MIT: Independent Activities Period: IAP

IAP 2013



A Hands-on Introduction to Gesture Recognition & Machine Learning

Nick Gillian, Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Media Lab

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/07
Limited to 14 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Basic knowledge of c++ (or Java)

This three-day workshop presents a very hands-on introduction to gesture recognition and machine learning, with an emphasis on providing the participants of the workshop the opportunity to experience for themselves the power and flexibility of a number of machine-learning algorithms using free open-source software (www.nickgillian.com/software/grt).  Participants will get numerous opportunities throughout the workshop to build their own gesture-recognition based systems, using their own computers, sensors, and gestures.

Participants for this workshop do not require any prior knowledge of machine learning or gesture recognition, as the fundamentals of these topics will be reviewed in the opening section of the workshop.  Participants should have very basic experience in programming in c++ (or Java).  Experience in creating software using OpenFrameworks is a bonus, but not required.  Participants are encouraged to bring along their own sensor/input devices (i.e. Kinects, Wii-motes, custom-made hardware) and laptops.

Participants should only apply to this workshop if they can attend all three days.

Contact: Nicholas Gillian, E14-574B, 508 310-3672, NGILLIAN@MEDIA.MIT.EDU


Gesture Recognition - Day 1

Jan/08 Tue 10:00AM-04:00PM E14-240, Bring your laptop (running OSX or Windows)

Day 1 of the workshop will introduce participants to the fundamentals of machine learning and gesture recognition and introduce the gesture-recognition toolkit that will be used throughout the workshop.  Participants will then get the opportunity to use the toolkit to build their own basic gesture-recognition system (using a Kinect as the input to the toolkit).

Nick Gillian - Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Media Lab


Gesture Recognition - Day 2

Jan/09 Wed 10:00AM-04:00PM E14-240, Bring your own laptop (running OSX or Windows)

Day 2 of the workshop will focus on more advanced gesture-recognition techniques, such as developing custom feature-extraction algorithms.  The participants will get the opportunity to write their own custom feature-extraction algorithm and use this to build a system that can recognize more complex gestures.

Nick Gillian - Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Media Lab


Gesture Recognition - Day 3

Jan/10 Thu 09:00AM-05:00PM E14-240, Bring your own laptop (running OSX or Windows)

Day 3 of the workshop will give the participants an opportunity to create a much larger-scale interactive system that is controlled exclusively using gestures.  Participants will work in small teams (of 2-3 people) to create their own, gesturally controlled, interactive system.  Each team will then get an opportunity to present their system to a public audience at the end of the session.

Nick Gillian - Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Media Lab