of target scene is captured with the multiple viewpoint cameras, and/or with depth cameras, then arbitrary viewpoints videos are sent to auto-stereoscopic display for 3D viewing. Such arbitrary viewpoints videos can also be displayed for virtual/augmented
reality applications.
I would also like to introduce aerial 3D display system that can truly show a sequence of illuminating dots at arbitrary positions in the aerial space. The illuminating dots can be generated based on laser-plasma phenomenon. I will talk about the history of the development of the aerial 3D display system. Then I will also introduce the method for generating 3D contents that can be displayed with the aerial 3D display.
About the Speaker:
Hideo Saito is a full professor in Department of Information and Computer Science, Keio University, Japan, since 2006. He received Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Keio University, Japan, in 1992. After that, he has been on the faculty of Keio University. In 1997 to 1999, he was a visiting researcher in the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently the leader of the research project, "Technology to Display 3D Contents into Free Space," supported by CREST, JST, Japan. He recently served as the general Co-Chairs of ICAT2008 (International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence, December 2008), MVA2009 (IAPR International Conference on Machine Vision Applications, May 2009), AH2010 (The first Augmented Human International Conference. He has also been serving as a Program Co-Chairs of International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR2008 and ISMAR2009).
November 16th, 2010, 2:00pm, room MT325
Speaker: Prof. Bruce H. Thomas, The University of South Australia Mawson Lakes, Australia
Title: Spatial Augmented Reality the Ultimate Design Tool
Abstract:
We at the Wearable Computer Lab in the University of South Australia are investigating the use of Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) in the process of interactive rapid prototyping for industrial design. This talk presents our concepts and current results for employing SAR to aid designers in the development of prototypes, and in particular the ability to quickly add interactive behaviour. Current industrial design processes are widely employed to optimize product development in automotive, home appliances, aerospace, and other industries. A strong benefit of this modern approach is the iterative aspect of the engineering, design, and construction phases. Characteristics such as aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability are addressed through numerous iterations to improve a product’s design. We are collaborating with designers from our University on the use of SAR in the design process. We are interested in developing tools to aid in iterative aspects of the physical design, whilst providing interactive functionality early in the detail design process. This talk presents a number of current projects investigating this concept.
About the Speaker:
Professor Thomas is the current the Deputy Director of the Advanced Computing Research Centre, Director of the Human Embedded Systems Group, and Director of the Wearable Computer Laboratory at the University of South Australia. He is currently a NICTA Fellow, CTO A-Rage Pty Ltd, Senior Member of the ACM, and visiting Scholar with the Human Interaction Technology Laboratory, University of Washington. Prof. Thomas is the inventor of the first outdoor augmented reality game ARQuake. His current research interests include: wearable computers, user interfaces, augmented reality, virtual reality, CSCW, and tabletop display interfaces.
Prof. Thomas' academic qualifications include the following:
1) B.A. in Physics, George Washington University;
2) M.S. in Computer Science, University of Virginia with a thesis titled:
Pipeline Pyramids in Dynamic Scenes; and
3) Ph.D. in Computer Science, Flinders University with a thesis titled:
Animating Direct Manipulation in Human Computer Interfaces
His experience includes working at the School of Computer and Information Science, University of South Australia since 1990. He has run his own computer consultancy company. He was a Computer Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (A major US government laboratory for the Department of Commerce.), and a software engineer for the Computer Sciences Corporation and the General Electric Company.
October 19th, 2010, 5:00pm, room MT325
Speaker: Dr. Ronald Azuma, Nokia Research Center Hollywood, USA
Title: The Westwood Experience: Connecting Story to Location
Abstract:
This talk briefly describes Nokia Research Center Hollywood, a new research lab in Santa Monica and its areas of interest, and then focuses on the first major project completed by this lab: The Westwood Experience, a novel location-based experience that combined Mixed Reality effects and the power of specific, unique locations to tell a simple linear story in a new way. This work was our initial effort in exploring how to use context to make entertainment experiences on mobile devices more compelling. In particular, it combined research with the efforts of Hollywood professionals to build a more compelling experience. The talk concludes with a discussion of what we learned from evaluating this experience.
About the Speaker:
Ronald Azuma is a Research Leader at the Nokia Research Center Hollywood. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining Nokia, he worked at HRL Laboratories in the areas of Outdoor Augmented Reality, air traffic control visualization, and virtual environments.
Ronald is best known for his work in Augmented Reality. For his dissertation, he built the world's first compelling demonstration of Augmented Reality, developing calibration techniques and hybrid tracking methods to improve both static and dynamic registration. His survey papers helped establish and guide the field. He has worked on visualizing occluded objects, automatically repositioning labels so they are readable, and making AR systems operate outdoors. He also is involved in running the premier forum of this field: the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), and he currently is the leader of its Steering Committee.
