Adventures at USC

This morning, I went to breakfast at EVK and talked with Bob for awhile. I had some cereal with soy milk, along with one of those famous waffles topped with strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and whipped cream.

Then, I went out to the Hedco Neuroscience Building to get an access code and request a room key for the USC Competition Robotics Club’s laboratory (iLab). It was a $10 deposit for the key, and it’ll take a few days – but I was emailed an access code right away. The security on the building is fairly tight. They’ve got animals – such as frogs and birds. I talked with one of the researchers on the 5th floor. She said they deal mostly with cerebellum research.

I went to EE 106 and we acted out the functions of a computer. I was the CPU Decoder. And then, after my math discussion and quiz were out of the way, I went to the “Meet the Chair” event for CSCI/CECS majors. We met Dr. Gerard Medioni, and after the talk about the 4+1 program, a new AI and Science Fiction course, and the new Video Game Design major, he brought us to the lab next to SAL and we looked at the Vision research they’re doing. They can generate 3D models of your face using two cameras, and use this for identification. The demonstration was awesome. This is already being used commercially by some prisons. They’re working on having it work with only one camera – thus making it compatible with millions of existing security systems, at the software level – by getting different angles when the person moves/turns their head. Also, they’re working on having the computer do optical zooming on interesting features in video, automatically, while tracking multiple people and keeping the situation in context.

Now time to write an essay… darn Thematic Option…