CCNY Lecture Series

Computer Vision, Robotics and Human-Computer Interaction



Title: Human Computer Intelligent Interaction

Thomas. S. Huang
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Date: Friday, April 15, 2005
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room: Steinman Hall, Room T-512

ABSTRACT

One of the major research themes at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is Human Computer Intelligent Interaction (HCII).  Under this theme a number of research projects are being carried out in the area of modeling, analysis, and synthesis (visualization) of human motion. Another research area is image and video databases,  especially content-based indexing, retrieval, filtering and summarization.  In this talk, we shall concentrate on the first of these two areas. In particular we shall describe our research project on visual hand tracking and gesture recognition. We use a 3D model-based approach for hand/fingers motion tracking. Appearance-based hand gesture recognition is also being explored. Applications include:  Using hand gesture to control display, and the manipulation of visual objects.

In addition to a description of the  above project, we shall also give a brief overview of the general research acitivities and facilities at the Beckman Institute.  The uniqueness of the Beckman Institute lies in its Infrastructure and its Culture, which are particularly conducive to interdisciplinary research.

THOMAS S. HUANG  Biography

 Thomas S. Huang received his B.S. Degree in Electrical Engineering  from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, China; and his M.S.  and Sc.D. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts  Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was on the  Faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT from 1963  to 1973; and on the Faculty of the School of Electrical Engineering  and Director of its Laboratory for Information and Signal Processing  at Purdue University from 1973 to 1980. In 1980, he joined the  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is now William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Research Professor at the  Coordinated Science Laboratory, and Head of the Image Formation and Processing Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and Co-Chair of the Institute's major research theme Human Computer Intelligent Interaction.

 During his sabbatical leaves: Dr. Huang has worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and the Rheinishes Landes Museum in Bonn, West Germany, and held visiting Professor positions at the Swiss Institutes of Technology in Zurich and Lausanne, University of Hannover in West Germany, INRS-Telecommunications of  the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada and University of  Tokyo, Japan.  He has served as a consultant to numerous industrial firms and government agencies both in the U.S. and abroad.

 Dr. Huang's professional interests lie in the broad area of information technology, especially the transmission and processing of multidimensional  signals. He has published 14 books, and over 500 papers in Network Theory, Digital Filtering, Image Processing, and Computer Vision. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering;  a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academies of Engineering and Sciences; and a Fellow of the International Association of Pattern Recognition, IEEE, and the Optical Society of American; and has received a Guggenheim  Fellowship , an A.V. Humboldt Foundation Senior U.S. Scientist Award, and a Fellowship from the Japan Association for the Promotion of  Science . He received the IEEE Signal Processing Society's Technical Achievement Award in 1987, and the Society Award in 1991.   He was awarded the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000. Also in 2000, he received the Honda Lifetime Achievement Award for "contributions to motion analysis".  In 2001, he received the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Medal. In 2002, he received the King-Sun Fu Prize, International Association of Pattern Recognition; and the Pan Wen-Yuan Outstanding Research Award. He is a Founding Editor of the International Journal Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing; and  Editor of the Springer Series in Information Sciences, published by Springer  Verlag.


The lecture series is supported by CCNY School of Engineering, and a planning grant from NSF Minority Institutional Infrastructure program.