Manfred Lau Researcher JST ERATO Igarashi Design Interface Project Tokyo Japan manfred.lau@gmail.com

I am a post-doc researcher working with Prof. Takeo Igarashi at the JST ERATO Igarashi Design Interface Project. I recently completed my Ph.D. in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, under the supervision of Prof. James Kuffner. I received my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in 2003 at Yale University. My research interests are in sketch-based modeling, computer animation, robotics, motion planning, and machine learning.

Research
		Face Poser: Interactive Modeling of 3D Facial Expressions Using Facial Priors We present an intuitive interface for posing 3D facial expressions interactively. This is a new journal version of our earlier work. Manfred Lau, Jinxiang Chai, Ying-Qing Xu, and Heung-Yeung Shum. Face Poser: Interactive Modeling of 3D Facial Expressions Using Facial Priors, ACM Transactions on Graphics, 29(1), Article 3, 2009. Project page
		Modeling Spatial and Temporal Variation in Motion Data Given a few input examples of a type of motion, this system learns a model that can generate spatial and temporal variants of the inputs. Manfred Lau, Ziv Bar-Joseph, and James Kuffner. Modeling Spatial and Temporal Variation in Motion Data, ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH ASIA 2009), 28(5), 2009. Project page
		Face Poser: Interactive Modeling of 3D Facial Expressions Using Model Priors We present an intuitive interface for posing 3D facial expressions interactively. Please see the new journal version of this work above. Manfred Lau, Jinxiang Chai, Ying-Qing Xu, and Heung-Yeung Shum. Face Poser: Interactive Modeling of 3D Facial Expressions Using Model Priors, ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, 2007. Project page
		Animation Theatre piece on Behavior Planning This is a fun animation of an explorer, skateboarder, dancer, and a herd of babies navigating through an obstacle course. We use our Behavior Planning framework to automatically generate their motion. Manfred Lau, James Kuffner, and Moshe Mahler. A Behavior Planning Framework for Efficient Character Animation, Eurographics Animation Theatre, 2007. Animation page
		Precomputed Search Trees: Planning for Interactive Goal-Driven Animation We present a "Precomputed Search Trees" technique that can synthesize motion much faster than real-time. The main idea is to precompute a search tree of motion clips. The best available solution paths and motion sequences can then be efficiently extracted during runtime. Manfred Lau and James Kuffner. Precomputed Search Trees: Planning for Interactive Goal-Driven Animation, ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, Vienna, Austria, 2006. Project page
		Behavior Planning for Character Animation We use planning techniques and motion capture data to automatically generate natural motion for animated characters. Manfred Lau and James Kuffner. Behavior Planning for Character Animation, ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, Los Angeles, CA, 2005. Project page
		Footstep Planning for the Honda ASIMO Humanoid We present a footstep planner for the Honda ASIMO humanoid robot that plans a sequence of footstep positions to navigate toward a goal location while avoiding obstacles. Joel Chestnutt, Manfred Lau, German Cheung, James Kuffner, Jessica Hodgins, and Takeo Kanade. Footstep Planning for the Honda ASIMO Humanoid, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, April, 2005. Project page

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