Computer vision is a sub-field of artificial intelligence that explores automatic techniques for analyzing images and videos. In this session we will demonstrate state of the art techniques in the computer vision problem of ”activity recognition.” The grand goal of the field of human activity recognition is to build systems that can find human figures in either still images or video sequences, and determine what action they are performing. Such systems can be applied to develop more natural interfaces to computers, for example using gestures, in addition to being used for surveillance, security, and graphics applications.

In this segment we demonstrate some of the work we have done at the SFU Vision and Media Lab on this problem:

Automatically detecting people in images and videos
Motion-based action recognition
Synthesizing novel videos

For more information about this work, please see my personal website, or the SFU Vision and Media Lab website.

This work was done in conjunction with other members of the SFU Vision and Media Lab, and our collaborators: Mark Drew, Ze-Nian Li, Kris Rothley, Alireza Fathi, Hao Jiang, Christopher Johnson, Shelley Marshall, Maryam Moslemi, Andy Rova, Payam Sabzmeydani. Muntaseer Salahuddin, Zinovi Tauber, Yang Wang, Jens Wawerla, Alyosha Efros, Alex Berg, and Jitendra Malik

RELATED WEBSITE LINKS
My personal website:
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~mori/
SFU Vision and Media Lab website:
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/research/groups/VML/index.html

RAID is fantastic, but it’s complicated, and not for the every day user

Drobo is an actual robot; keeps all your data safe by distributing it between the drives

Takes the idea of RAID and makes it super simple – the user doesn’t have to know anything

The guys behind Drobo understand robotics and understand the jobs that Sys Admins do. They’ve incorporated psycho cybernetics so that Drobo does the job of a Sys admin in a home enviornment

Explain lights and meanings (as well as warnings when 80% full)
Pull out a drive – all my data is safe

Put it back in, and the robot goes to work getting everything placed back on the drive

RELATED WEBSITE LINKS
http://www.cdw.ca/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1277925

Products Shown

Drobo: 4 Drive Capacity (any size drives) $499
Drobo DRO4DU10 4-bay, USB2.0 Robotic Storage Array

Twitter - multiplatform messaging system

founded by Evan Williams of Blogger and Odeo
-microblogging - super short, one thought, limited to one hundred forty characters

pros
-mobile ready - good for mobile. can use via sms. also works via instant messenger and skype
-everything gets a publicly available permalink - ie google can index it - and twitter has high page rank

cons
-one forty characters can be limiting tough to express complex thoughts
-good for sharing locations and ideas. not as good for sharing structered data like links and file and stuff
-only options are direct messages or public messages
-tough to find friends
-some spammers have already joined
-twitter goes down a lot

Pownce - multipurpose sharing system

launched by Kevin Rose, Daniel Burka, and Leah Culver

-similar to twitter but in addition to short blocks of text, you can also use it to send links, events, and files to friends

pros
-groups - sort your friends or contacts - can send direct, to a group, to all friends, to public
-threaded comments and responses to your post
-i’ve found lots of great music shared from friends on pownce
-nicer interface than twitter
-spam reporting built in

cons
-easy to ‘drown in the flow’
-lots of updates, haven’t found a great way to keep up with it all
-tough to find friends

Links:

http://pownce.com
http://twitter.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce

http://www.teradome.com/posts/pownce-vs-twitter
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/01/kevin-v-evan/