Kanav Kahol Website

Kanav Kahol
1016 S Mariana Street #3
Tempe, Arizona, 85281, USA.
Phone: 1-480-332-0919 , 1-480-727-3612
Email:

Website: http://www.public.asu.edu/~kkahol

Objective

To seek a faculty position in a leading university.

Brief Research Statement

The primary aim of my research is to design, develop, and test intelligent, touch-based human-computer interfaces. Hardware and software that allows touch-based interactions between humans and computers (called haptic user interfaces, where haptics refers to the science of touch) are a recent addition to multimodal systems. My recent focus has been on the development of haptic user interfaces for distal environment perception. While the haptic modality is useful for spatial tasks such as object recognition and texture perception, a major limitation is that haptic perception is limited by the reach of the limbs –a spatial region defined as the kinesphere. I have developed a novel methodology for capturing distal environmental information from outside the kinesphere, and presenting it to a person through a haptic user interface. I have focused my research on the application domain of assistive devices for individuals who are blind. This focus has allowed me to (1) conduct basic research on the relationship between spatial perception in the visual and haptic modality, (2) develop an assistive system for distal environmental perception, and (3) develop novel algorithms for multipoint haptic rendering and haptic cueing. In collaborative projects with Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix and the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, this research is currently being extended to (1) surgical training and objective evaluation, (2) assistive devices for patients with Parkinson’s disease and painful diabetic neuropathy. These collaborations have strengthened our research team’s confidence in the applicability of our research across various domains. Full Research Statement.

Brief Teaching Statement

My primary focus in teaching a class is to communicate the basics and encourage the student’s ability to visualize, hypothesize and solve problems that they may encounter as a researcher or as an engineer. Research in Multimedia, has taught me the value of strong theoretical background in computer science and its use in designing systems and algorithms. My professors and peers have been instrumental in strengthening my theoretical foundations. I hope to continue this effort and aid the learning process in my students. As an instructor, I am interested in teaching and developing courses in multimedia, haptic user interfaces, computational neurosciences and multimodal human computer interfaces. I hope to continue teaching multimedia course such as image processing, computer vision and multimedia information systems. My interest in teaching courses on user interfaces stems from my research. Haptic user interfaces is a developing field and I intend to design and develop a graduate level course that explains the basics of designing haptic applications. Full Teaching Statement

Educational Background

Graduate Studies

Arizona State University (ASU) PhD, Computer Science,
Thesis Advisor. Dr. Sethuraman
Panchanathan,
Thesis Title. Distal object
perception through haptic user
interfaces
Fall 2005 4.1/4

Arizona State University MS, Computer Science,
Thesis Advisor. Dr. Sethuraman
Panchanathan,
Thesis Title. Gesture segmentation
in complex motion sequences
Summer 2003 3.7/4

Undergraduate Studies

Guru Nanak Dev Engineering
College, Ludhiana, Punjab India
B. Tech Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Spring 2001 3.9/4

Awards and Honors

1. Biography listed in who’s who in America 2006.
2. Awarded the second position ($4000) in Arizona State University Entrepreneur 2003, competition for presenting a business case for technologies in the field of real-time motion capture.
3. Nominated for the best student paper award at the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing 2003, held in Barcelona Spain. The paper titled Gesture Segmentation in Complex Motion Sequences is selected for oral presentation.

Professional memberships and synergistic activities

Grants and Proposal Writing

1. NSF, Information and Intelligent Systems, Universal Access, SGER: Incorporation of a psychological basis of haptics in the design of assistive haptic user interfaces, $196,574 Award Id : 0554698
2. The Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), Pre-Proposal for Collaborative Projects on Virtual Reality and Motion Analysis Based Surgical Training, with Doctors from Banner Samaritan (Dr. Leibowitz, Dr Panchanathan co-PI) (to be submitted) 3. National Institute of Justice, Solicitation on Sensor, Surveillance, and Biometrics Technologies for Criminal Justice, “Adding Biometric Capabilities to Existing Surveillance Systems”, $800,000 Dr. Panchanathan Lead PI (. Accepted for Final phase of selection)
4. NSF , Information and Intelligent Systems, Distal object perception through haptic user interfaces: a collaborative and interactive approach for the development of informational assistive devices. $750,000 Dr Panchanathan Lead PI (did not get accepted. Panel rating competitive)
5. NSF Universal Access Call, P3: Perceive, Process and Present Distal Environmental Information to Individuals Who Are Blind, $450,000 Dr Panchanathan Lead PI (did not get accepted panel rating: very good)

Interdisciplinary Collaborators and Partners

1. Mayo Clinic Scottsdale.
2. Barrow Neurological Institute Phoenix
3. Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, Phoenix
4. ASU Psychology Department.
5. ASU Arts and Media Engineering

Professional Memberships

1. IEEE Student member. computer society, robotics and automation society, computational intelligence society, Task committee on Multimedia 2001-Present
2. ACM student member SIGCHI member
3. Member ASU Ethics Club. Organization committee of the Ethics of Entertainment Conference held in Tempe, Arizona Oct 22nd-23rd 2005.
4. Member ASU AIESEC Chapter

Editing/Reviewing
1. Served as a reviewer for The 3rd International Conference on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies CCCT 2005 held in Austin Texas.
2. Served as a reviewer for the seventh international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility conference (ASSETS 2005) held in Baltimore, MD from October 9-12 2005.

