Google Tech Talks
January, 17 2008
ABSTRACT
Team Cornell was one of six teams to complete the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, completing over 55 miles of autonomous driving in an urban environment in approximately seven hours, including competition stops. The competition included many urban driving scenarios such as staying in a lane, merging into traffic, passing, intersections, parking, and even robot-robot interaction. Team Cornell designed and built a vehicle around technological innovations in vehicle automation, a real time UDP based data distribution system, tightly coupled pose estimation, scene estimation including localization within an urban environment and tracking all obstacles with a fusion of laser, radar and vision sensors, and hierarchical intelligent planning. Team Cornell’s vehicle was designed to drive “human-like” with smooth, intelligent behaviors, even in the presence of a vast array of uncertainties. The systematic approach taken by Team Cornell led to an innovative, robust solution to the complex problem proposed in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. This seminar will present the key technologies, semi-final and final results, and plans for future research.
Speaker: Dan Huttenlocher
Dan Huttenlocher is the John P. and Rilla Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science and Business at Cornell University, where he holds a joint appointment in the Computer Science Department and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. His research interests are in computer vision, social and information networks, collaboration tools, geometric algorithms and financial trading systems. He has been recognized for his research and teaching contributions on several occasions, including being named an NSF Presidential Young Investigator, New York State Professor of the Year and a Fellow of the ACM. In addition to academic posts he has been chief technical officer of Intelligent Markets, a provider of advanced trading systems on Wall Street, and spent more than ten years at Xerox PARC directing work that led to the ISO JBIG2 image-compression standard.
Speaker: Mark Campbell
Mark Campbell is an Associate Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. His research interests are in the areas of autonomous systems, probabilistic models of human decision making, nonlinear estimation theory, cooperative vehicle control and estimation, and sensor fusion. He has been recognized from NASA for his modeling and control work on the Middeck Active Control Experiment, flown on STS-67 in 1995. He received best paper awards from the AIAA and Frontiers in Education conference, and teaching awards Cornell, University of Washington, and the ASEE. He was also an Australian Research Council International Fellowship in 2006 while on sabbatical at the University of Sydney. He is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, an Associate Director of the AACC board, and member of the AIAA GNC Technical Committee, and is active in both IEEE and ASEE.
Duration : 1:6:12
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Google Tech Talks
May 15, 2008
ABSTRACT
Severe flood disasters may frequently occur in near future because global warming will change the flood risk. To prepare the disaster, we propose global flood simulation software which simulates flood flow in
short time on an earth viewer (i.e., global geographical information system). User can edit a flood scenario such as the location of levee failure by clicking on the earth viewer, then the software simulate the
flood flow based on fluid dynamics. The simulation and GIS communicate each other using our technology, the flood information are visualized on the viewer even during the simulation. I will make a presentation about
the technology and show how to work our flood simulation software.
Speaker: Satoshi Yamaguchi
I specialize in the geophysics, hydrodynamics and software development such as geographical information system (GIS). I conduct a research on flood disaster and develop flood simulation software on our original GIS for a number of years in Hitachi Central Research Laboratory. I studied physical oceanography in Tohoku University and received masters degree.
Duration : 0:26:12
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Google Tech Talks
June, 9 2008
ABSTRACT
Presented by
Andrew B. Whinston
Center for Research in Electronic Commerce
Mccombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin
Based on a joint research with Jianqing Chen and De Liu
Abstract:
Internet-based advertising continues to increase in importance. Internet advertising providers such as Google and Yahoo! allocate their advertising resources using a novel form of share auctions in which the highest advertiser gets the largest share, the second highest advertiser gets the second largest share, and so on. A share structure problem arises in such a setting regarding how much resources to set aside for the highest advertiser, for the second highest advertiser, etc. We address this problem under a general specification and derive implications on how the optimal share structure should change with advertisers’ price elasticity of demand for exposure, their valuation distribution, total resources, and minimum bids.
Full Synopsis here:
http://docs.google.com/a/google.com/Doc?id=cdvbh2g5_1621cg97gcct
Speaker: Dr. Andrew B. Whinston
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_B._Whinston
Andrew B. Whinston is an American economist and computer scientist. He is the Hugh Roy Cullen Centennial Chair in Business Administration, Professor of Information Systems, Computer Science and Economics, and Director of the Center for Research in E-Commerce (CREC) in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Prof. Whinston is also a fellow of the IC2 Institute, Austin.
