Research seminar "Human Motion Analysis for Robotics, Expressive Environments and Automated Rehabilitation"

Abstract:

Human motion measurement and analysis is a challenging problem, due to issues such as sensor and measurement system limitations, high dimensionality, and spatial and temporal variability. Automation of motion measurement and analysis would enable many applications, including imitation learning for robotics, new input and interaction mechanisms for interactive environments, and automated rehabilitation monitoring and assessment. In this talk we will describe recent work in the Adaptive Systems Laboratory at the University of Waterloo developing techniques for fully automated human motion measurement and analysis. We will overview techniques for motion measurement from both stationary and ambulatory sensors. Approaches for designing the appropriate motion representation and abstraction will be discussed. Next, an approach for on-line, incremental learning of whole body motion primitives and primitive sequencing from observation of human motion will be developed. The application of the developed techniques to humanoid robot learning, expressive environments and sports training and rehabilitation will be described. The talk will conclude with an overview of preliminary experimental results and a discussion of future research directions.

Bio:

Dana Kulić received the combined B. A. Sc. and M. Eng. degree in electro-mechanical engineering, and the Ph. D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1998 and 2005, respectively. From 2002 to 2006, Dr. Kulić worked with Dr. Elizabeth Croft as a Ph. D. student and a post-doctoral researcher at the CARIS Lab at the University of British Columbia, developing human-robot interaction strategies to quantify and maximize safety during interaction. From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Kulić was a JSPS Post-doctoral Fellow and a Project Assistant Professor at the Nakamura-Yamane Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, Japan, working on algorithms for incremental learning of human motion patterns for humanoid robots. Dr. Kulić is currently an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research interests include human motion analysis, robot learning, humanoid robots, human-robot interaction and mechatronics.