U Texas, Austin

Last Friday I was at the University of Texas at Austin for the doctoral defense of Mohan Sridharan. Mohan's thesis dealt with color recognition and constancy (and re-calibration) for navigation and localization.

A key part of his work deals with adapting to illumination changes. This is accomplished by using a hybrid representation of both color and illumination change, and using different mechanisms to deal with gradual versus sudden changes. He passed comfortably.

The robotics labs there were large and very active. I finally got a chance to ride on a Segway myself, which was surprisingly easy and smooth. Most Segways one finds in robotics labs are not suitable for human riders.