A Geometric Approach to Computer Vision and Robotics

Professor Ponce will conduct research on the geometric aspects of computer vision and robotics at the California Institute of Technology. He will collaborate with Professor Pietro Perona (Department of Electrical Engineering) and Professor Joel Burdick (Department of Mechanical Engineering). In collaboration with Professor Perona, he will investigate the application of projective geometry to vision and explore issues in shape representation for object recognition. He will work with Professor Burdick on the geometry of grasping and object manipulation. He will also edit a book entitled Algebraic Surfaces in Computer Vision.

Conducting this work at Caltech will have two main advantages: first, it will help Professor Ponce start an active collaboration with Professors Perona and Burdick. He shares research interests such as stereo vision and motion analysis with Professor Perona, and robotic grasp synthesis in the case of Professor Burdick. Second, Professor Ponce will gain access to the experimental facilities of Professor Burdick's robotics laboratory, ranging from a 20-foot long hyper-redundant robot with 30 degrees of freedom to a 1-inch long crawling micro-robot.