Ronald Azuma's research interests, education and employment

Research interests and general background

I am primarily interested in new interactive 3D interfaces, for their ability to improve human understanding and their potential as new communication media. In particular, I have focused on Augmented Reality, Virtual Environments and Visualization technologies for applications such as training, battlespace visualization, simulation, and data exploration. Most of my work has involved improving enabling technologies (such as hybrid 6D trackers and calibration techniques), developing new visualizations, and constructing systems and demonstrations in these areas. I have a track record of building prototype systems that worked reliably during demonstrations at major conferences and other venues. However, I am also interested in all aspects of 3D graphics and their use in entertainment, simulation and training applications. I would also like to explore interactive storytelling techniques to create new types of compelling and effective experiences (for training and other applications).

I am best known for being a pioneer in the field of Augmented Reality. For my dissertation, I built the first convincing demonstration of virtual-real alignment. My two survey papers helped define AR, described its characteristics and problems, and inspired many other researchers to undertake projects in this area. More recently, I have worked on problems in outdoor AR systems, view management (in the automatic positioning of labels), and in perception biases seen in "x-ray vision." I am actively involved in running the premier conference of this field: the IEEE Int'l Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). Besides being a member of its Steering Committee, I have served as Program Chair three times and also been an Area Chair.

Fundamentally, I am an engineer rather than a scientist. I am an applied researcher who is most interested in developing new tools and techniques that can help people with real problems and applications. I believe in "grounding" research efforts with specific applications and requirements to steer development. Only by transitioning technologies into the hands of end users and evaluating their performance can we ensure that what we build has value.

Since my areas of research are multidisciplinary by nature, I collaborate with scientists and engineers who have different areas of expertise to achieve project goals. For example, I am not an experimental scientist, but I work with them and have learned many basics about designing and conducting experiments so that I can communicate with them and understand their needs. Similarly, I have learned about end user application domains in areas as diverse as air traffic management, special forces, automobile simulation, satellite operations, special effects, and military training. As the son of a retired US Army officer, I grew up with the military and that has helped me in projects with military customers.

As a senior researcher, my ability to communicate well (in giving talks, leading projects, and writing papers and proposals) is vital to the success of my projects. My history of invited presentations, the four SIGGRAPH courses that I taught, and my track record of successful proposals all testify to my communication abilities.

My guide to surviving graduate school has become a popular resource on the web for beginning graduate students who have the goal of obtaining a Ph.D. degree.

Education

• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

  Ph.D. in Computer Science, May 1995

  M.S. in Computer Science, May 1990

  Topic: Achieving accurate registration in an optically-based Augmented Reality system.

  Pogue Fellowship (3 years)

• University of California, Berkeley, CA

  B.S. in Electrical Engineering / Computer Science, May 1988, with highest honors (GPA 3.95/4.0).

  Chancellor's and National Merit scholarships

Employment history

• Senior Research Staff Computer Scientist, HRL (December 1999 to present)

  Research Staff Member, HRL (March 1995 to December 1999)

  Project Leadership: Principal Investigator of two DARPA projects and numerous Raytheon, Boeing and GM internal projects in visualization, tracking, and Augmented Reality.

  Augmented Reality: Demonstrated the first motion-stabilized outdoor Augmented Reality display. Built a new algorithm for automatically positioning AR labels over real-world objects to avoid occlusions. Demonstrated a basic perception problem in "x-ray vision" in AR visualizations. Active participant in running the IEEE ISMAR conference (serving as program and area chair multiple times).

  Visualization: Developed interactive visualization techniques for future "Free Flight" Air Traffic Control applications. Demonstrated them at the ATCA '95, '96 and '98 conventions. Worked on visualization displays for battlefield awareness and time-critical decision making. Examined the application of autostereoscopic displays. Developed non-geographic visualization techniques to generate insight from National Airspace System simulation data.

  Virtual Environments: Built part of a car simulator to investigate the effectiveness of multimodal warnings from Crash Avoidance sensors. Built large head-tracked stereo displays.

• Research Assistant, UNC Chapel Hill (May 1989 to Feb. 1995)

  Augmented Reality: Demonstrated the first compelling example of virtual-real registration in an optical see-through display. Developed inertial-based predictive trackers and calibration techniques. Built a see-through Head-Mounted Display system to demonstrate and evaluate these techniques. Reduced registration errors by a factor of 5-10. Published work in two SIGGRAPH papers.

