Distinguised Lecture Series 2009-2010: Jessica Hodgins

Robotics -> Animation -> Robotics
Jessica Hodings , Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract

In this talk, I will focus on algorithms for capturing and controlling the motion of humans -- both animated and robotic. I will frame these topics in the context of my career which has evolved from robotics to animation and most recently back to robotics. I have explored how to control a robot to allow it to run up and down stairs, jump over obstacles, and perform a flip. In computer animation, I first worked on physical simulations of humans and then investigated techniques for generalizing captured human data as well as novel forms of capture. Recently, I have returned to robotics, looking now at algorithms for the dynamic control of a full humanoid.

Bio

Jessica Hodgins joined the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University as a Associate Professor in the fall of 2000. She is now a Professor in computer science and robotics, Associate Director for the Faculty in the Robotics Institute as well as the part-time Director of a new industrial research laboratory, Disney Research, Pittsburgh. Prior to moving to CMU, she was an an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. She has received a NSF Young Investigator Award, a Packard Fellowship, and a Sloan Fellowship. She was editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics from 2000-2002 and Papers Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH 2003.