Last week Ryan was invited to a five day workshop aimed at developing novel ideas and new directions in cyber-physical systems security. The workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Intel, brought together researchers from around the country to understand this space, develop research ideas, and generally brainstorm about the applications and issues surrounding this increasingly important area.

As part of the “getting to know you sessions”, we were asked to blindly draw a random person (the one seated across the table). The picture was Ryan’s caricature. We won’t reveal the artist, but the likeness is uncanny.

After finishing his undergraduate degree last spring at UCSD, Riley Yeakle has joined the Kastner group as its newest graduate student. As an undergraduate, Riley found the Engineers for Exploration group and dived into the world of remote imaging. As a student leader in Engineers for Exploration, Riley led development on the Intelligent Camera Trap, a robotic wildlife videographer, and the Tiger Tracker, a behavior monitoring system for the tigers at the San Diego Zoo. Riley even spent a summer in the District with the National Geographic Society working on the CritterCam, a camera collar for animals used to study animal behavior from a first person perspective in the wild. Work on these projects strongly influenced Riley’s research interests in machine learning, ecological sensor networks, and embedded computer vision.

A true Californian, Riley rock climbs, hikes, surfs, and plays Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu outside of school. In the Kastner Group, Riley is continuing his trend of creating technologies for exploration by developing acoustic localization algorithms for the SIO autonomous underwater explorers.

Ryan and Riley spent much of the past month working with 19 outstanding high school students as part of the UCSD COSMOS program. These students in Cluster 1: Computers in Everyday Life were exposed to topics in computer science and electrical engineering while developing Android applications, programming robotics, and developing embedded systems using Arduinos. Their final projects were outstanding, and highlighted in an article from the Qualcomm Institute and UCSD CSE Department. We are sure that these students will go on to do great things, and we hope to see them in the future. For more information, including pictures and videos of the various projects throughout the summer, feel free to check out the blog.

A recent Xconomy article discussed Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference; its move from San Diego to the Bay Area; and the changes in Qualcomm’s mobile OS strategy. Ryan provided some thoughts into these issues and some insight into Qualcomm’s future markets.

Our group was awarded a one year grant to aimed to develop robust 3D imaging techniques to study underwater archaeological sites. The grant, “Mapping and Visualizing Complex, Large-Scale Underwater Archaeological Sites and Artifacts” will extend the work done by Perry Naughton, Antonella Wilby and other Engineers for Exploration group members to create a multi-camera underwater system. The key contribution is to develop accurate localization in order to supplement the camera location information during the construction of the 3D models. Teledyne has generously loaned us an Explorer Doppler Velocity Log which we have coupled with an IMU, optical location techniques (e.g., optical flow), and acoustic ranging via buoys in order to get an accurate location lock for each picture taken. Press references [Qualcomm Institute, UCSD CSE]