At the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in December 2005, Prof. Whinston was awarded “The LEO Award for Lifetime Exceptional Achievement in Information Systems” by the Association for Information Systems (AIS).
Andrew Whinston has been a major contributor to the field since information systems began as an academic discipline. His research record is exemplary, his publications are many, his doctoral graduates are found throughout the field in all parts of the world, and his innovative research has enlightened critical developments in the field.
Duration : 1:6:7
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Google Tech Talks
October 31, 2008
ABSTRACT
In knowledge-based information retrieval, search engines consult external sources of knowledge ontologies, taxonomies, thesauri, glossaries, gazeteers to help process the documents they encounter and the requests they receive. The idea is old, obvious, and compelling but results have been singularly unimpressive. The best performing and most widely used search systems are still those that deal in lexical character patterns without using any structured knowledge to understand them.
Wikipedia is changing all that. This open, constantly evolving encyclopedia represents a vast pool of topics and semantic relations. It is arguably the largest knowledge base humanity has ever seen. At last we have a resource that is (or may be) sufficiently broad, deep, and timely to be applicable to open-domain information retrieval. However, it brings its own challenges. Wikipedia’s haphazard and only partially machine-readable structure bears little resemblance to the carefully crafted knowledge bases that have been used to assist information retrieval in the past.
This talk will discuss Wikipedia’s promises and shortcomings, and describe ongoing investigations of how best to apply it to organizing and retrieving information.
Speaker: David Milne
David Milne is a PhD student at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, where he studies under the supervision of Prof. Ian H. Witten.
Duration : 0:49:27
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Google Tech Talks
October 31, 2008
ABSTRACT
In knowledge-based information retrieval, search engines consult external sources of knowledge ontologies, taxonomies, thesauri, glossaries, gazeteers to help process the documents they encounter and the requests they receive. The idea is old, obvious, and compelling but results have been singularly unimpressive. The best performing and most widely used search systems are still those that deal in lexical character patterns without using any structured knowledge to understand them.
Wikipedia is changing all that. This open, constantly evolving encyclopedia represents a vast pool of topics and semantic relations. It is arguably the largest knowledge base humanity has ever seen. At last we have a resource that is (or may be) sufficiently broad, deep, and timely to be applicable to open-domain information retrieval. However, it brings its own challenges. Wikipedia’s haphazard and only partially machine-readable structure bears little resemblance to the carefully crafted knowledge bases that have been used to assist information retrieval in the past.
This talk will discuss Wikipedia’s promises and shortcomings, and describe ongoing investigations of how best to apply it to organizing and retrieving information.
Speaker: David Milne
David Milne is a PhD student at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, where he studies under the supervision of Prof. Ian H. Witten.
Duration : 0:49:27
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Google Tech Talks
October, 23 2007
ABSTRACT
For most of us who work on the Internet, the Web is all we have ever really known. It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without browsers, URLs and HTTP. But in the years leading up to Tim Berners-Lee’s world-changing invention, a few visionary information scientists were exploring alternative systems that often bore little resemblance to the Web as we know it today. In this presentation, author and information architect Alex Wright will explore the heritage of these almost-forgotten systems in search of promising ideas left by the historical wayside.
The presentation will focus on the pioneering work of Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush, and Doug Engelbart, forebears of the 1960s and 1970s like Ted Nelson, Andries van Dam, and the Xerox PARC team, and more recent forays like Brown’s Intermedia system. We’ll trace the heritage of these systems and the solutions they suggest to present day Web quandaries, in hopes of finding clues to the future in the recent technological past.
Speaker: Alex Wright
Alex Wright is an information architect at the New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. Previously, Alex has led projects for The Long Now Foundation, California Digital Library, Harvard University, IBM, Microsoft, Rollyo and Sun Microsystems, among others. He maintains a personal Web site at http://www.alexwright.org/
Duration : 0:59:34
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Google Tech Talks
October, 23 2007
ABSTRACT
For most of us who work on the Internet, the Web is all we have ever really known. It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without browsers, URLs and HTTP. But in the years leading up to Tim Berners-Lee’s world-changing invention, a few visionary information scientists were exploring alternative systems that often bore little resemblance to the Web as we know it today. In this presentation, author and information architect Alex Wright will explore the heritage of these almost-forgotten systems in search of promising ideas left by the historical wayside.