Work History

1. Spring 2004, 2005. Faculty Associate Computer Science Department, Arizona State University. The primary role of this position was to teach the Multimedia Information Systems class.
2. August 2003-Present. Research assistant at Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC), working under the supervision of Dr S Panchanathan, Chair Computer Science Department Arizona State University, The primary role of this position was to conduct research
on haptic user interfaces and write grants and publications pertaining to haptics.
3. August 2001-August 2003. Research Assistant at Center for Research in Ubiquitous Computing (CubiC) and Arts and Media Engineering (AME) at Arizona State University. The primary role of this position was to conduct research on human motion analysis pertaining to dance. The research conducted was employed to develop multimedia presentation of modern art dance pieces by choreographers, Bill T Jones and Bebe Miller. (http://ame.asu.edu/motione/)
4. January 2000-May 2001. Multimedia and Telecommunication Engineer Intern, Siemens Public Communication Private Limited, India. The primary role was to develop a business case for the national long distance market in India and suggest technologies and strategies for Siemens to enter the long distance market in India.

Research

Research Interests

• Haptic User Interfaces, haptic rendering and haptic devices (Haptics refers to science of touch)
• Assistive and rehabilitative systems
• Neurological and psychological basis of haptics and multimodality

Current Research

1. Distal object perception through haptic user interfaces. Design, development and testing of haptic user interfaces that convey information about remote environments. This research includes

a. Assistive Devices. Development of an assistive system for individuals who are blind to perceive and present distal environments through haptic user interfaces. (2 J, 11 C)
b. Development of rehabilitative and assistive cueing systems. Design and test haptic cueing systems that enable cue based communication between systems and users. The systems can be designed to cue the user about environmental information, memory related events etc. (1J, 5C)
c. Understanding psychological basis of haptics. Design and conduct psychological experiments that reveal the basis of haptic perception and incorporation of this knowledge in the design of haptic user interfaces. (2C)
d. Visio-haptic processing. Design of novel algorithms that can sense visual environments and objects and convert them to haptic representations (3C)
e. Automatic hand movement analysis. Development of computational engines that can analyze hand movement used to sense an object haptically and predict haptic features the object and user’s style of exploration (2J, 4C)
f. Haptic Rendering and Computer Graphics. Development of a novel haptic cueing techniques that can convey information about remote environments in a fast and efficient manner. Development of novel haptic rendering techniques based on perceptual parameterization of haptic surfaces. Development of haptic visualization engines that present purely visual features such as colors haptically. (2J, 11C)

2. Design of hand movement analysis and haptic feedback based surgical training system. Development of an automatic hand movement analysis system that provides real time haptic feedback through gloves to surgical trainees on the conducted hand movement and its measures against predefined standards of efficiency. (1C)

3. Neural and physical rehabilitation. Design of virtual reality and augmented reality scenarios to aid in neural rehabilitation of patients with hemispatial neglect, diabetic neuropathy, Parkinson’s disease and constrain induced movement therapy. (2C)

Previous Research

1. Human motion analysis. Developing algorithms and analysis geared towards structure discovery in human motion and development of notation for human motion. Involved in the Motione project, which brings together experts in the field of dance, music and computer science for development of movement notation. (2J, 4C)

2. Characterization of Visual Content. Image content characterization using novel techniques based on Visual cognition models. Applications include face recognition, image description, scene analysis and gesture description for individuals who are blind and deaf blind. (5C)

3. Face Recognition and Characterizations. Development of a methodology to evaluate performance of face recognition algorithms. Use of words to characterize and describe faces. Developed mahalanobis distance based face recognition algorithm. (2C)
*The numbers in parenthesis represents the number of publications. C refers to conferences and J refers to journals

Teaching

New Course Development

Invited Talk

1. Kahol K., “Designing haptic user interfaces for medical applications”, Industrial Designers Society of America National Conference and Design Gallery held in Washington DC August 24th-27th 2005.

Papers and Publications

Journal Papers

K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, “Documenting Motion Sequences: Development of a Personalized Annotation System”, accepted for publication in IEEE Multimedia Magazine.

K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "Recognizing Human Movements through Human Anatomy Based Coupled Hidden Markov Models", accepted for publication in International Journal on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, Pentagram Publications, India

K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "What can movement tell us about haptics?", submitted for review in ACM Journal of Applied Perception June 2005

K Kahol, P Tripathi, T McDaniel, S Panchanathan, “Haptic User Interfaces”, to be submitted for review in IEEE Multimedia magazine 2005

K Kahol, P Tripathi, T McDaniel, S Panchanathan, “P3: Perceive, Process and Present distal environmental information to individuals who are blind”, to be submitted for review in IEEE transactions on rehabilitation

Conference Papers
Papers sent for Review

1. Kahol K., Hansford, D., Panchanathan, S., “Methodology to augment realistic haptic rendering for efficient perception in exclusively haptic environments”, submitted for review at IEEE Haptics Symposium to be held in Georgia Atlanta march 2006.

