Author Archives: briancbecker
KinectFusion Presents: Lord Pyry
After working all weekend on getting PCL’s new KinectFusion and collecting cool voxel representations of my friend (and after fixing the bug patch), we got …
KinectFusion Weekend (T-107)
So KinectFusion is an awesome new Microsoft algorithm for the GPU that essentially does real-time SLAM with Kinect RGBD cameras. They didn’t publish the source, …
Today was a good day (T-108)
Even though I was forced to get up unreasonably early for an advisor meeting, today went remarkably well. I discovered the deadline for BioRob 2012 …
Today I learned KY is awesome (T-109 days)
Today was “get back to the salt mines and get your shovel rusty” day. Our next set of experiments with our lab’s surgical robot Micron …
Star of India No More??? (T-110 days)
I went with a friend to Star of India on Craig because Wed. is chicken masala day only to discover they were closed with tarps …
The Frozen White North (T-112 days)
Well it’s back to the salt mines: this morning I departed from Orlando (left) and arrived at Pittsburgh (right). It is times like these that …
Whew, 15 Pages (T-113 days)
Ahhh!!! My journal paper with a 14 page limit was 16.5 pages this morning and after an entire day of chop chop chopping, I have …
Let the Madness Begin! (T-114 days)
So as the dawning new year coincides the 4.5 year anniversary of my entrance to the PhD program at the Robotics Institute at CMU, it …
The Christmas Tree Tax
So the media is abuzz with the latest crisis: a 15-cent tax on Christmas trees to spend on advertising and promoting real Christmas trees. Oh …
Intel Quick Sync Hardware Encoding
This post details my experiences with Intel’s hardware encoding Quick Sync functionality that is part of their new processors. I’ve spent the past three days …
IROS & San Fran & PhD Movie
Again it is 3 am. Must be the perfect time to update my website. Or you know, actually sleep like a normal person. In any …
You know, stuff
Well here I am waiting at 3 am in the morning for a run to finish. So I figured I could write a post on …
Thesis Proposal
Four years of grinding work in graduate school, done with classes, put out some conference papers, published a journal paper, and people keep asking when …
Why I detest LabVIEW
Because my robot’s control system runs on a LabVIEW real-time machine, I have no recourse but to add new features in LabVIEW. Oh, I tried …
Mac & Linux Helicopter Visualizer
Thanks to Joydeep and Pras, Plinth now actually works under Mac & Linux (both x86 and x64). It turns out it was just some minor …
Sick, cold, bleck
Well I got a cold with the stuffed up nose, sore throat, and whole enchilada. It’s like it’s winter or something. Oh wait! It is …
What Makes a Good Reviewer?
I have to review a couple of papers in the robotics field and was asking myself today: “What makes a good reviewer?” Let’s see. Ultimately, …
Dessert Burritos
After making prison loaf (e.g. a nutritionally complete bread similar to meatloaf but made out of vegetables for prison inmates that really quite honestly tastes …
Kinects & IR & Microscope
Microsoft, always the butt of nerd jokes with Windows and blue screens, has introduced a new device that will revolutionize robotics: the Kinect. It is …
Matrix Multiplication Optimization
Sparse encoding and finding solutions of the form Ax=b with x subject to an l1 norm is a popular solution in signal reconstruction and now …
My extreme frustration at Windows Video Libraries
I hate them. No seriously. They are terrible. In fact, I’ll go further and say that dealing with video programatically through C++ has plagued me …
Unsigned int has to go
I’m sure unsigned int has had its place in the eons gone by; however, I think it’s outlived it’s useful lifespan. The number of times …
Oh my, perilous journeys
Often, I join Internet sites to find out information about people I know or am going to know. The reason I joined Facebook was to …
Brina Moving Trip
Periodically somebody manages to graduate from the robotics institute and moves away, which is both a glad and sad time. This year it is Brina …
Vision System Latency
Say your baseball hitting robot is using cameras to track and hit a thrown ball. In this and other systems where computer vision is a …
