News & Events

1,506 News items, Awards, Events and Talks related to MERL and its staff.


  •  NEWS    IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT Asia) 2012: publication by Daniel N. Nikovski, Hongbo Sun and others
    Date: May 21, 2012
    Where: IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT Asia)
    MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Brief
    • The paper "Two-Level State Estimation Method for Power Systems with SCADA and PMU Measurements" by Sun, H., Wang, Z. and Nikovski, D. was presented at IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT Asia).
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  •  NEWS    AVI 2012: 2 publications by Kent B. Wittenburg and others
    Date: May 21, 2012
    Where: International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI)
    Brief
    • The papers "Visualizing Set-valued Attributes in Parallel with Equal-height Histograms" by Wittenburg, K., Malizia, A., Lupo, L. and Pekhteryev, G. and "Envisioning Grid Vulnerabilities: Multi-dimensional Visualization for Electrical Grid Planning" by Romero, R., Diez, D., Wittenburg, K. and Diaz, P. were presented at the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI).
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  •  NEWS    ICRA 2012: 3 publications by Yuichi Taguchi, Srikumar Ramalingam, Amit K. Agrawal, C. Oncel Tuzel and Ming-Yu Liu
    Date: May 14, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The papers "Voting-based Pose Estimation for Robotic Assembly Using a 3D Sensor" by Choi, C., Taguchi, Y., Tuzel, O., Liu, M.-Y. and Ramalingam, S., "Convex Bricks: A New Primitive for Visual Hull Modeling and Reconstruction" by Chari, V., Agrawal, A., Taguchi, Y. and Ramalingam, S. and "Coverage Optimized Active Learning for k - NN Classifiers" by Joshi, A.J., Porikli, F. and Papanikolopoulos, N. were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
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  •  NEWS    The International Journal of Robotics Research: publication by Yuichi Taguchi, Tim K. Marks, C. Oncel Tuzel, Ming-Yu Liu and others
    Date: May 8, 2012
    Where: The International Journal of Robotics Research
    MERL Contact: Tim K. Marks
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The article "Fast Object Localization and Pose Estimation in Heavy Clutter for Robotic Bin Picking" by Liu, M.-Y., Tuzel, O., Veeraraghavan, A., Taguchi, Y., Marks, T.K. and Chellappa, R. was published in The International Journal of Robotics Research.
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  •  NEWS    PCS 2012: publication by Anthony Vetro, Robert A. Cohen, Huifang Sun and others
    Date: May 7, 2012
    Where: Picture Coding Symposium (PCS)
    MERL Contacts: Anthony Vetro; Huifang Sun
    Research Area: Digital Video
    Brief
    • The paper "Predictive Coding of Intra Prediction Modes for High Efficiency Video Coding" by Xu, X., Cohen, R., Vetro, A. and Sun, H. was presented at the Picture Coding Symposium (PCS).
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  •  NEWS    VTC 2012: publication by Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Philip V. Orlik and others
    Date: May 6, 2012
    Where: IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC)
    MERL Contacts: Philip V. Orlik; Toshiaki Koike-Akino
    Research Area: Communications
    Brief
    • The paper "Improved and Opportunistic Interference Alignment Schemes for Multi-Cell Interference Channels" by Gou, T., Koike-Akino, T. and Orlik, P. was presented at the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC).
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  •  NEWS    Optics Express: publication by Keisuke Kojima, Bingnan Wang, Kieran J. Parsons and others
    Date: April 23, 2012
    Where: Optics Express
    MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; Kieran Parsons
    Research Area: Electronic and Photonic Devices
    Brief
    • The article "Mode-evolution-based Polarization Rotator-splitter Design via Simple Fabrication Process" by Yuan, W., Kojima, K., Wang, B., Koike-Akino, T., Parsons, K., Nishikawa, S. and Yagyu, E. was published in Optics Express.
