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Christopher R. Wren

MIT E.E.C.S. Department
MIT Media Laboratory Vision and Modeling Group

machines have visited these pages so far.

Education

S.M., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996
S.B., Computer Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1993
Western Reserve Academy , 1989

Experience

Research Assistant
MIT Media Laboratory Vision and Modeling Group 1994-present

Engineer and Dynamicist
Boston Dynamics Inc. 1993-4

Undergraduate Researcher
MIT Media Laboratory Advanced Human Interface Group 1989-93

Affiliations

Academic Interests

I work with Prof. Pentland and his students. I am working on a project to aid human motion tracking through the marriage of dynamic and behavioral models with machine vision. Knowledge of the constraints on human motion should increase the computer's ability to track and interpret people.

Hopefully the result will be better vision-based human/computer interfaces. Eventually better interfaces could lead to many less-invasive, natural, human uses for computers.

Here is a transcript of my 1997 TTT consortium meeting statement.

Here is a more detailed statement.

Here are lists of Demonstrations, Publications, and Technical Reports:

Live Demonstrations

Live demonstrations of technology in settings where hundreds to thousands of people actually get inside the tech and try it out, while several thousand people see it in action. Big demos. Not listed here are the uncountable multitude of demos to the individuals and small groups of sponsors who come to the Lab in search of enlightenment.

Netrek Collective: Using wireless perceptual technologies to provide a high-level, natural interface to a very complex system. Work in progress.
Wearable City of News: A wearable, context-sensitive, information tool. SIGGRAPH99 Millennium Motel.
Shall We Dance: Wireless 3D body tracking and on-line animation and dance-oriented telepresence at SIGGRAPH98 Enhanced Realities.
Toco the Toucan: Wireless 3D body tracking and on-line audio-visual learning at the SIGGRAPH97 Electric Garden.
Smart Spaces: Wireless 3D body tracking for animation, information manipulation, and motion-understanding applications at the SIGGRAPH96 Digital Bayou
Dreams and Illusions: Wireless 2D body tracking for enhanced telepresence and art at SIGGRAPH95. Immersive telepresence between MIT and the conference floor in Los Angeles.
Trans-Atlantic SURVIVE: Wireless 2D body tracking for immersive telepresence in the context of multi-player Doom. One installation at MIT, one at BT Laboratories, Martlesham Heath, England, for the Schools Lecture series. Fall 1994.

Publications

Peer-reviewed publications, including those currently in press.

Dynaman: Recursive Modeling of Human Motion: Christopher R. Wren and Alex P. Pentland
To appear in: Image and Vision Computing
Understanding Purposeful Human Motion: Christopher R. Wren, Brian P. Clarkson, and Alex P. Pentland
Fourth IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Grenoble, France, March 26-30, 2000
Combining Audio and Video in Perceptive Spaces: Christopher R. Wren, Sumit Basu, Flavia Sparacino, Alex P. Pentland
First International Workshop on Managing Interactions in Smart Environments, Dublin, Ireland, December 13-14, 1999
Real-time 3D Motion Capture: Thanarat Horprasert, Ismail Haritaoglu, David Harwood, Larry Davis, Christopher Wren, Alex Pentland
Workshop on Perceptual User Interfaces, San Francisco, Calif., November 4-6, 1998
Dynamic Modeling of Human Motion: Christopher R. Wren and Alex P. Pentland
Proceedings of the Third IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Nara, Japan, April 14-16, 1998
Perceptive Spaces for Performance and Entertainment (Revised): Christopher R. Wren, Flavia Sparacino, Ali J. Azarbayejani, Trevor J. Darrell, James W. Davis, Thad E. Starner, Akira Kotani, Chloe M. Chao, Michal Hlavac, Kenneth B. Russell, Aaron Bobick, Alex P. Pentland
ATR Workshop on Virtual Communication Environments: Bridges over Art/Kansei and VR Technologies, Kyoto, Japan, April 13, 1998
Perceptive Spaces: Learning Dynamic Models of Human Behavior: Christopher R. Wren, Sumit Basu, Alex P. Pentland
Workshop on Perceptual User Interfaces, Banff, Canada, October 19-21, 1997
Perceptive Spaces for Performance and Entertainment: Untethered Interaction using Computer Vision and Audition: Christopher R. Wren, Flavia Sparacino, Ali J. Azarbayejani, Trevor J. Darrell, Thad E. Starner, Akira Kotani, Chloe M. Chao, Michal Hlavac, Kenneth B. Russell, Alex P. Pentland
Applied Artificial Intelligence, June 1997, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 267-284.
Improvisational Theater Space: Flavia Sparacino, Kristin Hall, Christopher Wren, Glorianna Davenport, and Alex Pentland, The Sixth Biennial Symposium for Arts and Technology, Connecticut College, New London, CT, February 27 - March 2, 1997.
Real-time 3-D Tracking of the Human Body: Ali Azarbayejani, Christopher Wren, Alex Pentland
Proceedings of IMAGE'COM 96, Bordeaux, France, May 1996
Pfinder: Real-Time Tracking of the Human Body: Christopher R. Wren, Ali Azarbayejani, Trevor Darrell, and Alex Pentland
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
July 1997, vol 19, no 7, pp. 780-785.
HyperPlex: a World of 3D Interactive Digital Movies: Flavia Sparacino, Christopher Wren, Alex Pentland, and Glorianna Davenport
Proc. of IJCAI'95 Workshop on Entertainment and AI/Alife. Montreal, Quebec. pp. 77-81. August 1995.

Unpublished Reports

Technical reports that have not (yet) appeared in a peer-reviewed collection, as well as class projects and other academic articles.

Understanding Expressive Action: Christopher R. Wren
E.E.C.S. Ph.D Thesis
Calibrating a Sony EVI-D30: Christopher R. Wren
Perspective Transform Estimation: an on-line companion to A Plane Measuring Device by A. Criminisi, I. Reid, and A. Zisserman: Christopher R. Wren
RemoteCompute: Distributed Computing with Java: Christopher R. Wren and Scott D. Schneider
Parallel Scientific Computing Class Project.

When I'm not working or sleeping, I try to have a life. Find out more about it.

Take a look at my Photo Gallery .

Friend or relative looking for family photos? Take the shortcut to the Chris' Family section.

I don't get a chance to read for pleasure as much as I'd like to. Here are some recent titles that I liked:

Here are some web toys you can play with:

My head rendered in VRML thanks to Ken Russel.
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Services

Banner Days

Saturday, January 1st, 2000 the world didn't end. Maybe now we can get on with life and everyone can get off the backs of the computer scientists. Maybe people will actually be so embarrassed for taking part in the Luddite hysteria that they'll be more willing to explore how technology can improve their lives.
Thursday, November 11th, 1999 Blizzard announced that Diablo II won't be out until early 2000. This would be a bad thing if I weren't trying to graduate in December. As it is, this works out nicely - thanks Blizzard!

Black Days

Can't think of any - I'm a good mood.

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