-   Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 2:15 PM
Speaker: Dr. Herb Gish, BBN - Raytheon
MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
Research Area: Speech & Audio
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 -   Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 11:00 AM
Speaker: Prof. Dan Ellis, Columbia University
MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
Research Area: Speech & Audio
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 -   Date: October 22, 2012
Where: Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES)
Research Area: Speech & Audio
  Brief   - The paper "Evaluation of Two Types of In-Vehicle Music Retrieval and Navigation Systems" by Zhang, J.,  Borowsky, A.,  Schmidt-Nielsen, B.,  Harsham, B.,  Weinberg, G.,  Romoser, M.R.E. and  Fisher, D.L. was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES).
 
  -  
 -   Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - Friday, October 19, 2012
Location: Portsmouth, NH
MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro  Brief   - MERL is a sponsor for the Fourth International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, Automotive UI 2012.
 
  -  
 -   Date: October 17, 2012
Where: ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference
Research Area: Data Analytics
  Brief   - The paper "Decentralized Finite-Time Stabilizing Feedback Network Control" by Zhao, Y. was presented at the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference.
 
  -  
 -   Date: October 16, 2012
Where: Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
  Brief   - The paper "Markov Decision Processes for Train Run Curve Optimization" by Nikovski, D.,  Lidicky, B.,  Zhang, W.,  Kataoka, K. and  Yoshimoto, K. was presented at Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS).
 
  -  
 -   Date: October 14, 2012
Where: IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
  Brief   - The paper "Hybrid Three-Phase Load Flow Method for Ungrounded Distribution Systems" by Sun, H.,  Nikovski, D.,  Ohno, T.,  Takano, T. and  Kojima, Y. was presented at IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe).
 
  -  
 -   Date: October 13, 2012
Where: IEEE International Conference on 3D Imaging, Modeling, Processing, Visualization and Transmission (3DIMPVT)
Research Area: Machine Learning
  Brief   - The paper "Classification and Pose Estimation of Vehicles in Videos by 3D Modeling within Discrete-Continuous Optimization" by Hodlmoser, M.,  Micusik, B.,  Liu, M.-Y.,  Pollefeys, M. and  Kaampel, M. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on 3D Imaging, Modeling, Processing, Visualization and Transmission (3DIMPVT).
 
  -  
 -   Date & Time: Thursday, October 11, 2012; 2:30 PM
Speaker: Dr. Gautham J. Mysore, Adobe
Research Area: Speech & Audio
  Abstract   - Non-negative spectrogram factorization techniques have become quite popular in the last decade as they are effective in modeling the spectral structure of audio. They have been extensively used for applications such as source separation and denoising. These techniques however fail to account for non-stationarity and temporal dynamics, which are two important properties of audio. In this talk, I will introduce the non-negative hidden Markov model (N-HMM) and the non-negative factorial hidden Markov model (N-FHMM) to model single sound sources and sound mixtures respectively. They jointly model the spectral structure and temporal dynamics of sound sources, while accounting for non-stationarity. I will also discuss the application of these models to various applications such as source separation, denoising, and content based audio processing, showing why they yield improved performance when compared to non-negative spectrogram factorization techniques.
 
  -  
 -   Date & Time: Thursday, October 11, 2012; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Kresimir Matkovic, VRVis Research Center, Vienna  Abstract   - Increasing complexity and a large number of control parameters make the design and understanding of modern engineering systems impossible without simulation today.  Advances in simulation technology and ability to run multiple simulations with different sets of parameters poses new challenges for analysis techniques. In this talk we will present our experiences in exploration and analysis of simulation ensembles realized in several projects with experts from automotive, meteorology, and medical domains.  We tightly integrate simulation, numerical optimization, and interactive visual analysis in a unified framework. Our new data model supports families of curves and families of surfaces.  Accompanying interactive visual analysis techniques offer new possibilities for data exploration and analysis.  It is possible to start with a simple analysis, to continue with identifying hidden features, and finally to explore very complex dependencies using advanced interaction and on-the-fly data derivation and aggregation. All proposed techniques will be illustrated using a coordinated multiple views system and real-life data from various projects with scientists and engineers, including the optimization of an automotive rail injection system.
 
  -  
 -   Date: October 7, 2012
Where: European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)
Research Area: Computer Vision
  Brief   - The papers "Motion-Aware Structured Light Using Spatio-Temporal Decodable Patterns" by Taguchi, Y.,  Agrawal, A. and  Tuzel, O., "Rainbow Flash Camera: Depth Edge Extraction Using Complementary Colors" by Taguchi, Y. and "Monocular Visual Odometry and Dense 3D Reconstruction for On-Road Vehicles" by Zhu, M.,  Ramalingam, S.,  Taguchi, Y. and  Garaas, T. were presented at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV).
 
  -  
 -   Date: October 1, 2012
Where: Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing
MERL Contacts: Arvind Raghunathan; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Optimization
  Brief   - The paper "Global Optimization of Optimal Power Flow Using a Branch & Bound Algorithm" by Gopalakrishnan, A.,  Raghunathan, A.U.,  Nikovski, D. and  Biegler, L.T. was presented at the Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.
 
  -  
 -   Date: Sunday, September 30, 2012 - Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Location: Orlando, FL
MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro  Brief   - Anthony Vetro is the Industrial Co-chair of ICIP 2012, the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, to be held in Orlando, Florida, in September 2012.
 
