Nuo Ma

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. I am advised by Dr. R. Benjamin Knapp. My research interest is computer vision and mixed reality. Currently I'm working on Mirror Worlds Research Infrastructure.

I received my bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Shandong University in July 2014. From 2012-2013, I was a Research Assistant at Shandong University - Virginia Tech International Laboratory, dedicated to the study of bat biosonar from an engineering perspective.

News

2017-12:

Abstract submitted to ACM TOCHI special issue Human-Building Interaction.

2017-11:

Steelcase telepresence demo.

2017-11:

Virginia Science Festival volunteer.

2017-09:

Mirror Worlds Youtube Live is online!

2017-4:

Mirror Worlds Challenge website is online!

Research Project

• Mirror Worlds Research Infrastructure
  We track the locations of people in complex indoor settings using 35 ceiling mount fisheye cameras installed in Moss Art Center, Virginia Tech. The tracked information is represented in a Unity based model. Below is a real time representation of people currently in Moss Art Center.
  
  
• Mirror Worlds Dataset
  This is a multi-target multi-camera tracking dataset for computer vision research. Since the Mirror Worlds project is a complex computer vision task involving detection, tracking, person re-id. This benchmark helps us compare the effectiveness of different algorithms.
• Bat Flapping Wing Flight Reconstruction Using Low Cost Camera Rig
  The goal of this project was to measure and characterize the complex, articulated bat motion from multiple image sequences recorded from different viewpoints. We used 25 GoPro cameras to create a camera rig, which is low cost and delivers acceptable video quality. The problems we solved include illumination control, camera trigger and camera calibration.
  
• Data Acquisition System For Bat Ears and Noseleaves Motion Reconstruction
  Designed and implemented data acquisition systems involving cameras and ultrasonic sensors using NI DAQ & Labview. Implemented stereo reconstruction with OpenCV. Synchronized 3D motion and ultrasonic recordings provides quantitative analysis of the functional role of noseleaf motion in bat biosonar.
  
• Real-time Belief Propagation Based Stereo Reconstruction
  Project team leader of senior design. We equipped our experimental vehicle platform with stero high-resolution color and grayscale video cameras for data acquisition. We also implemented stereo matching algorithm Belief Propagation and parallelization with CUDA GPU for real-time disparity map computing.
  

Hobbies

I like travelling. According to a website called MyTravelMap, I've travelled to 10% of the world. The place I liked most is Aachen in Germany. Ja, ich spreche ein bisschen deutsch.

Music is a part of my life. I used to play accordion, my favourite piece is Mendelssohn Violin Concerto E Minor 3rd movement, yes use accordion. In high school and college, I participated in choir and won silver medal in World Choir Games mixed youth group, twice.