  Human Tracking: Built a novel outward-looking optoelectronic tracking system that was the first demonstrated scalable tracker for Head-Mounted Displays (shown at SIGGRAPH '91). This was a team effort; my contributions included designing and simulating the overall software architecture, developing and coding the mathematics that compute head locations given sensor inputs, and calibrating the optical sensors. The HiBall tracker sold by 3rdTech is a descendent of this system.

• Instructor, UNC Chapel Hill (Summer 1992)

  Completely redesigned and taught undergraduate "Computers and Society" course.

• Software Engineer, Apple Computer (Summers of 1986-1988)

  Investigated image compression, wrote AppleTalk file transfer and test programs.

Publications

• My publications list (separate page)

Contract funding

• Pre-launch weapon detection. One DARPA STO seedling (2008)
• CT2WS [Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System]. DARPA STO (2007)
• COVER ME seedling. DARPA IXO (2007)
• UltraVis seedling and Immersive Operations panel. DARPA IXO (2006)
• Pre-launch detection of RPG's. Two DARPA TTO seedlings (2005-6)
• Visualization for Insight into the Overall NAS (VisION). AFRL Rome (2004-5)
• AR Vision System for Ground Controller. SBIR (NASA/Seagull), in two phases (1999-2001)
• Direct Visualization of the Electronic Battlefield. DARPA ATO (1999-2000)
• Geospatial Registration of Information for Dismounted Soldiers. DARPA ETO (1997-1999)
• Human-Computer Symbiotes. DARPA ITO (1997-1999)

Specific experience

• Windows, UNIX, SGI, and Macintosh systems.
• C, C++, Python, Open SceneGraph, Delta3D, Open GL, many commercial VE products.

Professional activities

• Program Chair for IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2002 and 2005
• Program Chair for International Symposium on Augmented Reality 2001
• Area Chair for IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2004 [There were ten area chairs who decided which papers to accept] and ISMAR 2006 and 2007 [One of 12 area chairs].
• Steering Committee member of IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (2002 to present)
• Awards Chair for IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2008
• Instructor in SIGGRAPH 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2004 courses
• Invited attendee of the 9th Annual National Academy of Engineering Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering (Sept. 2003). Attendance was limited to 100 young engineers (50% from industry, 50% from academia) chosen through a competitive selection process. Also invited attendee of the 2005 Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (Nov. 2005)
• IEEE VRAIS (95-98) program committee
• IEEE Virtual Reality conference (1999-2002) program committee
• VRST conference (2004-2005) program committee
• First International Workshop on Mobile Geospatial Augmented Reality scientific committee (2006)
• International Workshop on Augmented Reality (1998-2000) program committee
• Reviewer for SIGGRAPH, IEEE TVCG, IEEE VR, Presence, EGVE, and others
• Invited speaker at Virtual Reality and Software Technologies 2000 (Seoul, South Korea)
• Invited speaker at Workshop on Wearable Computer Systems (Seattle, WA, Aug. '96)
• Invited speaker to the First International Symposium on Mixed Reality (ISMR '99), Yokohama, Japan
• Invited speaker to the 5th Eurographics Workshop on Virtual Environments (with a special focus on AR), Vienna, Austria (June 1999).
• IEEE Senior Member
• ACM Senior Member
• Member ACM SIGGRAPH, LA SIGGRAPH, and IEEE Computer Society
• Former Science Advisory Board member of the USC Integrated Media Systems Center
• Former advisory board member for UC Irvine's Center for Virtual Reality

Issued Patents

• US 6,408,251. Calibrating a Magnetic Compass With an Angular Rate Gyroscope and a Global Positioning Receiver. Ronald Azuma. Issued June 18, 2002.
• US 6,577,976. Real-Time Sensor Autocalibration for a Multi-Sensor Inertial Tracking System. Bruce Hoff, Ronald Azuma. Issued June 10, 2003.
• US 7,002,551. An Optical See-Through Augmented Reality Modified-Scale Display. Ronald Azuma, Ron Sarfaty. Issued Feb. 21, 2006.
• US 7,120,875. Augmented Reality Hybrid Tracking System with Fiducial-Based Heading Correction. Michael Daily, Ronald Azuma, Howard Neely III, Gerald Isdale. Issued Oct. 10, 2006.
• US 7,131,060. System and Method for Automatic Placement of Labels for Interactive Graphics Applications. Ronald Azuma. Issued Oct. 31, 2006.
• US 7,315,241. Enhanced Perception Lighting. Mike Daily, Ron Azuma, Chris Furmanski. Issued Jan. 1, 2008.

Citizenship

• I am a US citizen.