What I Do
 

 Mel Siegel fast lane to my publications

Research Faculty
Director, Intelligent Sensors, Measurement, and Control Lab

TechBridgeWorld: Technology Peace Corps
Advanced Video Display Systems
3D-Stereoscopic Displays
Mobile Robots for Aircraft Inspection
Center for Integrated Manufacturing Decision Systems
The Robotics Institute seminar schedule
The Human Computer Interaction Institute
School of Computer Science events calendar internal webpage facilities home page
Carnegie Mellon University faculty/staff directory alternative CMU home page search the CMU web
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3891 USA

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Space:
mws@cmu.edu
lab: +1 412 268 8742
fax: +1 412 268 5569
efax: +1 412 291 1509
cell: +1 412 983 2626
My plan file will give you the location of and directions to my lab and office.

Favorites:
Injunction [ Measurement, Leviticus 19:35-37 ]
Definition [ Perception, Frank Rosenblatt ]
Quotation [ Cognition, Henri Poincare ]

FAQ (questions I've answered too many times):
Distance between two points (latitude, longitude) on the earth
Generating random points on a sphere
Convergence of 3D-stereoscopic cameras

Research Interests:

My current research is concentrated in two areas and their intersection: robotics for difficult measurements in difficult environments (cracks and corrosion in airplane skins, for example), and 3D-stereoscopic display systems (yeah, with those funny glasses). I also dabble in modeling complex lighting sources, medical imaging, neat tricks for range sensing, etc. I actually know something about sensors, sensing, and measurement science.

Please assume that the papers referenced below are copyrighted by their respective publishers.

For an overview of my aircraft inspection work, see the paper presented at the 1994 IEEE Mohawk Valley "Dual-Use" Conference. A paper with more technical detail was presented at the 1993 International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems. An abstract of a paper describing our research on vision-based guidance for aircraft inspection robots can be found on line at SPIE as andi-vision93. The executive summary of a recent FAA report on this work is here; this page also contains a link for downloading the full report.

For a thematic overview of my 3D stereoscopic display system work see my group's home page: 3D-Stereoscopic Video Display Systems. For a top-level set of pointers to this project and two others with which it is coordinated see: Advanced Video Display Systems. For a more technical overview of my 3D-stereoscopic display systems work, see the paper presented at the International Workshop on Stereoscopic and Three Dimensional Imaging, September 1995, Santorini, Greece; for a hyperstereo pair from the center of Fira, Santorini.

Papers about camera and screen geometries for correct recording, ray-tracing, rendering, and display of 3D-stereoscopic images were presented at the annual IS & T / SPIE 3D topical conferences in San Jose: naked-eye in 1994, augmented-eye in 1995, and real-lens in 1996. Abstracts of these three papers are on line at SPIE as geometry-I, geometry-II, and geometry-III.

Abstracts of papers about compression of 3D images and image streams are on line at SPIE as compression-94, multiresolutional-95 , segmentation-96, and adaptive-96. The abstract of a related paper about eyestrain reduction is on line as eyestrain-96.

Abstracts of papers about software for putting 3D images and image streams onto workstations with GUI operating environments (XWindows, etc) are on line at SPIE as doublebuffering-95 and xwindows-95.
 

Here is a complete list of our AVDS publications in both PDF and PostScript formats. 

I am also interested in modeling illumination sources and related topics. See the thesis of my student, Robert D. Stock: Fourier Formulation of Illumination Optics and Computer-Automated Reflector Design, or just its title page if you're not sure you want to transfer all that PostScript. This work is scheduled for publication in two back-to-back articles in the Journal of Optical Engineering: General near-zone light source model and its application to computer-automated reflector design, and Orientation invariant light source parameters.
 

The above three papers are available in both PDF and PostScript formats. 

Another recent interest is in certain aspects of medical robotics, especially those relating to fusion and 3D-stereoscopic rendering of images from multiple modalities. See the paper Frameless Patient Registration Using Ultrasonic Imaging by my student Tom Ault and myself, published in the Journal of Image Guided Surgery.
 

This and other medical robotics papers are available in both PDF and PostScript formats. 

 

A comprehensive list of our other papers (in both PDF and PostScript formats) can be found here. 

Resume stuff:
Stuyvesant High School
Cornell University / Physics Department (B.A.)
Peace Corps / Achimota School / Ghana
University of Colorado Physics Department and JILA (M.S., Ph.D.)
University of Virginia / Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Physics
SUNY-Buffalo / Physics Department
Extranuclear Laboratories (now ABB Extrel)
Carnegie Mellon University / The Robotics Institute

Personal stuff:

Between my undergraduate and graduate school years I taught physics and math as a US Peace Corps volunteer at Achimota School, outside Accra, in Ghana (West Africa). I traveled extensively, on the ground and by water, during this period. I am digitizing and JPEGing some of the pictures I took at my school and during my travels. If you're interested have a look (I retain the copyright to all of these).

At my school:

Elsewhere in Ghana:

Trip to Timbuktu, Mali, via Ougadougou, Mopti, Timbuktu, Gao, and Niamey,Dec-62/Jan-63:

Trip (on a 50cc Honda + various boats) from Accra to Pointe Noire and back via Togo, Dahomey (now Benin), Nigeria, The Cameroons, Central African Republic, and (ex-French) Congo, with a brief foray into (about 10 meters) Angola. These pictures were taken on the barge we rode, Fifth Class, from Bangui to Brazzaville:

Siberia and Lake Baikal:

In August 1997 I took an AAAS sponsored "professional enrichment" trip to the Russian Far East and Siberia. The itinerary involved flying from Pittsburgh to San Francisco and San Francisco to Khabarovsk via Anchorage, 2 1/2 days on the TransSiberian Express (Russian Train #1) from Khabarovsk to Irkutsk, a short bus trip from Irkutsk to Lystvyanka, 6 days on the research ship Zaisan visiting various locations around Lake Baikal, and then the reverse route home (except the return trip from Irkutsk to Khabarovsk was by air). The trip was "guided" by Russian scientists specializing in botany, environmental science, limnology (lakes), ichthyology (fish), mammalogy, geology, and solar physics. Because research funding and even scientists' salaries are so uncertain in Russia now, guiding tours like this provides these scientists with the only opportunity they have to do the field work necessary for their research, and also provides a little badly needed personal income.

I'm still working on organizing and uploading the approximately 250 pictures I took. Until I finish this and add proper captions and links here, you can have a look at a few of them by clicking on the directory below and opening the individual jpeg pictures. Note that the names refer more to the roll of film than to the individual frames, so a frame may bear a location name because it comes from a roll that was mainly shot at that location, not necessarily because that particular frame was shot at that location.

click here to go to Russian Far East and Siberia pictures (use your "BACK" button to get back here)

maintained by: Alan Guisewite and Mel Siegel when bugged enough by the website-currentness police

Last Update 2006 April 02 by mws