SPEAKER: DAVID M. MCKEOWN
Principal Research Computer Scientist and Head,
Digital Mapping Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University
SPEAKER: DAVID M. MCKEOWN
Principal Research Computer Scientist and Head,
Digital Mapping Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University
ABSTRACT:
Over the last thirty years computer vision research has broadened
from concerns of individual image acquisition and iconic processing
to the automated extraction of useful information from streams of
imagery collected by a variety of sensors. As a scientific endeavor,
computer vision research has greatly matured and spun off many diverse
application areas in the fields of medicine, robotics, environmental
remote sensing, mapping and geographic information systems, and
entertainment.
Computer vision's fundamental problem in all of these fields is one of "signal-to-symbol" transformation, going from a 2D array of "pixels" to a description of image content or 3D scene semantics. Thirty years ago, Raj Reddy and his students designed and implemented the first primitive face recognition programs based on simple symbolic descriptions of the human facial anatomy.
From this work, a sequence of image interpretation systems in various application domains were developed under Raj's model of the importance of semantics, domain knowledge, and the need for system-based performance evaluation. Raj's early hand in the formulation of the "CMU approach" to computer vision has allowed this area to grow into many major efforts within the School of Computer Science.
In this talk I would like to reflect on some early work with Raj on geospatial databases and observe how the CMU approach to this problem domain has evolved over 25 years into automated systems for the rapid construction and visualization of geospatial data.
SPEAKER BIO:
David M. McKeown, Jr. is a Principal Research Computer Scientist
in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and
has been a member of the research faculty since 1986. Prior to
joining the faculty he was a researcher at Carnegie Mellon from
1975, a Research Associate at George Washington University and a
Member of the Technical Staff at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Maryland (1974--1975). Upon his arrival at CMU he joined
the HEARSAY II Speech Understanding Project and subsequently became
one of the initial researchers on the newly created ARPA Image
Understanding Program, both organized by Professor Reddy. He is
currently the head of the Digital Mapping Laboratory within the
Computer Science Department.
His research interests in computer science are in the areas of image understanding for the automated analysis of remotely sensed imagery, digital mapping and image/map database systems, simulation of large scale geospatial environments, and artificial intelligence.
Mr. McKeown is a member of ACM, IEEE, AAAI, the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), and Sigma Xi. He is chair of Working Group II/6 on Integration of Image Understanding into Cartographic Systems (1996-2000) and was co-chair of Intercommission Working Group II/III on Digital Photogrammetric Systems of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) from 1992-1996.
Significant external awards include the 1995 Photogrammetric Award (Fairchild) by ASPRS "in recognition of his sustained contributions in computer science research appled to digital mapping". He was presented with the 1996 Schermerhorn Award by the Netherlands Society of Earth Observation and Geo-Informatics and ISPRS for his work "in promoting scientific research and technical exchange meetings in the area of computer vision and photogrammetry".