Intel Research Distinguished Lectures

Title: Computer vision: Progress, Fun, and Usefulness
Speaker: Takeo Kanade

Abstract: Vision is one of the first areas that Artificial Intelligence tackled. After some stagnation due to the failure of an earlier "Let's-program-what-I-think-I-am-doing" approach, computer vision has made substantial progress recently, thanks to several new approaches: physics-based, statistic-based, view-based, system-based, and sample-based approaches. I will review the progress, fun and usefulness that the computer-vision field has brought about, and argue that there is an opportunity to renew the tie between the vision and the search problem.

Bio: Takeo Kanade is the U. A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon. He received his Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University in 1974. He joined Carnegie Mellon in 1980. He was the Director of the Robotics Institute from 1992 to 2001. Dr. Kanade works in multiple areas of robotics: computer vision, sensors, multi-media, autonomous ground and air mobile robots, and medical robotics. He has been the principal investigator of more than a dozen major vision and robotics projects at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Kanade has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ACM, a Founding Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the former and founding editor of the International Journal of Computer Vision. He has received several awards, including the C&C Award, the Joseph Engelberger Award, the FIT Funai Accomplishment Award, the Allen Newell Research Excellence Award, the JARA Award, and the Marr Prize Award.


Title: Research at the Robotics Institute
Speaker Matthew T. Mason

Abstract: The Robotics Institute has been conducting research for 25 years, and has grown to about 400 faculty, technical staff, and graduate students, with a sponsored research budget of over 45 million dollars. The diversity of our research activity far exceeds the popular conception of robotics. Robotics research is deeper than just studying robots, and broader than just building robots. Our most fundamental work addresses problems that robots and animals share: perception of one's surroundings; planning actions; real-time sensor-based control of one's actions; and communication and coordination with other agents. The underlying technologies have applications that include advanced user interfaces, entertainment, education, security, and many other areas. This talk will include a sample of Robotics Institute research chosen to illustrate the full depth and breadth of robotics research.

Bio: Matthew T. Mason earned the BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at MIT, finishing his PhD in 1982. Since that time he has been on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is presently Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, and Director of the Robotics Institute. His research interests are in robotic manipulation, mobile robot error recovery, mobile manipulation, and robotic origami. He is co-author of "Robot Hands and the Mechanics of Manipulation" (MIT Press 1985), co-editor of "Robot Motion: Planning and Control" (MIT Press 1982), and author of "Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation" (MIT Press 2001). He is a winner of the System Development Foundation Prize, a Fellow of the AAAI, and a Fellow of the IEEE.