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  •  TALK    Cooperative Cuts: Coupling Edges via Submodularity
    Date & Time: Thursday, April 12, 2012; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Stefanie Jegelka, UC Berkeley
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Abstract
    • Graph cuts that represent pairwise Markov random fields have been a popular tool in computer vision, but they have some well-known shortcomings that arise from their locality and conditional independence assumptions. We therefore extend graph cuts to "cooperative cuts", where "cooperating" graph edges incur a lower combined cost. This cooperation is modeled by submodular functions on edges. The resulting family of global energy functions includes recent models in computer vision and also new critieria which e.g. significantly improve image segmentation results for finely structured objects and for images with variation in contrast. While "minimum cooperative cut" is NP-hard, the underlying indirect submodularity and the graph structure enable efficient approximations.

      In the second part of the talk, I will switch topics and briefly address Hilbert space embeddings of distributions. With the kernel trick, such embeddings help generalize clustering objectives to consider higher-order moments of distributions instead of merely point locations.
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  •  NEWS    ICCP 2012: publication by Yuichi Taguchi, C. Oncel Tuzel, Amit K. Agrawal and others
    Date: April 1, 2012
    Where: Computational Photography (ICCP), 2012 IEEE International Conference on
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The paper "Variable Focus Video: Reconstructing Depth and Video for Dynamic Scenes" by Shroff, N., Veeraraghavan, A., Taguchi, Y., Tuzel, O., Agrawal, A. and Chellappa, R. was presented at the Computational Photography (ICCP), 2012 IEEE International Conference on.
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  •  NEWS    EUSAR 2012: publication by MERL researchers and others
    Date: April 1, 2012
    Where: European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar (EUSAR)
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The paper "SAR Despeckle Filtering by Sparse Coding on Affinity Nets (SCAN)" by Porikli, F., Sundaresan, R. and Suwa, K. was presented at the European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar (EUSAR).
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  •  NEWS    IWSML 2012: publication by Jonathan Le Roux, John R. Hershey and others
    Date: March 31, 2012
    Where: International Workshop on Statistical Machine Learning for Speech Processing (IWSML)
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • The paper "Latent Dirichlet Reallocation for Term Swapping" by Heaukulani, C., Le Roux, J. and Hershey, J.R. was presented at the International Workshop on Statistical Machine Learning for Speech Processing (IWSML).
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  •  EVENT    ICASSP 2012 - Special Session on Signal-Processing Challenges and Opportunities in Depth Cameras
    Date & Time: Friday, March 30, 2012; 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
    Location: Kyoto, Japan
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • Anthony Vetro co-organized a Special Session of ICASSP 2012 on Signal-Processing Challenges and Opportunities in Depth Cameras. ICASSP 2012 will be held in Kyoto, Japan, in March 2012.
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  •  NEWS    European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) 2012: publication by Koon Hoo Teo, Bingnan Wang and others
    Date: March 26, 2012
    Where: European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP)
    MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; Koon Hoo Teo
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
    Brief
    • The paper "Analysis on Wireless Power Transfer to Moving Devices Based on Array of Resonators" by Wang, B., Ellstein, D. and Teo, K.H. was presented at the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP).
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  •  NEWS    ICASSP 2012: 8 publications by Petros T. Boufounos, Dehong Liu, John R. Hershey, Jonathan Le Roux and Zafer Sahinoglu
    Date: March 25, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
    MERL Contacts: Dehong Liu; Jonathan Le Roux; Petros T. Boufounos
    Brief
    • The papers "Dictionary Learning Based Pan-Sharpening" by Liu, D. and Boufounos, P.T., "Multiple Dictionary Learning for Blocking Artifacts Reduction" by Wang, Y. and Porikli, F., "A Compressive Phase-Locked Loop" by Schnelle, S.R., Slavinsky, J.P., Boufounos, P.T., Davenport, M.A. and Baraniuk, R.G., "Indirect Model-based Speech Enhancement" by Le Roux, J. and Hershey, J.R., "A Clustering Approach to Optimize Online Dictionary Learning" by Rao, N. and Porikli, F., "Parametric Multichannel Adaptive Signal Detection: Exploiting Persymmetric Structure" by Wang, P., Sahinoglu, Z., Pun, M.-O. and Li, H., "Additive Noise Removal by Sparse Reconstruction on Image Affinity Nets" by Sundaresan, R. and Porikli, F. and "Depth Sensing Using Active Coherent Illumination" by Boufounos, P.T. were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP).
