UC Merced Computer Graphics Lab

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Media Coverage

"Tech is starting to find its way into physical therapy..."

ARO Grant Awarded

Our lab has been awarded a new research grant from the Army Research Office to work on the project "Algorithms for Visualization and Simulation of Optimal Navigation".

Two CITRIS Grants Awarded

"Robots that Capture Emotion", with Anca Dragan (UCB, PI) and Lisa Wymore (UCB).

"Bodie Digital Community - Connect with your Past", with Nicola Lercari (UCM, PI) and Arnav Jahla (UCSC).

Media Coverage

Read below about our recent collaboration with Disney Research:

"Virtual game characters can leap, roll and climb so realistically that simply watching them could seemingly exhaust a player. Generating the precise instructions that govern such characters in increasingly complex environments is also quite labor intensive and..." [continue here]

TOG Paper Presented at SIGGRAPH 2014

Paper Dynamic and Robust Local Clearance Triangulations has been accepted at TOG and will be presented at this SIGGRAPH in Vancouver. The approach is the one integrated in EA's The Sims 4!

Media Coverage

An article at the California Healthline featuring our physical therapy projects can be seen here (local copy here.)

New NSF Funding Award!

We have been awarded a 3-year award from the National Science Foundation to support our projects on motion synthesis and rehabilitation. More information can be seen here.

Media Coverage

A nice story featuring our physical therapy project in collaboration with the UC Davis Medical Center can be seen here (local copy here.)

MIG 2012

The webpage of MIG 2012 is online - paper submission deadline is July 6 !

Best Paper Award at MIG

Our paper Feature-Based Locomotion with Inverse Branch Kinematics won best paper award at MIG 2011!

Media Coverage

An article about Robert Backman's work can be seen here.

Our Physical Therapy Project in the News

From Fresno Bee (front page, Oct 25) as well as Sacramento Bee and Merced Sun-Star:
"UC Merced received a $75,000 grant through the UC system for five graduate students to begin creating a software program this year that uses avatars to provide physical therapy to the elderly."

Video Showcasing our HCC NSF Project

UC Merced has produced a nice video that is now airing on KVIE in Sacramento and is available online here.

CAIS Webpage is Online

The webpage of the recently approved Center for Autonomous and Interactive Systems is now online. It also shows some images of the early stages of the powerwall facility (here).

New Accepted Papers at SCA, ICRA and IVA

Project pages are now available for the following projects:
Shortest Paths with Arbitrary Clearance from Navigation Meshes - SCA 2010
A Skill-Based Motion Planning Framework for Humanoids - ICRA 2010
Interactive Motion Modeling and Parameterization by Direct Demonstration - IVA 2010

New Paper Accepted at TOG

Our paper Underwater Cloth Simulation with Fractional Derivatives has been accepted at TOG and will be presented at this SIGGRAPH in LA.

New NSF Award Received for Research on Gestures

Project description here: [NSF page]. See also the Merced Sun Star story.

New NSF Award Received for Robotic Equipment

"A team of five investigators in computer science and cognitive science at UC Merced are now ordering the equipment - a humanoid robot that will run on its own, as well as advanced, three-fingered robotic arms that they will connect with a torso and head to be built on by UC Merced graduate students. The NSF funds will also be used for state-of-the art motion capture cameras, which will allow mapping motions from people to the robots. The team expects the equipment to arrive around the beginning of 2009." [full story] [award abstract]

Motion Planning and Autonomy for Virtual Humans at SIGGRAPH 2008

The class Motion Planning and Autonomy for Virtual Humans has been accepted at SIGGRAPH 2008. Organizers: Julien Pettré, Marcelo Kallmann, Ming Lin. Lecturers: Julien Pettré, Marcelo Kallmann, Ming Lin, James Kuffner, Michael Gleicher, Claudia Esteves, and Jean-Paul Laumond. For more information check the SIGGRAPH program.

Cognitive Animation Workshop

The workshop finally took place June 4-5. For more information and for presentation materials, visit the Cog Anim page.

Best Paper Nomination at AAMAS 2008

The paper: "SmartBody: Behavior Realization for Embodied Conversational Agents" by Marcus Thiebaux, Andrew Marshall, Stacy Marsella and Marcelo Kallmann is one of three papers nominated for best paper at AAMAS 2008. This work is being develloped in collaboration with the USC-ICT Virtual Humans project.

Motion Capture Lab

We have just installed mocap cameras as part of the Cognitive Sensorium and Visualization project.

Media Coverage: CITRIS Award

"Professors Stefano Carpin and Marcelo Kallman recently received $75,000 in funding from the California Institute for Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) for their project, Robotic and Virtual Assistive Agents for Establishing the Center on Autonomous and Interactive Systems, at UC Merced."
[online article] [local copy]

Media Coverage: Merced Sun-Star's Front Page

Our plans for the Cognitive Sensorium and Visualization facility appeared at the Merced Sun-Star's Front Page.

"UC Merced engineering professor Marcelo Kallmann, left, stands by as computer science graduate student Mentar Mahmudi, right, fits his colleague, Oktar Ozgen, with a new motion-capturing exoskeleton Thursday afternoon at the university"
[online article] [local copy] [front page]

Software Web Page On-Line

The software page is finally on-line and the source code of our graphsim toolkit is now available for noncommercial use. More information in the software page.

Graphics Lab Web Page On-Line

The preliminary web pages of the Graphics Lab are finally on-line and running from our graphics server. The address is: graphics.ucmerced.edu. We are probably the Graphics Lab closest to the Yosemite National Park!

Media Coverage: Our Work Appears at Merced Sun-Star's Front Page

Merced Sun-Star published a story about our work entitled "giving robots human qualities". Pieces of the same story have appeared in several other places. Here is a local copy. We also have a scan of the newspaper front and back page.

Paper Accepted at I3D

Ari Shapiro,  Marcelo Kallmann, and Petros Faloutsos have a paper accepted at I3D showing how arm motions can be planned in synchronization with locomotion. Check out the cool video available here.

Media Coverage: Building Strength in Computer Science

UC Merced newsletter features some of our work in an article available here.