The weather was gorgeous, and the crowds were large and enthusiastic, allowing the campus to greet thousands of prospective and newly admitted students along with visitors who have been Cal Day regulars for years. The CITRIS demonstrations were very popular at the April 16th Cal Day, the campuswide open house for UC Berkeley. Highlights here included the towel-folding robot developed by Pieter Abbeel’s group, which delighted children with it’s ability to detect and properly fold cloth. In addition, the new exhibit by Maurizio Forte was highly attended. Professor Forte, who has a multidisciplinary approach to the development of virtual heritage at UC Merced, gave a talk to attendees about the nature of the exhibit and the research that had taken place to create it.
Photos from CITRIS at Cal Day 2011:
The towel-folding robot demonstrates its prowess. Researchers from Abbeel’s group have developed a computer vision-based approach for detecting the key points on the cloth for the robot to grasp, an approach that is highly effective because it depends only on geometric cues that can be identified reliably even in the presence of changes in appearance and texture.
Professor Maurizio Forte (right) demonstrates his exhibit at the Tech Museum: virtual tombs and artifacts, digital landscapes, and hands-on experiences show a new dimension of the archaeology of the future.
