"Modeling from Reality"
Prof. Katsushi Ikeuchi, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Abstract:
This talk presents an overview of our efforts in modeling-from-reality, which automatically creates photo-realistic object models for virtual reality systems from observation of the real objects. This effort consists of three aspects of research: geometric, photometric, and environmental modeling. The geometric modeling creates a complete-consistent surface model from a sequence of partial views of the object by aligning and merging observed data. The photometric modeling creates photo-realistic new appearances of an object from the analysis of an object surface. The environmental modeling seamlessly integrates a virtual object with a real scene by estimating illumination environment in a real scene. I will overview these component algorithms developed in my group over the last five years, and, then, explain a project to preserve Kamakura Big Buddha in the virtual space using these component algorithms.

Speaker Biography:
Dr. Katsushi Ikeuchi is a Professor at the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo.

He received the Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1978.

After working at MIT-AI Lab, ETL, and CMU, he joined the university in 1996. His research interest spans computer vision, robotics, and computer graphics. He has received several awards, including IEEE R&A K-S Fu memorial best transaction paper award for the paper “Toward Automatic Robot Instruction from Perception.” He is selected as a distinguished speaker of IEEE SP society this year. He has been elected to a fellow of IEEE since 1998.