Carnegie Mellon University

Tudor Achimtudor achim

Major: Computer Science          Year: Junior          Hometown: Macin, Romania

Project title: "Indoor People Detection"
Type of Support
: SURF 2009, SURG 2010

When did you become involved in undergraduate research at CMU?  I became involved in my second semester through the Intel First Year Research Experience (IFYRE) Program.

How did you find your mentor?  The mentor I chose for that semester, Professor Sidd Srinivasa, was a good fit for me, and I have continued to work with him ever since.

How has your idea/project evolved through the academic years?  The project evolved based on the changing sensor capabilities of the robot I work with; initially, the project revolved around detecting people with a simple webcam. When we acquired a new 3D sensor, we modified some of our algorithms to take advantage of it, and finally we developed a new algorithmic framework to combine these different person models into one.

What successes or difficulties have you encountered in this project or others?  The successes consisted of good classification results compared to state of the art algorithms, and of the application of people detection to real world applications like drink delivery. Most of the difficulties cropped up in the process of discovering which feature sets and classification methods are effective for the problem.

If you could summarize your experience in one word, what would it be?  Illuminating