  -  
 -   Date: September 30, 2012
Where: IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)
MERL Contacts: Anthony Vetro; Huifang Sun  Brief   - The papers "An Attribute-Based Framework for Privacy Preserving Image Querying" by Rane, S. and  Sun, W., "Emerging Cryptographic Challenges in Image and Video Processing" by Puech, W.,  Erkin, Z.,  Barni, M.,  Rane, S. and  Lagendijk, R.L., "A Local Depth Image Enhancement Scheme for View Synthesis" by Wang, Y.,  Tian, D. and  Vetro, A. and "On Modeling the Rendering Error in 3D Video" by Cheung, N.-M.,  Tian, D.,  Vetro, A. and  Sun, H. were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP).
 
  -  
 -   Date: September 27, 2012
Where: International Journal of Computer Vision
Research Area: Computer Vision
  Brief   - The article "A Theory of Minimal 3D Point to 3D Plane Registration and Its Generalization" by Ramalingam, S. and  Taguchi, Y. was published in International Journal of Computer Vision.
 
  -  
 -   Date: September 17, 2012
Where: IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP)
MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
Research Areas: Digital Video, Computational Sensing
  Brief   - The paper "Quantized Embeddings of Scale-Invariant Image Features for Mobile Augmented Reality" by Li, M.,  Rane, S. and  Boufounos, P. was presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP).
 
  -  
 -   Date: September 16, 2012
Where: European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Kieran Parsons
Research Area: Electronic and Photonic Devices
  Brief   - The paper "An MMI-based Polarization Splitter Using Patterned Metal and Tilted Joint" by Yuan, W.,  Kojima, K.,  Wang, B.,  Koike-Akino, T.,  Parsons, K.,  Nishikawa, S. and  Yagyu, E. was presented at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC).
 
  -  
 -   Date & Time: Thursday, September 6, 2012; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Dr. Daisuke Saito, The University of Tokyo
Research Area: Speech & Audio
  Abstract   - In voice conversion studies, realization of conversion from/to an arbitrary speaker's voice is one of the important objectives. For this purpose, eigenvoice conversion (EVC) based on an eigenvoice Gaussian mixture model (EV-GMM) was proposed. In the EVC, similarly to speaker recognition approaches, a speaker space is constructed based on GMM supervectors which are high-dimensional vectors derived by concatenating the mean vectors of each of the speaker GMMs. In the speaker space, each speaker is represented by a small number of weight parameters of eigen-supervectors. In this talk, we revisit construction of the speaker space by introducing the tensor analysis of training data set. In our approach, each speaker is represented as a matrix of which the row and the column respectively correspond to the Gaussian component and the dimension of the mean vector, and the speaker space is derived by the tensor analysis of the set of the matrices. Our approach can solve an inherent problem of supervector representation, and it improves the performance of voice conversion. Experimental results of one-to-many voice conversion demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
 
  -  
 -   Date: September 3, 2012
Where: IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC)
MERL Contact: Philip V. Orlik
Research Area: Communications
  Brief   - The paper "Location Based Data Delivery Schedulers for Vehicle Telematics Applications" by Xu, K.,  Orlik, P.,  Nagai, Y. and  Saito, M. was presented at the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC).
 
  -  
 -   Date: September 1, 2012
Where: Journal of Communications
MERL Contact: Jinyun Zhang
Research Area: Communications
  Brief   - The article "Combating Interference: MU-MIMO, CoMP, and HetNet" by Liu, L.,  Zhang, J.,  Yi, Y.,  Li, H. and  Zhang, J. was published in Journal of Communications.
 
  -  
 -   Date: September 1, 2012
Awarded to: Mu Li, Shantanu Rane and Petros Boufounos
Awarded for: "Quantized Embeddings of Scale-Invariant Image Features for Mobile Augmented Reality"
Awarded by: IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP)
MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
Research Areas: Digital Video, Computational Sensing
 -  
 -   Date: August 24, 2012
Where: EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing  Brief   - The article "An Explicit Construction of Fast Cocyclic Jacket Transform on the Finite Field with Any Size" by Guo, Y.,  Lee, M.H. and  Kim, K.J. was published in EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing.
 
  -  
 -   Date: August 23, 2012
Where: IFAC Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Conference (NMPC)
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Area: Control
  Brief   - The paper "An Industry Perspective on MPC in Large Volumes Applications: Potential Benefits and Open Challenges" by Di Cairano, S. was presented at the IFAC Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Conference (NMPC).
 
  -  
 -   Date: August 19, 2012
Where: International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM)
MERL Contacts: Jinyun Zhang; Philip V. Orlik; Jianlin Guo
Research Area: Communications
  Brief   - The paper "Loop-Free Routing in Low-Power and Lossy Networks" by Guo, J.,  Han, C.,  Orlik, P.,  Zhang, J. and  Ishibashi, K. was presented at the International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM).
 
  -  
 -   Date & Time: Friday, August 17, 2012; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Prof. Hiroshi Kawasaki, Kagoshima University
Research Area: Computer Vision
  Abstract   - In this talk, I will introduce an overview of my research projects on 3D shape acquisition of moving object. The talk mainly focuses on two parts, the first one is about our 3D shape acquisition technique using projector and camera system and the second is entire shape acquisition using multi-view pro-cam system. I also briefly cover the following topics:
 -- Theory of shape from coplanarity technique
 -- Texture recovery method on pro-cam system
 -- Future plan on medical application of our scanner
Those researches are jointly researched by Prof. Katushi Ikeuchi (Univ. of Tokyo), Prof. Ryo Furukawa (Hiroshima city Univ) and Prof.  Ryusuke Sagawa (AIST). 
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