Stefano Soatto, UCLA

Professor Soatto received his Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology in 1996. He is currently a professor in the department of computer science at UCLA. His general research interests are in Computer Vision and Nonlinear Estimation and Control Theory. In particular, he is interested in ways for computers to use sensory information (e.g. vision, sound, touch) to interact with humans and the environment. His many research projects include structure from motion, vision-based control, understanding deforming motion, modeling dynamic textures, and face recognition. Dr. Soatto is the recipient of the David Marr Prize for work on Euclidean reconstruction and reprojection up to subgroups.

Kurt Konolige, Willow Garage

Dr. Konolige received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1984; his thesis, "A Deduction Model of Belief and its Logics," develops a model of belief based on the resource-bounded inferential capabilities of agents. His research interests are broadly based on issues of commonsense reasoning, including introspective reasoning, defeasible reasoning, and reasoning about cognitive state, especially in the context of multiagent systems. Konolige co-developed the Pioneer and AmigoBot robot line and the Saphira robot control architecture.

More recently, he has conducted research in fuzzy control for reactive systems; in constraint-based planning and inference systems; in reasoning about perceptual information; and in realtime robotics and vision systems. Before joining Willow Garage he was a Senior Computer Scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Center of SRI International.

Matthew Mason, CMU

Matt is the director of the Robotics Institute at CMU.

Matt's research explores how humans understand the way the world works. This understanding enables them to manipulate the world very effectively. Robots lack that understanding. Matt's research goal is to discover the nature of that understanding. Part of his time goes toward exploring the fundamental mechanics of manipulation: how one's actions affect the world. Part of it goes toward automatic planning: given some goals, what actions would be appropriate.

Tamim Asfour, KIT

He is working on research topics of humanoid robotics including perception, action and cognition components. His group focuses on the following areas:

1. Humanoid Robotics: Design, control and system integration
2. Humanoid Grasping and Manipualtion
3. Imitation Learning
4. Visuo-haptic exploration
5. Robot Vision and Active Vision
6. Modeling and Analysis of the Human Body and Human Motion
7. Mechatronics and Control Systems

Satoshi Kagami, AIST

Satoshi received his Ph.D from the University of Tokyo. He works on various research topics, including: Computational Geometry, Design and Implementation of Robot System Software, 3D Robot Vision, Microphone Array, Tactile Sensor, Planning and Control, Sensing-Action Coupling Robots, and Motion-Mechanical Digital Human Modeling.

Katherine Kuchenbecker, Penn

Katherine researches the design, control, and performance of robotic systems that enable a user to touch virtual objects and distant environments as though they were real and within reach. These haptic interfaces combine electromechanical sensors and actuators with high-speed computer control to fool the human sense of touch. By studying applications such as robot-assisted surgery, smart prosthetics, educational computer games, and driver assistance, Katherine seeks to improve our understanding of haptic feedback and uncover new opportunities for its use in interactions between humans, computers, and machines.

Xiaofeng Ren, Intel

Xiaofeng is interested in all aspects of computer vision. He has worked on many vision problems including local descriptors, boundary detection, image segmentation, figure-ground grouping, object and pose recognition, human body detection and pose estimation, object segmentation and tracking, optical flow, and 3D reconstruction. More recently, he has been working on vision-related problems in robotics and human-computer interaction.