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amelim

1,046 karma · joined May 15, 2009

Graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology specializing in theory and artificial intelligence.

Currently working at Georgia Tech on autonomous soaring, robot navigation, and 3D reconstruction. Robotics PhD student at Georgia Tech.

Lab Website: http://borg.cc.gatech.edu/

http://github.com/amelim http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~amelim3/ Contact me at Andrew d0t Melim :a]t~ gatech.edu

submissionscomments
amelim··on Apple Commits $2.5B to Ease California Housing Crunch
Tech spends money on lobbying local politicians to write favorable public policy. This should be obvious.
amelim··on Vice Raises $500M in Its Quest for 'Total Media Domination'
You are forgetting that they have an Emmy award winning show on HBO.
amelim··on YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?
I disagree. Games like Dota 2 and League of Legends are filling sports stadiums and giving out multi-million dollar prize pools these days. If anything, at least in the United States, they are on the rise.
amelim··on Detecting duplicate images with Python
Using feature detectors and descriptors is only half of the solution. If you really want robust image recognition you need to use something like the vocabulary tree developed by Nister[1][2].

[1]http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bagon/CVspring07/files/sca... [2]http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~phlosoft/files/schindler07cvpr2.pd...

amelim··on New Oculus Rift dev kit goes on sale for $350 today, likely ships in July
I was able to get the DK1 working using a hdmi -> regular displayport adapter for my Thinkpad X220 on Ubuntu 13.04
amelim··on Image Background Removal
One of the coolest approaches I've seen does some cool inference on fully connected Conditional Random Fields via high-dimensional filtering. Amazing results.

http://vladlen.info/publications/efficient-inference-in-full...

amelim··on Planning Algorithms
Well, some of us just happen to be graduate robotics students :)
amelim··on Psychologically trying PC game re-creates tension faced by soldiers
I believe the fundamental difference is that the time to get to null-sec in EVE (the actual interesting component of the game that generates strong narratives) takes a significant time investment from the player. Leveling up skills, purchasing ships, and developing knowledge of the game are fairly tedious.

In comparison, you can get thrown into interesting situations from the get-go in DayZ. Basic FPS skills and a little knowledge of the clunky interface are all you need to generate strong player narratives. Whereas you make need several weeks to months to motivate an interesting experience in EvE, DayZ only requires a time investment of a couple hours (maybe).

amelim··on The new Photosynth
Sure! My lab focuses on SLAM and 3D reconstruction, especially for robotic applications. We've developed a BSD-licensed C++ (w/ MATLAB wrapper) library with specific applications towards 3D reconstruction problems such as SLAM and structure from motion. It's called GTSAM [1]

We actively maintain and release new features as they are published. While we don't provide a full out of the box pipeline (yet!), there are plenty of examples and documentation which walk you though the math, implementation, and other issues. If you want to read about the graphical models underlying GTSAM, see [2]

Utilizing OpenCV for feature detection and association is pretty much all you really need to add to a program in order to recreate Photosynth using gtsam. I'd also you recommend KAZE features from a former post-doc out of our lab, it's state of the art and recently added OpenCV wrappers[3]. However, it's also trivial to integrate other sensors such as IMUs, GPS, lasers, etc. for full navigation problems.

If you wish to know more about the actual subject, I definitely recommend Hartley and Zisserman's Multiview Geometery Book[4]

[1] https://borg.cc.gatech.edu/borg/

[2] http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~dellaert/pub/Dellaert06ijrr.pdf

[3] https://github.com/pablofdezalc/akaze

[4] http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/hzbook/index.html

amelim··on Water seems to flow freely on Mars
I believe that most UAV designs for extra-terrestrial missions are designed around the use of airships rather than more traditional airplane or quadrotor designs. An example of initial research in the area is the Titan Aerobot [1]

[1] https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/research/facilitie...

amelim··on The Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in CS is now accepting applications
As someone who is on the other side of the fence for this program (I'm currently a CS PhD student at Georgia Tech), I can tell you that many of the faculty are excited about online programs. Hopefully the learning process for the faculty goes smoothly and the online students have a worthwhile experience. I know I'm excited to help TA some of the courses!
amelim··on Steam Family Sharing
A brilliant move would be to offer discounts on purchasing a game if the lender kicks you off while you are playing. "Sorry we have to kick you off while you are playing, it looks like the owner wants to play game X right now. Purchase the game for yourself at 10% off and keep playing immediately!"
amelim··on Employer Tipped Off Police In Pressure Cooker/Backpack-gate, Not Google
But let's be clear here. It's from a search that was performed on an employer owned computer from a recently released employee. This is an entirely different narrative than the one insinuated in the original blog post. I'd say the premise was fundamentally flawed to begin with seeing as how she presented zero evidence and only anecdotes from her husband.
amelim··on Maxis Insider: SimCity Servers Not Necessary
Well, it's plausible seeing as how multiple people have reported to be able to play the game while lacking internet connections for up to 20 minutes. Additionally, the methodology of the code seems to fit with several of the changes made by Maxis to improve performance (disabling cheetah speed for example).

