Ruzena Bajcsy... Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award winner

This was one of the best sessions I have attended at the Grace Hopper Conference this year... to hear this technical lady of astounding impact talk about Computer Vision, a field that I have always had interest in.. :)

With a list of innumerable qualifications and awards having become quite synonymous with her now, Ruzena is a professor in the University of California, Berkeley. She has made substantial impact in today's world, by combining the various research areas together to make contributions to technology. For about an hour in today's session, the time that she spoke, She completely left me amazed about all the advances that one can make using Computer Vision...

Starting with a description about the requirements of Tele-immersive environment setup, Ruzena enlightened us about how the clusters of cameras have to be positioned at different angles, to be able to grab a 3D vision of the object under consideration. Not only do the collaborations have to be same, but also the internal and external parameters for all the objects participating in the environment. It's more of a joint 3D world that she and with her, others in this field work on. They way scientists in universities in different parts of the world, collaborate with each other, collect data, analyze data and work on a 3D reconstruction of images without even being physically acquainted with each others physical environment.

On of the main areas of concern is the Real time usage of such systems, which is more concerned about understanding human dynamics and based on interaction with the virtual environment. Another one is about the representation of data in a way such that it not only requires less bandwidth to be transferred but can also speed up reconstruction. All these interesting tasks are intriguing, but great to learn. As I heard Ruzena speak, there was definitely a thought in my mind about what serves as the source of motivation for her ans so many other technical women here at the conference as well... And here's the answer, it's the vigour to face and stand against the scientific challenges and more importantly, the applications that the usage of all such technology serves to the world around.

I witness seeing some of the nest technical (and artistic :)) work at her session today, displaying the efficient usage of Computer Vision to accomplish innumerable tasks. Based in the idea of interacting and communicating in a virtual state, as if we were in the same physical state. The example that popped up right there in my head was that of Second Life... no wonder individuals can actually interact and have meetings using second life as if all of them are sitting on the same table, irrespective of whatever part of the world you reside in. A few such examples I saw were about teaching different types of exercises and dances or any other physical activities to individuals specially the ones for which trainers are not usually available, recognition of human activities, using artifacts etc. A nice one was dancing with your own self.. :P.

After such an intriguing talk, Ruzena ended by allowing others to think about some language that we could have to code or define physical movements of humans just like the way we speak or even music for that matter, which would make all such tasks a piece of cake irrespective of whatever place you come from..:)

I loved writing this one... Please leave your comments if you liked it or any views about it.. :)