August 20th, 2010, 10:30am, room MT327
Speaker: Vinh Ninh DAO, Interaction Technology Lab, University of Tokyo, Japan
Title: A robust one-shot geometry acquisition technique for a mobile projector-camera system
Abstract:
This research describes a technique for reconstructing dynamic scene geometry using a handheld video projector--camera system and a single checkerboard image as a structured light pattern.
The proposed technique automatically recognizes a dense checkerboard pattern under dynamic conditions. The pattern-recognition process is adaptive to different light conditions and an object's color, thereby avoiding the need to set threshold values manually for different objects when the scanning device is moving. We also propose a technique to find corresponding positions for the checkerboard pattern, when displayed by a projector, without needing any position-encoding techniques. The correspondence matching process is based on epipolar geometry, enabling the checkerboard pattern to be matched even if parts of it are occluded. We can construct a handheld projector--camera system that can acquire the geometry of objects in real time, and we have verified the feasibility of the proposed techniques.
About the Speaker:
Vinh Ninh DAO is doing Ph.D research in the Interaction Technology Laboratory at the University of Tokyo under the instruction of professor Masanori Sugimoto. He received B.S. and M.S degrees in the University of Tokyo in 2006 and 2008 respectively. His research concentrates on the technology and interaction technique of using a handheld projector.
Summer Break: no talks in July, August, and September
June 21st, 2010, 4:00pm, room MT226
Speaker: Prof. Mark Billinghurst, HIT Lab NZ
Title: Designing Augmented Reality Experiences
Abstract:
Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that allows the virtual overlay of images on the real world. Although the underlying technology is not new, it is only recently that compelling augmented reality experiences can be developed. This presentation discusses how to design effective augmented reality applications. The fundamental technologies needed are briefly discussed and then research on authoring tools, interaction techniques and evaluation methods presented. A set of design guidelines are given for researchers and developers in the field, and finally topics for future research. The presentation will draw on research at the HIT Lab NZ and other leading Augmented Reality research groups and companies. Examples will be discussed from desktop, mobile and wearable AR systems.
About the Speaker:
Professor Mark Billinghurst is a researcher developing innovative computer interfaces that explore how virtual and real worlds can be merged. Director of the HIT Lab New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, he has produced over 200 conference and journal technical publications and presented demonstrations and courses at a wide variety of academic and industry conferences. He has a PhD from the University of Washington and conducts research in Augmented and Virtual Reality, Human Computer Interaction and mobile interfaces. He has previously worked at ATR Research Labs, British Telecom and the MIT Media Laboratory and has been actively involved in developing and commercializing AR technology, such as the popular ARToolKit tracking library.
May 5th, 2010, 5:00pm, room MT325
Speaker: Prof. Aditi Majumder, University of California Irvine, USA
Title: Ubiquitous Displays: A Distributed Network of Active Displays
Abstract:
This talk presents our work-in-progress on developing a new display paradigm where displays are not mere carriers of information, but active members of the workspace interacting with data, user, environment and other displays. The goal is to integrate such active displays seamlessly with the environment making them ubiquitous to multiple users and data. Such ubiquitous display can be a critical component of the future collaborative workspace.
We have developed an active display unit, a projector augmented with sensors, and an embedded computation and communication unit. We are exploring for the first time, the challenges and capabilities resulting from instrumenting a workspace with a distributed network of such active displays to achieve ubiquitous displays. Our main objective is to develop novel distributed methodologies (a) to cover existing surfaces (e.g. walls, floors) - that can deviate considerably from planar, white and Lambertian - with multiple active displays; (b) provide scalability and reconfigurability (in terms of scale, resolution and form factor) of displays; (c) provide a framework for shared viewing and interaction modalities for multiple users.
About the Speaker:
Aditi Majumder is an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science in University of California, Irvine. She received her BE in Computer Science and Engineering from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India in 1996 and PhD from Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003.
Her research area is computer graphics and vision, image processing with primary focus on multi-projector displays. Her research aims to make multi-projector displays truly commodity products and easily accessible to the common man. Her significant research contributions include photometric and color registration across multi-projector displays, enabling use of imperfect projectors in tiled displays and more recently a distributed framework for tiled displays via a distributed network of projector-camera pairs. She is the co-author of the book "Practical Multi-Projector Display Design". She was the program and general co-chair of the Projector-Camera Workshop (PROCAMS) 2005 and the program chair of PROCAMS 2009. She was also the conference co-chair for ACM Virtual Reality Software and Technology 2007. She has played a key role in developing the first curved screen multi-projector display being marketed by NEC/Alienware currently and is an advisor at Disney Imagineering for advances in their projection based theme park rides. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 2009 for Ubiquitous Displays Via a Distributed Framework.
