Dr.
Jun OHYAProfessor of GITI, Waseda University (April 2000)
Doctor of Engineering (The University of Tokyo)
Fields of Research:
Image processing
Computer vision
Virtual reality
Multimedia
Pattern recognition
Research Interests and Some Personal Info.:
I was born in Tokyo on September 29, 1954. I obtained B.S. and M.S. degrees in Precision Machinery Engineering from the University of Tokyo. After I entered NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.) Telecommunication Laboratories, I switched my technical area and worked in image processing and image representation.
Based on the results from those projects, I was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo in 1988. Soon after this, NTT sent me to the University of Maryland, Maryland, U.S.A. as a visiting research associate for one year. The stay was very exciting and valuable for me, as I experienced an international atmosphere and became acquainted with many people.Since 1992, when I transferred to Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in the Kansai science city, I have been studying the integration of virtual reality and telecommunication. During my first 4 years, I worked on building the Virtual Space Teleconferencing, a combination of virtual reality and teleconferencing. Since I became a department head of ATR Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratories in 1996, I have been researching how to generate virtual communication environments through which remotely located people can communicate with each other. I supervise projects on the component technologies needed for realizing the above-mentioned virtual communication environments: how to create virtual scenes, recognize human images, and synthesize the recognized human images
into the virtual scenes. In addition, we try to propose new concepts that can be applied to virtual communication environments, e.g.
Virtual Metamorphosis system, in which anyone can change his/her form to any other form in a virtual scene. To conduct these kinds of projects, not only research in engineering fields such as computer vision, virtual reality, and computer graphics, but integrating art and technologies ("Art & Technology", a new paradigm) is also useful. We always set challenging new targets so that we can lead the world in our field.ATR is a very academic and international research institute. So far, I have been working with many foreign visiting researchers and students. I am collaborating with several foreign universities that are conducting cutting-edge projects. I have played some important roles in academic activities, for example as an organizer of IEEE and ACM's international conferences. Presenting papers at international conferences and exhibiting our demonstration systems at events like SIGGRAPH (the largest international conference in computer graphics. Every year, approximately 50,000 people attend) are very exciting and useful for me. After participating in these activities, I feel that it is important that education and research in Japan should be more international.
My hobbies include classical music (recently, mainly listening; I used to play the classical guitar), traveling, sports (recently, mainly watching; I used to ski and play tennis, golf, and ping pong), and English conversation. My family: my wife Kanako and my daughter Saki (born on January 21, 2000).
Biographical Information:
E-mail: gits@list.waseda.ac.jp
Project Summary:
Image processing and computer vision technologies needed for realizing multimedia based communication and virtual reality systems are researched. More specifically, analysis / synthesis of scenes, merging real images and CG images, analysis / synthesis of moving objects such as humans, etc. are studied.
Publications:
"Virtual Factory: challenges to future factories," Edited by E. Nakamachi, Kogyo-chosa-kai, (1994.6) (J. Ohya wrote Section 3.4
"Communication and VF (pp.151-166)) (in Japanese)"Mixed Reality - Merging Real and Virtual Worlds," Edited by Yuichi Ohta and Hideyuki Tamura, Ohmsha and Springer-Verlag, (1999.3) (J. Ohya wrote Section 16 "Virtual Reality Technologies for Multimedia Communications" (pp.285-300)).