Ross G
- Research Program Mentor
PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Expertise
Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Autonomous Vehicles, Human-Robot (and Human-Computer) Interaction, Music, Intelligent Systems, Image Processing
Project ideas
Computer Recognition of Directed Gestures
After spending a year in virtual classrooms, what are some of the small, nonverbal interactions you miss from in-person conversations? Eye contact & directed gestures are two modalities of communication we usually take for granted, but over Zoom, it can be very hard to tell to whom someone is waving or pointing. What if a computer vision system could help in determining & communicating this information? In this project, you can research methods in computer vision and machine learning that will allow for gesture recognition. Beginning from a standard desktop workstation, you can further experiment with your methods, extending to other poses and contexts.
Machine Learning for Autonomous Vehicles
There are many, many tasks involved in the realm of self-driving vehicles, which involve analysis of activities happening inside the vehicle, outside the vehicle, and even from a bird's-eye-view. Some projects you may want to explore: Driver activity analysis using inside-facing cameras, exploring a driver's eyes, attention, posture, hand activity, etc. Detecting pedestrians and other vehicles in the outside scene using machine learning. Path planning and trajectory prediction for intelligent agents. If your idea involves an intelligent vehicle, I'd love to connect and help guide your research!
Enhanced Transfer Learning for Convolutional Neural Networks
Transfer learning is a popular mechanism to improve performance and reduce training time of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models. However, when a pretrained model well-suited for a task operates on a different scale than the original training images, it may be beneficial to change the size of the convolutional kernel. But, this requires retraining the network, making transfer learning impossible. In this project, you will develop a method for initializing kernels that maintain the effects of learned weights while having flexibility to accommodate new kernel sizes in convolutional layers.
Guiding Young Musicians with Machine Learning
Many young musicians need a little help from their teacher in managing hand placement, tone quality, rhythmic or pitch correction, or other actions on their instrument. Using your camera and/or microphone, we can explore ways to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify mistakes and help suggest corrections. This would be a great area of exploration for students who have experience playing a musical instrument!
Win a Computer Vision or Machine Learning Challenge!
The premier conferences in the computer vision and machine learning fields often put out seasonal challenges, allowing researchers to develop a rapid solution (usually in just a few months) to an exciting problem. For advanced students who have time to devote towards one of these competitions, I would be excited to serve as your coach and mentor towards these projects. Please visit the CVPR website for an idea of past competitions!
Facial Emotions to Affect Vehicle Control
Some riders may be nervous to be in an autonomous vehicle, and it's important to make smooth, safe rides for these passengers. What if their car could understand how they might be feeling, and drive slower to accommodate their cautionary feelings?