PhD Thesis Proposal

Abstract: Current non-rigid structure from motion (NRSfM) algorithms are limited with respect to: (i) the number of images, and (ii) the type of shape variability they can handle. This has hampered the practical utility of NRSfM for many applications within vision. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are an obvious candidate to help with such issue. However, [...]

Abstract: Portable camera sensor systems are becoming more and more popular in computer vision applications such as autonomous driving, virtual reality, robotics manipulation and surveillance, due to the decreasing expense and size of RGB camera. Despite the compactness and portability of the small baseline vision systems, it is well-known that the uncertainty in range finding [...]

Abstract: Humans have the remarkable ability to create visual worlds far beyond what could be seen by human eye, including inferring the state of unobserved, imagining the unknown, and thinking about diverse possibilities about what lies in the future. Machines lack this inquisitive ability despite the current revolution in machine learning and computer vision. We [...]

Abstract: Humans are arguably one of the most important entities that AI systems would need to understand to be useful and ubiquitous. From autonomous cars observing pedestrians to assistive robots helping the elderly, a large part of this understanding is focused on recognizing human actions, and potentially, their intentions. Humans themselves are quite good at [...]

Abstract: Real-time dense 3D reconstruction of indoor environments has been a popular research field due to its wide application, such as inspection, virtual / augmented reality (VR/AR), and service robotics. While many state-of-the-art algorithms are capable of reconstructing accurate 3D dense models in general indoor scenes, robustness is still an unsolved problem for all of [...]

Abstract: Water ice at the lunar poles could be the most valuable resource beyond planet Earth. However, that value is not foregone, and can only be determined by rovers that evaluate the distributions of abundance, concentration, and characteristics of this ice. The near-term explorations will be solar and unlikely to endure night, and hence are [...]

Abstract: The increasing prevalence of wearable technology in our daily lives has created a demand for safe and robust sensing skins. Largely inspired by human skin, the ultimate goal of electronic skins is to measure diverse sensory information, conform to surfaces, and avoid interfering with the natural mechanics of the host or user. These demands [...]

Abstract: A long standing goal of robotics research is to create algorithms that can automatically learn complex control strategies from scratch. Part of the challenge of applying such algorithms to robots is the choice of representation. While RL algorithms have been successfully applied to many robotics tasks such as Ball-in-a-Cup and various RoboCup soccer domains, [...]

Abstract: Finding dynamically feasible and safe global plans for multi-agent teams in real world applications is enormously difficult because the decision branching factor, when considering all possible interactions across agents and an environment, is usually intractable. Humans, however, have great success in the multi-agent planning domain by using behaviors: practiced, coordinated responses for groups of [...]

Abstract: In domains requiring effective situational awareness with limited resources, prioritizing focus is critical. Search and rescue tasks require fast identification of safe avenues for rescuers to traverse the area. Inspection tasks must realize trends over long durations to identify issues caused by the confluence of high-stress modes that compound into catastrophic failure. Deploying robots [...]