Undergraduate Research
Robotics, Automation and Dance Lab
I performed my undergraduate research with the Dr. Amy LaVier's Robotics, Automation and Dance Lab in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Illinois. In my first semester I performed an independent study and in the second semester I worked with another undergraduate researcher, Omar Darwish and a graduate mentor, Roshni Kaushik.
Independent Study
The aim of the independent study was to better understand human motion by simplifying it into lower degrees of freedom skeletons. To do this, I used Microsoft Kinect software which allowed me to superimpose the skeleton on humans. I also designed a user study to understand how people interpreted the imitation of human motion. The users were required to rate the imitation as observed in the video where I had asked the person represented by the green skeleton to follow the person represented by the red skeleton.
Research
The second semester as an Undergraduate Research assistant, my colleague Omar Darwish and I used the motion capture system to live stream data via the Motive software. This data would then be used to run a Python program written by our graduate mentor Roshni Kaushik to generate 3 degree of freedom skeletons which would track the verticality of the skeleton. Through this project, I gained expertise in using the LINUX system, Robotics Operating System and gained familiarity with the Motion Capture environment.