Regardless, Maxis has stated they will respond shortly to the article. https://twitter.com/rockpapershot/status/311618456640450561

amelim··on The “Steam Box” era begins with the Piston, a $1,000 PC-in-a-console
I think it's important to note that this actually isn't the Valve branded "Steam box", but actually a similar spec hardware platform to the one Valve is developing internally. It's unfortunate that a lot of the momentum and hype Valve can leverage with their name is being wasted on this particular platform which they have nothing to do with.
amelim··on What I’ve learned from 35 years of wearing computerized eyewear
Google has been working with one of Steve Mann's previous collaborators[1], Thad Starner[2]. Thad's actually the Tech Lead on the Glass project. As far as I know, he's been wearing AR systems for just as long and does the majority of his research in this domain. I must admit, I'm extremely jealous when I see Thad walking around campus with his Glass.

[1] http://www.wearcam.org/computing.html/ [2] http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~thad/

amelim··on Why we Die
Seems to be more of a "How we die" rather than why, but regardless it's a well done visualization.
amelim··on Neal Stephenson wants to revolutionize sword fighting video games
I'm surprised there was no mention of the Mount and Blade[1] series, which took a serious look at this sort of combat through the use of contextual mouse movements for parries and attacks. I wonder if he's unaware of the franchise, or just didn't feel the need to mention it.

I'm also not convinced that today's odometry based controllers will give you high enough fidelity to model swords convincingly. Any sort of wiimote or kinect based sword/lightsaber game has always seemed very waggle centric without any deliberate movement. Also, I'm not really thrilled about the thought of having to buy plastic swords to swing in my room.

[1]:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psLA87SgZcw

amelim··on A hacker creates his own version of Google Project Glass
I'm not sure the last time you saw him with it, but it seems he's iterated a couple times. The most recent version isn't too far off from the Glass concept. http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/349511/large/T4200406-Wear...
amelim··on A hacker creates his own version of Google Project Glass
Thad Starner, shown in [2] is actually a member of the team working on Project Glass.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~thad/

amelim··on Double Fine Adventure
As far as I'm aware, this is a completely different project from Psychonauts 2. I don't think Notch had any real significant involvement in this Kickstarter campaign.
amelim··on Panic of the Plutocrats
I'd be extremely wary about coming to any conclusions based upon the Reason.TV video. They have a clear political agenda and it's difficult to really understand the complexities of any situation through a series of edited interviews.

In any sense, from what I understand it seems that the group isn't necessarily pushing for any particular policy but the fact that the Government is systemically broken. They feel there isn't any democratic say from the average citizen in the policies made by Congress and the Presidency. It seems that they choose Wall Street as their target because their large financial abilities allow for them to give massive amounts of financial contributions to key politicians, essentially cutting out the average voter.

However, I haven't been to the movement in person, so it's difficult for me to be sure with any certainty.

amelim··on New gaming laptop with innovative UI by Razer
The last thing the PC gaming community needs right now is another insanely expensive piece of hardware with a gimmick attached. I really cannot see this going anywhere within the community. I'm guessing that those who largely play the PC games that would require such high specs aren't likely to want to play them outside of their homes. Besides you can purchase a comparably spec'd desktop system for a quarter of the price.

Heck, the most popular PC game at the moment (World of Warcraft) can be played on relatively cheap laptops already.

amelim··on Jonathan Coulton On how he made 500K as a DIY musician
To be fair, it was the NPR Music guest hosts who missed the point, not the Planet Money team (which actually argued that it Jonathan's success was not a fluke).
amelim··on Remind HN: STS-134, Space Shuttle Endevour's last launch is at 8:56AM ET
The NASA budget is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the defense budget and entitlement programs. In my opinion, I don't think it's getting enough funding. The future of the human race is among the stars.
amelim··on An Introduction to Xiangqi for Chess Players
I've always been quite intrigued by the game of Rithmomachy. It was quite popular and even rivaled chess in popularity during it's hayday. You begin to understand it's complexity when you realize that "Proper Victories" are achieved by creating arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic sequences with the pieces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rithmomachia

amelim··on Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively
Fear not, unless you have a Vicon system installed in your house. Most of these quadcopter demos involved very expensive motion capture systems to determine the location of the vehicles. Pretty much all of the control software is on a separate system.
amelim··on SwipeGood (YC W11) Gives Its Start Fund Cash To Charity
Bank of America already does this for their debit cards through their Keep the Change program.

http://www.bankofamerica.com/promos/jump/ktc_coinjar/

amelim··on Digikey products now listed on Octopart
I believe the Pandaboard comes with an RS232 connection. But you could also try the Beagleboard. You might want to take a look at the Gumstix Overo line and their various expansion boards, but I'm not exactly sure if they provide what you need. Also, you could try a USB->RS485 converter if you need that specifically.
amelim··on The "vaccination causes autism" fraud
It's unfortunate because there are many people who either can't be vaccinated due to allergies or have other legitimate medical issues such as being too young for the vaccine, that rely upon the herd immunity of the portion of the population that can be vaccinated. Opting out of vaccines puts these people at risk, not to mention the increased risk of child opted out.
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