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  •  NEWS    Journal of Applied Physics: publication by Koon Hoo Teo, Jinyun Zhang and others
    Date: March 22, 2012
    Where: Journal of Applied Physics
    MERL Contacts: Jinyun Zhang; Koon Hoo Teo
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electronic and Photonic Devices
    Brief
    • The article "Magnetic Superlens-enhanced Inductive Coupling for Wireless Power Transfer" by Huang, D., Urzhumov, Y., Smith, D.R., Teo, K.H. and Zhang, J. was published in Journal of Applied Physics.
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  •  TALK    Control Design with Uncertain Predictions in Autonomous Systems: Theory and Practice
    Date & Time: Friday, March 16, 2012; 10:00 AM
    Speaker: Prof. Francesco Borrelli, UC Berkeley
    MERL Host: Stefano Di Cairano
    Abstract
    • Forecasts will play an increasingly important role in the next generation of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. In nominal conditions, predictions of system dynamics, human behavior and environmental envelope can be used by the control algorithm to improve safety and performance of the resulting system. However, in practice, constraint satisfaction, performance guarantees and real-time computation are challenged by the (1) growing complexity of the engineered system, (2) uncertainty in the human/machine interaction and (3) uncertainty in the environment where the system operates.

      In this talk I will present the theory and tools that we have developed over the past ten years for the systematic design of predictive controllers for uncertain linear and nonlinear systems. I will first provide an overview of our theoretical efforts. Then, I will focus on our recent results in addressing constraint satisfaction and real-time computation in nonlinear systems and large-scale networked systems. Throughout the talk I will use two applications to motivate our research and show the benefits of the proposed techniques: Safe Autonomous Cars and Green Intelligent Buildings.
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  •  NEWS    ASJ 2012: publication by Jonathan Le Roux and John R. Hershey
    Date: March 13, 2012
    Where: Acoustical Society of Japan Spring Meeting (ASJ)
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • The paper "Speech Enhancement by Indirect VTS" by Le Roux, J. and Hershey, J.R. was presented at the Acoustical Society of Japan Spring Meeting (ASJ).
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  •  TALK    Research and Development in JSK Robotics Lab, Univ. of Tokyo
    Date & Time: Thursday, March 8, 2012; 9:30 AM
    Speaker: Prof. Masayuki Inaba, Professor, Director of JSK Robotics Lab<br /> Department of Creative Informatics<br /> Department of Mechano-Informatics<br /> Graduate School of Information Technology and Science<br /> The University of Tokyo
    Abstract
    • This talk introduces a history and ongoing activities of the research and development in JSK Robotics Lab, The University of Tokyo including hand-eye coordination in rope handling, correlation-based tracking vision, vision-based robotics, wireless remote-brained approach, whole-body behaviors on humanoids, tactile deformable devices for robot sensor suit, musculoskeletal spined humanoids, power systems for human speed and torque perfomance, learning and assistive activities on HRP2 (Japanese Humanoid Robot Project Platform) and PR2 (Willow Garages's Personal Robot Platform for Open Source Robot Operating System:ROS), common software architecture in all JSK robots, and their mother environment for inherited research and development in JSK.
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  •  NEWS    IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing: publication by Zafer Sahinoglu and others
    Date: March 8, 2012
    Where: IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
    Research Area: Signal Processing
    Brief
    • The article "Persymmetric Parametric Adaptive Matched Filter for Multichannel Adaptive Signal Detection" by Wang, P., Sahinoglu, Z., Pun, M.-O. and Li, H. was published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
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  •  NEWS    IEEE International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT) 2012: publication by Koon Hoo Teo and Bingnan Wang
    Date: March 5, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT)
    MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; Koon Hoo Teo
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
    Brief
    • The paper "Metamaterials for Wireless Power Transfer" by Wang, B. and Teo, K.H. was presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT).