The presentation will focus on the pioneering work of Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush, and Doug Engelbart, forebears of the 1960s and 1970s like Ted Nelson, Andries van Dam, and the Xerox PARC team, and more recent forays like Brown’s Intermedia system. We’ll trace the heritage of these systems and the solutions they suggest to present day Web quandaries, in hopes of finding clues to the future in the recent technological past.
Speaker: Alex Wright
Alex Wright is an information architect at the New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. Previously, Alex has led projects for The Long Now Foundation, California Digital Library, Harvard University, IBM, Microsoft, Rollyo and Sun Microsystems, among others. He maintains a personal Web site at http://www.alexwright.org/
Duration : 0:59:34
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Google Tech Talks
June, 26 2008
ABSTRACT
The Semantic Web presents the vision of a distributed, dynamically growing knowledge base founded on formal logic. Common users, however, seem to have problems even with the simplest Boolean
expression. So how can we help users to query a web of logic that they do not seem to understand? One frequently proposed solution to address this problem is the use of natural language (NL) for
knowledge specification and querying. We propose to regard formal query languages and NL as two extremes of a continuum, where semistructured languages lie somewhere in the middle.
To evaluate what degree of structuredness casual users prefer, we introduce four query interfaces, each at a different point in the continuum, and evaluate the users’ preference and their query performance in a study with 48 subjects. The results of the study reveal that while the users dislike the constraints of a fully
structured formal query language they also seem at a loss with the freedom of a full NLP approach. This suggests that restricted query languages will be preferred by casual users because of their
guidance effect, mirroring findings from social science theory on human activity in general.
Speaker: Prof. Bernstein
Abraham Bernstein is a full Professor at the Department of Information Technology (Institut für Informatik) of the University of Zurich. He conducts research on various aspects of supporting dynamic (intra- and inter-) organizational processes. His work draws from both social science (organizational psychology/sociology) and technical (computer science, artificial intelligence) foundations.
Before coming to Zurich he was an Assistant Professor, at the Information Systems Department in New York University’s Stern School of Business, and received a Ph.D. at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where he worked with Prof. Thomas W. Malone at the Center for Coordination Science.
Duration : 0:56:52
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Google Tech Talks
June, 26 2008
ABSTRACT
The Semantic Web presents the vision of a distributed, dynamically growing knowledge base founded on formal logic. Common users, however, seem to have problems even with the simplest Boolean
expression. So how can we help users to query a web of logic that they do not seem to understand? One frequently proposed solution to address this problem is the use of natural language (NL) for
knowledge specification and querying. We propose to regard formal query languages and NL as two extremes of a continuum, where semistructured languages lie somewhere in the middle.
To evaluate what degree of structuredness casual users prefer, we introduce four query interfaces, each at a different point in the continuum, and evaluate the users’ preference and their query performance in a study with 48 subjects. The results of the study reveal that while the users dislike the constraints of a fully
structured formal query language they also seem at a loss with the freedom of a full NLP approach. This suggests that restricted query languages will be preferred by casual users because of their
guidance effect, mirroring findings from social science theory on human activity in general.
Speaker: Prof. Bernstein
Abraham Bernstein is a full Professor at the Department of Information Technology (Institut für Informatik) of the University of Zurich. He conducts research on various aspects of supporting dynamic (intra- and inter-) organizational processes. His work draws from both social science (organizational psychology/sociology) and technical (computer science, artificial intelligence) foundations.
Before coming to Zurich he was an Assistant Professor, at the Information Systems Department in New York University’s Stern School of Business, and received a Ph.D. at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where he worked with Prof. Thomas W. Malone at the Center for Coordination Science.
Duration : 0:56:52
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Google Tech Talks
July 15, 2008
ABSTRACT
Org-mode is a large Emacs sub-systems that has been integrated into
Emacs with the version 22.1 release. From it original intend,
Org-mode is a system for structured note-taking and project planning.
It uses strictly plain text files, making it a truly portable,
system-independent solution. The project-planning features are
implemented using a fairly simple outlining paradigm, upon which
meta-data concepts like due dates, priorities, TODO states and tags
are overlayed in a non-intrusive way. Besides outlining the system
and its basic concepts, I will give background information into the
history of Org-mode and discuss the properties of such an evolved
system compared to a top-down designed one. Finally, I will also
briefly touch on some technical aspects that may be interesting for
Emacs wizards and developers.
Speaker: Carsten Dominik
Duration : 0:46:56
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