April 21st, 2010, 5:00pm, room MT325
Speaker: Dr. Mark Mine, Disney Imagineering, USA
Title: We Make the Magic: Walt Disney Imagineering
Abstract:
Ever since Walt Disney first opened the doors to Disneyland in 1955, Imagineers have been using (and misusing) state-of-the-art technology to immerse their guests in magical worlds. Combined with richly detailed environments, imaginative characters, and compelling stories, these tools have enabled visitors to Disney theme parks to dance with ghosts, sail with pirates, and fly to the furthest reaches of both inner and outer space.
The theme park world of today, however, is vastly different from the theme park world of 1955; audiences are more diverse, guests more sophisticated, and children growing up faster than ever before. The competition is likewise greater than ever before; consumers have an increasingly broad array of rich and compelling entertainment options to choose from, many conveniently located in the local theater, shopping mall, and more than ever in the home. To succeed in this ever-changing marketplace, Imagineers must continue to innovate and push the boundaries of engineering, design, and magic. Our worlds must be richer, our characters more interactive, and our storytelling more fluid, customizable, and reactive.
In this talk Mark will discuss how advances in computing power, display technology, and sensing devices, along with ever accelerating trends of miniaturization and cost reduction are enabling exciting new ways for Imagineers to create magical Disney worlds. He will present some of the new techniques and technology being used to light, animate, and augment Disney theme parks, bringing the world of Disney animated features to life in ways never before possible. He will also demonstrate how these very same advances in technology are changing the theme park design process itself. He will give examples of the work of the Creative Technology Group, a new group at Imagineering dedicated to developing innovative computer-based tools and techniques to be used in the design of Disney theme parks, resorts, and attractions worldwide. Mark will describe how advanced virtual reality technology such as head-mounted displays, high precision motion capture systems, and ultra-high definition display walls are being used to help designers at WDI experience, and evaluate attraction designs months and years before the actual construction process begins in the real world,
About the Speaker:
Mark Mine is Director of Technical Concept Design at Walt Disney Imagineering and the head of WDI's new Creative Technology Group. The Creative Technology Group's expertise in virtual reality and computer graphics has been applied to many projects including the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, Toy Story Mania, and the new Radiator Springs Racers at Disney's California Adventure. Prior to working at Disney, Mark was a system engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California working on the Voyager Missions to the outer planets. Mark has a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, a Master's Degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and Master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
March 24th, 2010, 12:45pm, room MT325
Speaker: Prof. Xubo Yang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Title: Visual Effects for Computer Games
Abstract:
Abstract: As the power of graphics processor is continuously enhanced, more and more amazing visual effects are emerging from
off-the-shelf computer games. This talk will give a brief introduction to cutting-edge visual effect techniques invented for or adopted in latest computer games. The techniques will mainly involve global illumination, environmental effects,camera effects and other advanced features such as physics.Future trends and improvements of visual effects for computer games will also be briefly discussed.
About the Speaker:
Xubo Yang is an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is now the director of Digital Art Lab in the School of Software. He received a PhD in computer science from the State Key Lab of CAD&CG at Zhejiang University in 1998. Later he joined the Virtual Environment group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication (IMK) in Germany till 2001 and the Mixed Reality Lab of National University of Singapore till 2003. He has been a visiting researcher in the Ubisoft Shanghai Studio during 2008-2009. His current research interests focus on next-generation media art computing technologies in the context of computer graphics, computer vision, augmented reality and novel media interaction. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers in the field of virtual and augmented reality, computer graphics and entertainment computing. He is member of IEEE and ACM.
February 10th, 2010, 4:15pm, room MT325
Speaker: Prof. Ramesh Raskar, MIT, USA
Title: Computational Photography
Abstract:
Though revolutionary in many ways, digital photography is essentially electronically implemented film photography. By contrast, computational photography exploits plentiful low-cost computing and memory, new kinds of digitally enabled sensors, optics, probes, smart lighting, and communication to capture information far beyond just a simple set of pixels. It promises a richer, even a multilayered, visual experience that may include depth, fused photo-video representations, or multispectral imagery. Professor Raskar will discuss and demonstrate advances he is working on in the areas of generalized optics, sensors, illumination methods, processing, and display, and describe how computational photography will enable us to create images that break from traditional constraints to retain more fully our fondest and most important memories, to keep personalized records of our lives, and to extend both the archival and the artistic possibilities of photography.
