While not required to teach, I enjoy it and try and do so when I can. In the Fall of 2003 I created a First Year Seminar on 3D Computer Modeling and Animation. Since then I have had the priviledge of teaching the course on several occasions. Check out the Animation Festival (final project) results from Spring 2007, Spring 2005, and Fall 2003. (In 2003 I also created my own animation for the course.) I have also taught our Java-based Introduction to Programming course in the past. Here are a few of the coolest semester projects from the Spring 2003 offering. In the spring of 2001 I taught our Team Software Engineering Lab. In spring 1997 and 1998 spring I taught Exploring Virtual Worlds with Henry Fuchs. Check out our virtual amusement park and Televator (TM) project from 1997.
Active Projects
I am working on a "smart grid" project with some collaborators at the Pacific Northwest National Laborarory. The overall goal of the project is to develop advanced stochastic estimation methods for the national power grid, which is both very non-linear and has a very large state space. With Gary Bishop at UNC I am working on optimal placement of sensors over the grid.
I am leading (with Henry Fuchs) an effort to develop dynamic physical avatars for real and virtual people. We call one realization of this Animatronic Shader Lamps Avatars. The Chronical of Higher Education recently ran an online aritcle on the work. New Scientist also has an article on the work.
I am leading (with Henry Fuchs) the UNC portion of an ONR-sponsored project called Behavior Analysis and Synthesis for Intelligent Training (BASE-IT), which includes collaborators from the MOVES Institute of the Naval Postgraduate School and the Sarnoff Corporation.
One of my fundamental research areas is wide-area tracking for Virtual Environments. A nice article (500 KB PDF) fom the April 2000 issue of Computer Graphics World provides a good introduction to our HiBall tracking system. These days I am primarily focusing on algorithms and methods for both design and use of tracking systems, and on optimal sensor placement.
In the late 1990s I began working on what we call tele-immersion, and a broad effort aimed at what we call the Office of the Future (OOTF). See some related news articles. These projects largely began as collaborative efforts, both within the National Science Foundation's Graphics and Visualization Science and Technology Center (STC) and the National Tele-Immersion Initiative (1997-2000). Although we still refer to our group as the "OOTF project," our scope has broadened to encompass many related sub-projects in projector-based graphics, computer vision, tracking, etc.
But why wait for the Office of the Future? Check out our related Office of "Real Soon Now" efforts. My current office however does not use projectors. Instead I have three 47" Westinghouse flat panel displays.
I maintain a Kalman filter web site. If you have anything to add, please let me know.
Past Projects
With collaborators at Brown University I worked on "Electronic Books for the Tele-immersion Age." The idea is to train trauma surgeons using life-sized, high-fidelity, three-dimensional, dynamic, and annotated graphical reconstructions of surgical procedures. Check out our 3D knot reconstructions,
I also worked in a related area we call 3D Telepresence for Medical Consultation. The project goal is to develop and test 3D telepresence technologies that are permanent, portable and handheld in remote medical consultations involving an advising healthcare provider and a distant advisee.
Current advisees (alphabetical)
