VASC Seminar

Abstract: Visual reasoning is a core capability of artificial intelligence. It is a necessity for effective communication, planning, and for question/answering tasks. In this talk, I discuss some recent explorations into visual reasoning for question/answering, game playing and dialog. I also describe our new reinforcement learning platform ELF; an Extensive, Lightweight and Flexible research platform [...]

Abstract: Google Brain Robotics vision is to leverage learning to push the field of robotics forward. As such, we have engaged in research ranging in application from navigation to grasping and approach from deep RL to learning from demonstration. Fundamentally, our research is built around the core idea of lifelong learning. Our long term goal [...]

Abstract: Person detection from vehicles has made rapid progress recently with the advent of multiple high-quality datasets of urban and highway driving, yet no large-scale benchmark has been available for the same problem in off-road or agricultural environments. In this talk, we present the NREC Agricultural Person-Detection Dataset to spur research in these environments. It [...]

Abstract: In the adaptive information gathering problem, a robot is required to select an informative sensing location using the history of measurements acquired thus far. While there is an extensive amount of prior work investigating effective practical approximations using variants of Shannon’s entropy, the efficacy of such policies heavily depends on the geometric distribution of [...]

Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss the task of inferring 3D structure underlying an image, in particular focusing on two questions - a) how we can plausibly obtain supervisory signal for this task, and b) what forms of representation should we pursue. I will first show that we can leverage image-based supervision to learn [...]

Abstract: There has been significant research over the past two decades in developing new systems for spiking neural computation. The impact of neuromorphic concepts on recent developments in optical sensing, display and artificial vision is presented. State-of-the-art image sensors suffer from severe limitations imposed by their very principle of operation. These sensors acquire the visual [...]

Abstract: Communication between human users and artificial intelligences is essential for human-AI cooperative tasks. For these collaborations to extend into real environments, artificial agents must be able to perceive their environment (visually, aurally, tactilely, etc.) and to communicate with humans about it in order to accomplish mutual goals. For example, a user might talk with [...]

Abstract: Recent work has shown impressive success in automatically synthesizing new images with desired properties such as transferring painterly style, modifying facial expressions, increasing image resolution or manipulating the center of attention of the image. In this talk I will discuss two of the standing challenges in image synthesis and how we tackle them: - [...]

Abstract: In a world where Google, Facebook, and others possess massive proprietary data sets, and unprecedented computational power---how is a graduate student to make a dent in the universe? I’ll address this conundrum by re-visiting one of the holy grails of AI: acquiring, representing, and utilizing common-sense knowledge. Can we leverage modern methods including deep [...]

Abstract: Computer analysis of human behavior is an interdisciplinary endeavor combining sensing technology, theoretical and empirical models of human behavior, pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms, and interaction sciences. The applications in this area range widely, from robotics to healthcare, from smart environments to multimedia, from security to humanitarian response. While human behaviors span different [...]