PhD Thesis Proposal

Event Location: NSH 3002Abstract: Computer vision analysis of live cells in time-lapse microscopy images enables long-term continuous monitoring of a large number of intact cells with minimal human intervention, which has not been feasible by existing image processing methods with cellular staining images. Of critical importance in time-lapse microscopy image analysis is to understand the [...]

Event Location: NSH 3002Abstract: Miniature flapping flight systems hold great promise in matching the agility of their natural counterparts, bees, flies, and hummingbirds. Characterized by reciprocating wing motion, unsteady aerodynamics, and the ability to hover, insect-like flapping flight presents an interesting locomotion strategy capable of functioning at small size scales and is still a current [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Abstract: obust to both external disturbances and modeling error. We describe a walking controller that functions by coordinating multiple low-dimensional optimal controllers. We break a simplified model of the dynamics into several subsystems that have limited interaction. Each of the subsystems are augmented with coordination variables and we use a Dynamic Programming [...]

Event Location: NSH 1507Abstract: End effectors play a privileged role in the manipulation chain. They contact the world. That role gives them an advantageous position to convey function and contribute to a solution to the manipulation problem. This thesis proposal explores the problem of designing the shape of a rigid end effector to perform a [...]

Event Location: NSH 3305Abstract: Object instance detection is a fundamental problem in Computer Vision and has been extensively studied in the past. From a single image, the goal is to detect a specific object from an arbitrary viewpoint in a cluttered environment. While the use of discriminative point-based features such as SIFT works well for [...]

Event Location: NSH 1305Abstract: Non-rigid deformations of surfaces and volumes result in complex distortions in images. Modeling deformation can help better understand such real-world phenomena and extract useful information about the scenes. This is closely related to many core vision tasks, such as image alignment, matching, tracking, detection and recognition. Modeling deformation remains challenging because [...]

Event Location: NSH 1305Abstract: The task assignment problem is one of the fundamental combinatorial optimization problems. It has been extensively studied in operation research, management science, computer science and robotics. In multi-robot systems (MRS), there are various applications of task assignment, such as environmental monitoring, search and rescue, disaster response, extraterrestrial exploration, sensing data collection [...]

Event Location: NSH 3305Abstract: In this thesis proposal, we describe a data-driven approach to leverage repositories of 3D models for scene understanding. Our ability to relate what we see in an image to a large collection of 3D models allows us to transfer information from these models, creating a rich understanding of the scene. We [...]

Event Location: GHC 4405Abstract: Commanding robots through unconstrained natural language directions is intuitive, flexible, and does not require specialized interfaces or training. Providing this capability would enable effortless coordination in human robot teams that operate in non-specialized environments. However, natural language direction following through unknown environments requires understanding the structure of language, mapping verbs and [...]

Event Location: NSH 3002Abstract: High performance wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) require fast, accurate motion models for planning and control. This thesis addresses two challenges to producing these models: the tradeoff between fidelity and speed in model formulation, and the need for laborious calibration procedures. To address the first challenge, I propose the formulation of “enhanced” [...]