Published Papers.

1. K Kahol, S Panchanathan, "Biologically inspired haptic virtual reality", accepted for publication at International Conference on Cognitive Systems, New Delhi Dec 12-14th 2005.

2. McDaniel T, Kahol K, Tripathi P, Panchanathan S: Visio-Haptic database of objects for automatic content creation in multimodal environments published. In: IEEE International Workshop on Haptics and Audio Visual Environment: 2005; Ottawa Canada 2005.

3. Kahol K, Tripathi P, Panchanathan S: Hand anatomy based modeling of manual haptic gestures (submitted for review). In: International Conference on Cognition and Recognition: 2005; Hyderabad, India 2005.

4. Kahol K., Smith M., Ferrara J., Tripathi P., Leibowitz A., Panchanathan S., Gesture Based Hand Movement Analysis and Haptic Feedback for Surgical Training (submitted for review), at Medicine Meets Virtual Reality Long Beach California 2006.

5. D. Homa, K. Kahol, P. Tripathi, L. Bratton, S. Panchanathan, "Acquisition of haptic concepts by individuals who are blind" accepted for presentation at Psychonomics 2005 Meeting

6. K Kahol, "Distal environment perception through haptic user interfaces for individuals who are blind", doctoral consortium submission for ACM ASSETS 2005.

7. S. Panchanathan, K. Kahol, P. Tripathi, T. McDaniel, "Conversion of Visual data into Haptic Information.", poster at IEEE Sensor, Signal and Information Processing Workshop, Tempe, Arizona, USA

8. K Kahol, P Tripathi, T McDaniel, S Panchanathan, "Modeling Context in Haptic Perception, Rendering and Visualization”, accepted for publication at ACM International Workshop on Multimedia Information Systems to be held in Sorrento, Italy 2005.

9 . K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, “Rendering Block Diagrams Accessible through Audio-Haptic interface”, accepted for publication at IEEE First International Workshop on Computer Vision Applications for visually impaired, to be held in conjunction with IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition at San Diego, 2005.

10. K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "Tactile Cueing in Haptic Visualization", accepted for publication at ACM CHI 2005 Workshop/Conference on Haptic Visualization to be held in April 2005 in Portland Oregon.

11. K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, " Haptic User Interfaces: Design, testing and evaluation of haptic cueing systems to convey shape, weight, material and texture information", accepted for publication at International Conference on Human-Computer Interfaces to be held in Las Vegas, May 2005

12. P Tripathi, K Kahol, L Baxter, T McDaniel, A Baker and S Panchanathan," Rehabilitation of patients with hemispatial neglect using visual-haptic feedback in virtual reality environment ", accepted for publication at International Conference on Human-Computer Interfaces to be held in Las Vegas, May 2005

13. K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, " Recognizing Whole Body Movements and Gestures through Activities in Human Anatomy", published at International Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, January 6-9th Hyderabad India

14. K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan and M Goldberg, "Formalizing Cognitive and Motor Strategy of Haptic Exploratory Movements of Individuals who are blind", presented at IEEE Haptic Audio Visual Environment Workshop HAVE 2004 to be held in Ottawa, Canada 2004.

15. K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "Computational Analysis of Mannerism Gestures", accepted for publication at IEEE IAPR International Conference on Pattern Recognition, to be held in Cambridge UK.

16. K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "Automated Segmentation of Gestures from Dance Sequences", accepted for publication at IEEE Face and Gesture Recognition 2004 to be held in Seoul Korea May 17th-19th 2004.

17. J Black, K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "Indexing natural images for retrieval based on Kansei", Accepted for publication at Human Vision and Electronic Imaging conference 2004

18. S Panchanathan, J Black, P Tripathi, K Kahol, "Cognitive Multimedia Computing", published in IEEE International Symposium on Information Science and Electrical Engineering 2003 (ISEE 2003), November 13--15, 2003, ACROS Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan

19. J Black, K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "Visual Concept Derivation from Natural Scenery Images Using Lexical Basis Functions, Multidimensional Scaling, and Density Clustering", accepted for publication at IEEE Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2003. Click Here for clusters

20. K Kahol, P Tripathi, S Panchanathan, "Gesture Segmentation in Complex Motion Sequences", accepted for publication at IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, 2003 to be held in Barcelona, Spain.

21. J Black, K Kahol, G Fahmy, P Kuchi, S Panchanathan , "Characterizing the high-level content of natural images using lexical basis functions" , accepted at Human Vision and Electronic Imaging Conference SPIE 2003, Santa Clara

22.J Black, K Kahol, P Kuchi, S Panchanathan , "The use of lexical basis functions to characterize faces, and to measure their perceived similarity" , ICONIP 2002 Singapore

23. J. Black, M. Gargesha, K. Kahol, P. Kuchi , S. Panchanathan, "A Framework for Performance Evaluation of Face Recognition Algorithms ", published in the proceedings of the Conference on ITCOM, Internet Multimedia Systems II, July 2002.