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Nils T Siebel
Research Home Page

Principal areas of research: Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Image and Video Processing

News

The 6th International Workshop on Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems (ERLARS 2013) will take take place in Taormina, Italy on September 2 2013 in conjunction with the 12th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2013).
Meanwhile, the proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems (ERLARS 2012) have been published online. Please see the ERLARS 2012 site for details.

Contents of this page

1 Brief CV
2 Research Overview
2.1 Autonomous Robot Systems and Evolutionary Learning
2.2 People Tracking in Camera Images (Visual Surveillance)
2.3 Software Engineering
3 Publications
4 Software
4.1 The Reading People Tracker
4.2 PACLib
5 Contact Details

1 Brief CV

Below you will find information and other resources on my past and present research as well as relevant publications. This includes the source code of the Reading People Tracker which I am maintaining.

2 Research Overview

Following is a short overview over my main research areas.

2.1 Autonomous Robot Systems and Evolutionary Learning

Robot arm with camera
Since I started with robotics in 1997 I have worked on a number of algorithms to control robots, usually based on visual input, from academic research projects to industrial applications. The most prominent work is on Image-based Visual Servoing:
  1. using evolutionary reinforcement learning of neural networks for the controller, and
  2. using a Trust-Region-based approach to achieve a very high robustness to model errors and noise.
The evolutionary approach to neural network learning is explained on this page on Evolutionary Learning. Some results from both appraches can be found on this Autonomous Robots page.

2.2 People Tracking in Camera Images (Visual Surveillance)

Tracked people
The task was to develop a software for robust People Tracking in camera images for automatic visual surveillance systems. The research was carried out within the European Framework V project ADVISOR which was concerned with the development of an integrated visual surveillance and behaviour analysis system. The People Tracker developed within this project is based on the Leeds People Tracker which was developed by Adam Baumberg.
More information can be found on my dedicated People Tracking page.

2.3 Software Engineering

Between several software projects I was involved in the software quality differed enormously. Members of The University of Reading's Applied Software Engineering group and I had a closer look at the underlying reasons for these differences. The resulting research work covers the following questions:
Please have a look at the relevant publications for more details.

3 Publications

Most of my publications are available online. Please have a look at my Publications page for an overview.

4 Software

The following is a (short) list of software projects I am using and/or maintaining which are available online.

4.1 The Reading People Tracker

The Reading People Tracker was developed within my PhD project. It is a modular system for tracking people and other objects in video sequences. The main contribution is a powerful and scalable structure which has been achieved by a complete re-design and much refactoring of the underlying Leeds People Tracker, and the addition of new functionality, resulting in
The Reading People Tracker is still being maintained. Its C++ source code and documentation can be downloaded from the Reading People Tracker software home page.

4.2 PACLib

During my time in Kiel I have been using the PACLib - Perception-Action Components Library by the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel's Cognitive Systems Group to implement vision-based robot controllers and was one of the maintainers of that library.

5 Contact Details

Postal address

Nils T Siebel
Department of Engineering 1
HTW University of Applied Sciences Berlin
Wilhelminenhofstr. 75A
12459 Berlin
Germany

Electronic

E-Mail: nils AT siebel-res... etc
Please refrain from sending any type of unsolicited advertisement to the addresses given above.

Author of these pages: Nils T Siebel.
Last modified on Sun Aug 28 2011.
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