Currently, I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Penn State University. My advisor is Dr. Rajeev Sharma. I received my masters of Computer Science from the Technical University of Munich, Germany in June 2001. My masters thesis had the topic "Window based Stereo-Correlation in a Teleoperating-Task".

In the context of a Dialog-Assisted Visual Environment for Geoinformation (DAVE_G), a human-computer-interface (HCI) system is developed which allows collaborative and multi-modal interactions between users and geographic information systems (GIS). The objective of such a natural, multi-modal HCI is to provide a human-centered interface that uses computer vision and speech recognition to interpret natural human interactions and thus is able to drive a two-way human-computer-dialog. Here, the research focus on tasks such as tracking of natural hand-gestures in an environment where multiple persons interact collaborative in front of a large screen display. 

This poses three major problems that I am investigating: robust tracking of multiple person’s arm in 2D image sequences under partial or even full occlusion; accurate estimation of 3D arm and hand pose from 2D image sequences; suitability for real-time applications.

DAVE_G is a joint project with PI: Alan MacEachren (Department of Geography; GeoVISTA), Co-PIs: Rajeev Sharma (Department of Computer Science) and Guoray Cai (Department of Information Science and Technology) This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-0113030

We developed a first prototype of DAVE_G that is multi-user capable and supports preliminary dialog functionalities. Check out the demo-video below:

Long Version (4min):

DAVE_G-DemoVideo-HiRes-long(DivX) (17.4 MB)

DAVE_G-DemoVideo-LowRes-long(DivX) (10.1 MB)

Short Version (21/2 min):

DAVE_G-DemoVideo-HiRes-short(DivX) (10.3 MB)

DAVE_G-DemoVideo-LowRes(DivX) (5.6 MB)

• Sharma, R., Yeasin, M., Krahnstoever, N., Rauschert, I., Cai, G., Brewer, I., MacEachren, A., Sengupta, K. and Brewer, I., "Speech-Gesture Driven Multimodal Interfaces for Crisis Management", Proceedings of IEEE special issue on Multimodal Human-Computer Interface (accepted for publication).(pdf)

• Rauschert, I., Sharma, R., Fuhrmann, S., Brewer, I. and MacEachren, A., "Approaching a New Multimodal GIS-Interface," Proc. of the 2nd International Conference on GIS (GIScience), CO, USA, 2002, (pdf)

• Rauschert, I., Agrawal, P., Fuhrmann, S., Brewer, I., Wang, H., Sharma, R., Cai, G. and MacEachren, A., "Designing a Human-Centered, Multimodal GIS Interface to Support Emergency Management," Proc. of the 10th ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, McLean, Virginia, USA, 2002, (pdf)

• Vision-based Gesture Analysis and Multimodal Interfaces

• Toward Natural Gesture/Speech Interface

• Understanding Gestures in Multimodal Human Computer Interaction

• Penn State Computer Vision Lab

• General Computer Vision Homepage

• The Geographic Visualization Science, Technology, and Applications Center

• Lots of vacation pictures on my private homepage