[Graphics-net] Re: [Fwd: 4 Vacancies PhD students Game & Media Technology]

[Ioannis Z. Emiris]

Kalimera,

Sas stelnw prokirijeis 8esewn gia PhD sthn Outrexth (ollandia), einai apo ta
kalutera eurwpaika groups se efarmosmenh gewmetria.

Yiannis


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From: Remco Veltkamp <Remco.Veltkamp at cs.uu.nl>
To: info2all at aim-at-shape.net
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:39:15 +0100
Subject: 4 Vacancies PhD students Game & Media Technology

                 4 Vacancies PhD students Game & Media Technology

The department of Information and Computing Sciences of Utrecht University
is looking for 4 PhD-students for the project "GATE" (Game Research for
Training
and Entertainment).

At the Department of Information and Computing Sciences of Utrecht
University
there are four openings for PhD students for 4 years within the Game
Research
for Training and Entertainment (GATE) project.

Position 1: Automatic world generation based on real data
Building virtual worlds from real data such as panorama images is still a
very
labor intensive work, error prone, slow, and expensive. Therefore, the
results
is often small-scale, of low resolution, and not accurate. Our objectives
are to
research new algorithms to build virtual worlds automatically and from
multiple
data sources in order to alleviate these problems. From the various data
sources
we will identify salient points and landmark objects. Then we will find a
correspondence between them, derive the transformation to put the data in a
common coordinate frame, merge the data, and construct the final virtual
world.
The envisioned results are methods that build virtual worlds fast and
accurately. In this way, the quality of training people, mission planning,
contingency planning, and decision making can be improved.
This research is performed in collaboration with TNO Defence, Security and
Safety.

Position 2: Modeling planning behavior
Computer games are inhabited by virtual characters. Such characters move
around
in the virtual world to perform certain actions. So an important task of
virtual
characters is to plan their paths to a required destination. Such a path
must be
natural. A natural path can be defined as a path that would be taken in the
real
world, or that is at least convincing to a viewer. A natural path will
depend on
the environment, the task of the character, its knowledge of the world, the
presence and motion of other entities, and possibly its emotional state. The
goal of this project is to develop path planning algorithms that lead to
natural
paths, while they put only a small load on the processor. To this end we
will
employ our motion capture system to record natural motion and combine this
with
algorithmic planning techniques.

Position 3: Navigation and manipulation
One of the research objectives within GATE addresses navigation and
manipulation
tasks within virtual environments. Usually the interface with the virtual
environment is established by controlling an avatar represented by an
animated
virtual character. It is not an easy task to find an animation model that is
capable of handling both manipulation and navigation tasks and that can
dynamically switch between them. An example of such behaviour is to pick up
an
object from a table while waking past it, or walking toward a door and
opening
it, without an unnatural transition between walking (navigation) and
manipulating the object. The goal of the intended research is to address
such
types of problems, by using motion capture and motion synthesis techniques,
ultimately resulting in natural animation behaviour in real-time.

Position 4: Detecting, interpreting and affecting user behavior
In many applications, computer vision based analysis motion, gestures, and
facial expressions of groups of people is desired. Current techniques are
still
limited to a single person, and to fixed position in from of a camera. The
ability to robustly track persons in room opens many new applications. The
objectives of this project are to develop fast and robust algorithms that
can
detect, track, and model accurately and robustly individual persons in the
real
3D world. We also want to recognize gestures and motion of individuals, to
identify the interaction between persons such as looking or gesturing at
each
other, and to design interaction between humans and computer systems. For
all
these techniques we will first choose application domains, in order to
identify
the needs, and to evaluate the methods against the requirements.
This research is performed in collaboration with Technical University Delft.

GATE
The GATE (Game Research for Training and Entertainment) project aims to set
up the leading edge research center in Europe (and world-wide) that advances
the
state-of-the-art in gaming and simulation with strong ties to production
companies and users of gaming and simulation. The goal of the center is to
create technology for highly effective entertainment, learning and training
experiences.

We ask
MSc degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or any other relevant
discipline.
Knowledge and experience in programming (C++), algorithms and data
structures,
pattern recognition, computer vision.

More information about salary and how to apply can be found at
http://www.cs.uu.nl/vacatures/en/62704.html
Closing date: February 28, 2007

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Remco.Veltkamp at cs.uu.nl, http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/remcov
Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University
Padualaan 14, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands
phone: +31-30-2534091, fax: +31-30-2513791
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