About the Speaker:
Ramesh Raskar joined the Media Lab from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in 2008 as head of the Lab’s Camera Culture research group. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he introduced “Shader Lamps,” a novel method for seamlessly merging synthetic elements into the real world using projector-camera based spatial augmented reality. In 2004, Raskar received the TR100 Award from Technology Review, which recognizes top young innovators under the age of 35, and in 2003, the Global Indus Technovator Award, instituted at MIT to recognize the top 20 Indian technology innovators worldwide. In 2009, he was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship. He holds 37 US patents and has received four Mitsubishi Electric Invention Awards. He is currently co-authoring a book on computational photography. http://raskar.info
January 26th, 2010, 4:15pm, room MT325
Speaker: Prof. Michael Goesele, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Title: Scene Reconstruction from Community Photo Collections
Abstract:
With the recent rise in popularity of Internet photo sharing sites, community photo collections---collections of images contributed by users online---have emerged as a powerful new type of image dataset for computer vision and computer graphics research. Compared to standard datasets captured under laboratory conditions, community photo collections show an extreme variability since the images were captured by a large number of photographers with various cameras and at different times. In this talk, I will first describe our work on geometry reconstruction from community photo collections. We employ a robust multi-view stereo approach which yields high quality results even under such difficult conditions. I will then discuss how we can use images captured from different viewpoints and under varying lighting conditions to reconstruct a more complete scene model including geometry, reflectance, and distant illumination. I will close with an outlook on open research problems in the area.
About the Speaker:
Michael Goesele studied computer science at the University of Ulm and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then moved to the Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik (MPI) and received his doctorate degree in 2004. In 2005, he received a Feodor Lynen-Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation to work as a PostDoc at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Since 2007, he is an assistant professor of computer graphics at TU Darmstadt. Since 2009, he is additionally leading an Emmy Noether Research group funded by the German National Science Foundation (DFG). His research interests include capturing and modeling techniques for graphics and vision as well as high performance computing on modern massively parallel hardware. Michael Goesele received several awards including the Eurographics 2008 Young Researcher Award.
2009
December 1st, 2009, 4:15pm, room MT325
Speaker: Dr. Ivo Ihrke, University of British Columbia Vancover, Canada
Title: Digitizing the Unscannable: 3D Acquisition of Intangible Phenomena and Objects with Challenging Surface Characteristics
Abstract:
Standard range scanning techniques work well for approximately Lambertian
reflectors, but large classes of objects can currently not be scanned robustly. Specular and refractive objects pose challenges to range scanning because the surface cannot be observed directly. Translucent objects exhibit significant effects of global light transport, while volumetric phenomena like fire, smoke and gas flows do not have a proper surface. In the talk I will give an overview of my work in this area. I will discuss computed tomography as a useful tool in acquiring volumetric phenomena and discuss ways of dealing with and exploiting refraction
for real-world object digitization.
About the Speaker:
Ivo Ihrke is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation.
Beginning 2010, he will lead a research group on "Generalized Image Acquisition and Analysis" within the Cluster of Excellence "Multi-Modal Computing and Interaction" at Saarland University, Germany. He received a MS degree in Scientific Computing from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden in 2002 and a Ph.D. in computer science from Saarland University in 2007. His dissertation focused on reconstruction methods for transparent, dynamic phenomena, like fire, smoke, and fluid flows. His main research interest are the modeling of forward and inverse light transport processes and the development of effcient numerical solvers for these problems.
November 17th, 2009, 10:15am, room T911
Speaker: Prof. Daisuke Iwai, Osaka University, Japan
Title: Interactive Projection-Based Mixed Reality Systems
Abstract:
Projection-based mixed reality (PBMR) which seamlessly merges physical world and virtual content has a great potential to realize various interactive systems in which users can intuitively interact with existent objects that are augmented by projected imagery. Prominent advantages of PBMR are that the users do not have to wear any annoying head-mounted displays and that augmented reality experiences can be simultaneously shared among co-located multiple users. Our group at Osaka University has been focusing on exploring broad range of PBMR interactive applications including a real object painting with projected texture (1999-), supporting of tele-existence collaboration (1999-), wearable projector to support private activities (2001-), supporting of artwork creation through heat phenomena (2002-), radiometric compensation of projection light (2002-), virtual shape deformation to support product design (2003-), interactive palmtop display (2005-), document search on physical desktop (2006-) and in bookshelf (2008-), and cooperative distributed projection (2008-). I will give an overview of the above projects to introduce our research activities as well as PBMR's promising possibilities in interactive applications.
About the Speaker:
Daisuke Iwai is an assistant professor at Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Japan. He received the BS degree from Osaka University, in 2003 and the MS and Ph.D. degrees in engineering science from Osaka University, in 2005 and 2007, respectively. From 2007 to 2008, he was a visiting scientist at the Media System Science Department of the Bauhaus-University Weimar. He was a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from 2006 to 2008. His research interests include projection-based mixed reality and human-computer interaction. He is member of ACM and IEEE.