|
Lecture details:
5.15 pm, Wednesday 22 September
Michael Swann Lecture Theatre
Swann Building (reference 25 on this map)
The King's Buildings
The lecture will be followed by a reception, in the foyer of the lecture theatre.
Abstract
The fabulous increase in computer power now allows realistic 3D models of scenes and objects to be displayed and manipulated on a computer. The models now appear regularly (and often inobtrusively) in movies and video games. But where do the models come from? Although many models are hand-constructed by graphics designers, constructing these is slow, expensive and requires highly trained and experienced people. The resulting models also just don't quite have realism either.
Acquiring, encoding and improving models of real 3D objects is one of the central themes in my past and future research. This talk will introduce some of the key issues and results in the path towards acquiring realistic 3D models of real objects. One central theme that will be presented is that it is impossible to completely and accurately acquire models from real data, so various knowledge-based processes are needed to transform partial data into complete models.
A short biography
Professor Robert B. Fisher received a B.S. with Honors (Mathematics)
from California Institute of Technology (1974) and a M.S. (Computer
Science) from Stanford University (1978). After 5 years in industry, he
returned to academia and received his PhD from University of Edinburgh
(1987), investigating computer vision in the former Department of
Artificial Intelligence. Since then, Bob has been an academic at
Edinburgh University, now in the School of Informatics, where he is the
Director of the Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour. His
research covers topics in high level and 3D computer vision, recently
focussing on reconstructing geometric models from existing examples (of
industrial parts, buildings and people - the latter work has
contributed to a spin-off company, Virtual Clones, in conjunction with
Glasgow University). He also has a passion for on-line teaching and
research resources for the computer vision community, leading to
several well-used text and interactive exploration resources. He enjoys
teaching general AI and computer vision courses for undergraduate, MSc
and PhD level students. In the past, his academic "fun" has involved
investigating some aspects of humpback whale songs,but his "spare" time
now goes to Artificial Intelligence in the Cinema.
Back to Informatics Inaugural Lecture Series page.
|
Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK
Tel: +44 131 651 5661, Fax: +44 131 651 1426, E-mail: school-office@inf.ed.ac.uk Please contact our webadmin with any comments or corrections. Logging and Cookies Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh |