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  •  NEWS    OFC/NFOEC 2012: 2 publications by Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Chunjie Duan, Keisuke Kojima, Kieran J. Parsons and others
    Date: March 4, 2012
    Where: Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC)
    MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Kieran Parsons
    Brief
    • The papers "Fractionally-Spaced Statistical Equalizer for Fiber Nonlinearity Mitigation in Digital Coherent Optical Systems" by Koike-Akino, T., Parsons, K., Kojima, K., Duan, C., Yoshida, T., Sugihara, T. and Mizuochi, T. and "A Low-Complexity Sliding-Window Turbo Equalizer for Nonlinearity Compensation" by Duan, C., Parsons, K., Koike-Akino, T., Annavajjala, R., Kojima, K., Yoshida, T., Sugihara, T. and Mizouchi, T. were presented at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC).
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  •  NEWS    Journal of Electronic Science and Technology (JEST): publication by Daniel N. Nikovski, Hongbo Sun and others
    Date: March 1, 2012
    Where: Journal of Electronic Science and Technology (JEST)
    MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Brief
    • The article "A Hybrid Decoupled Power Flow Method for Balanced Power Distribution Systems" by Sun, H., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was published in Journal of Electronic Science and Technology (JEST).
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  •  NEWS    IEEE Transactions on Information Theory: publication by Petros T. Boufounos
    Date: February 27, 2012
    Where: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Area: Computational Sensing
    Brief
    • The article "Universal Rate-Efficient Scalar Quantization" by Boufounos, P.T. was published in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
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  •  TALK    Learning Intermediate-Level Representations of Form and Motion from Natural Movies
    Date & Time: Wednesday, February 22, 2012; 11:00 AM
    Speaker: Dr. Charles Cadieu, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Abstract
    • The human visual system processes complex patterns of light into a rich visual representation where the objects and motions of our world are made explicit. This remarkable feat is performed through a hierarchically arranged series of cortical areas. Little is known about the details of the representations in the intermediate visual areas. Therefore, we ask the question: can we predict the detailed structure of the representations we might find in intermediate visual areas?

      In pursuit of this question, I will present a model of intermediate-level visual representation that is based on learning invariances from movies of the natural environment and produces predictions about intermediate visual areas. The model is composed of two stages of processing: an early feature representation layer, and a second layer in which invariances are explicitly represented. Invariances are learned as the result of factoring apart the temporally stable and dynamic components embedded in the early feature representation. The structure contained in these components is made explicit in the activities of second-layer units that capture invariances in both form and motion. When trained on natural movies, the first-layer produces a factorization, or separation, of image content into a temporally persistent part representing local edge structure and a dynamic part representing local motion structure. The second-layer units are split into two populations according to the factorization in the first-layer. The form-selective units receive their input from the temporally persistent part (local edge structure) and after training result in a diverse set of higher-order shape features consisting of extended contours, multi-scale edges, textures, and texture boundaries. The motion-selective units receive their input from the dynamic part (local motion structure) and after training result in a representation of image translation over different spatial scales and directions, in addition to more complex deformations. These representations provide a rich description of dynamic natural images, provide testable hypotheses regarding intermediate-level representation in visual cortex, and may be useful representations for artificial visual systems.
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  •  TALK    User-guided 2D-to-3D Conversion
    Date & Time: Tuesday, February 21, 2012; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dimitri Androutsos, Richard Rzeszutek, Ryerson University
    MERL Host: Anthony Vetro
    Abstract
    • The problem of converting monoscopic footage into stereoscopic or multi-view content is inherently difficult and ill-posed. On the surface, this does not appear to be the case as the problem may be summed up as, "Given single-view image or video, create one or more views as if they were taken from a different camera view." However, capturing a three-dimensional scene as a two-dimensional image is a lossy process and any information regarding the distance of objects to the camera is lost. Methods exist for extracting depth information from a monoscopic view and it is possible to obtain metrically-correct depth estimates under certain conditions. But since conversion is primarily used as a post-processing stage in film production, the user requires a degree of control over the results. This, in turn, makes it ill-posed as there is no way to know ahead of time what the user wants from the conversion. In this talk we will present the work being done at Ryerson University on user-guided 2D-to-3D conversion. In particular, we will focus on how existing image segmentation techniques may be combined to produce reasonable depth maps for conversion while still providing complete control to the user. We will also discuss how our research can be applied to both images and video without any significant alterations to our methods.
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