Avinash Kumar is a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois. His research focuses on camera calibration, computational imaging, and computer vision applications to railroad monitoring. He has developed new models and analytical solutions for small field of view camera calibration. His other research includes developing an omnifocus imaging technique, extracting shadows obscured by scattering media, and structure from motion for indoor scenes. He has also worked on a machine vision system to analyze gaps between freight loads on trains.

1. Avinash Kumar
Contact
Information
Computer Vision and Robotics Laboratory Phone: (+001) 217-819-2843
Electrical and Computer Engineering E-mail: avinash@illinois.edu
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign http://vision.ai.uiuc.edu/avi index.html
Illinois, 61820 USA
Education UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Ph.D. candidate, Electrical and Computer Engineering, January 2008 - January 2015(expected)
Title : Non-frontal Camera Calibration for Omnifocus Imaging and Scene Depth Estimation
Research Area: Camera calibration, depth from focus/defocus, computational imaging, struc-
ture from motion, vision applications to railroad.
Thesis Committee: Prof. Narendra Ahuja (chair), Prof. Thomas S. Huang, Prof. Minh N.
Do, Prof. Stephen E. Levinson
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, HYDERABAD
Dual Degree (B.Tech. and M.S. by Research), Computer Science, July 2001 - December 2007
M.S. Thesis: Imaging and Depth Estimation in an Optimization Framework
Advisor: Prof. C. V. Jawahar
Research
Experience
Engineering Intern, Sure

2. eld (3D Vision based real estate startup)
May 2014 - August 2014 : Structure from motion for indoor scenes.
Research Intern, Computational Imaging Group, Rambus (host: Dr. David G. Stork)
May 2012 - August 2012 : Extraction of shadow details in transmissive media using structured light.
May 2013 - August 2013 : Point spread function calibration for a lens-less imaging system.
Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Visiting Scholar in Computer Vision and Robotics Lab (Prof. Narendra Ahuja)
January 2006 - December 2006
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research Assistant in Computer Vision and Robotics Lab (Prof. Narendra Ahuja)
January 2008 - present
Honors IAPR Piero Zamperoni Best Student Paper Award at International Conference on Pattern Recog-
nition (ICPR 2014)
IAPR Conference Travel Grant to attend International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR
2014)
UIUC Conference Travel Grant to attend International Conference on Computational Photogra-
phy (ICCP 2013)
TA Stewart-Dyer Prize/Frederick Harvey Trevithick Prize 2007 from IMechE for the paper title
Machine vision analysis of the energy eciency of intermodal freight trains
Recipient of National Talent Search Scholarship (NTSE 1998) awarded to top 0.5% of over 150,000
students based on a nationwide test conducted by the NCERT, India for higher studies.
Secured 1st rank among all students in my district appearing in all India (CBSE 1998) Secondary
School Exams for 10th grade.
Quali

3. ed for scholarship from SAIL for scoring highest aggregate in my city in all India (CBSE
1998) Secondary School Exams for 10th grade.
Received certi

4. cate of merit from the Indian government for being in top 0.1% in Maths score in
all India (CBSE 1998) Secondary School Exams for 10th grade.

5. Publications
(Accepted)
1. Avinash Kumar and Narendra Ahuja. Generalized Radial Alignment Constraint for Camera
Calibration, International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), August 2014, Stockholm,
Sweden.[Oral] [Piero Zamperoni Best Student Paper Award]
2. Avinash Kumar and Narendra Ahuja. Non-frontal Camera Calibration using Focal Stack
Imagery, International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), August 2014, Stockholm,
Sweden. [Oral]
3. Avinash Kumar and Narendra Ahuja. Generalized Pupil-Centric Imaging and Analytical
Calibration for a Non-frontal Camera, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June
2014, Columbus, Ohio, US.
4. Avinash Kumar and Narendra Ahuja. Motion-based Background Subtraction and Panoramic
Mosaicing for Freight Train Analysis. International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP),
September 2013, Melbourne, Australia.
5. Avinash Kumar, Patrick R. Gill, Thomas Vogelsang and David G. Stork. Transmissive Struc-
tured Illumination Reveals Target Depth and Cast Shadow Details Obscured by Scattering
Media. In OSA Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging (COSI), June 2013, Arlington,
Virginia, US. [Oral]
6. Avinash Kumar and Narendra Ahuja. A Generative Focus Measure With Application to
Omnifocus Imaging. International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP). April
2013, Harvard, Boston, US. [Oral]
7. Tristan G. Rickett, Avinash Kumar, John M. Hart, J. R. Edwards, Christopher P Barkan
and Narendra Ahuja. Machine Vision Analysis of Intermodal Loading Eciency on Heavy-
Haul Railroads. International Heavy Haul Association Conference (IHHA), June 2011, Calgary,
Canada. [Oral]
8. Avinash Kumar, Tristan G. Rickett, Anirudh Vemula, John .M. Hart, J. R. Edwards, Narendra
Ahuja and Christopher P Barkan. 2011. Aerodynamic Analysis of Intermodal Freight Trains
Using Machine Vision. World Congress on Railway Research (WCRR), May 2011, Lille, France.
9. Tristan G. Rickett, John M. Hart, J. R. Edwards, Avinash Kumar, Christopher P Barkan and
Narendra Ahuja. 2011. Monitoring the Aerodynamic Eciency of Intermodal Train Loading
Using Machine Vision. Transportation Research Board Annual Conference (TRB), January
2011, Washington D.C., US.
10. Qing J. Kong, Avinash Kumar, Narendra Ahuja and Yuncai Liu, Robust Segmentation of
Freight Containers in Train Monitoring Videos, Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision
(WACV), January 2009, Snowbird, Utah, US. [Oral]
11. Avinash Kumar, Narendra Ahuja, John M. Hart, U. K. Visesh, P. J. Narayanan, and C. V.
Jawahar, A Vision System for Monitoring Intermodal Freight Trains. Workshop on Applications
of Computer Vision (WACV), 2007, Austin, Texas, US.
12. Yung-Cheng Lai, Narendra Ahuja, Christopher P Barkan, Joseph Drapa, John M. Hart, C. V.
Jawahar, Avinash Kumar, Larry Milhon, and P. J. Narayanan, Machine Vision Analysis of
the Energy Eciency of Intermodal Freight Trains, Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit (JRRT),
2006. [TA Stewart-Dyer Prize/Frederick Harvey Trevithick Prize].
Publications
(Under Review)
1. Avinash Kumar and Narendra Ahuja. Anonymous, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
(CVPR), 2015

6. Research Areas Camera Calibration: I have developed new models and analytical solutions for those models for
the problem of small

7. eld of view perspective camera calibration in computer vision. Speci

8. cally, I
have proposed that a pupil-centric imaging model along with moving entrance pupil and non-frontal
sensor model give the least re-projection error for the same number of calibration parameters among
all available calibration methods. In my work, I have shown that non-frontal sensor physically
models typical decentering distortion in traditional methods and moving entrance pupil suces for
physically modeling radial distortion. For a subclass of this model, where entrance pupil is

9. xed, I
have also given analytical solution to a subset of calibration parameters.
Computational Imaging: I have developed a new focus measure for computing an omnifocus
image from a focal stack which is robust to edge bleeding problems common to traditional gradient
based focus measure methods. This technique has then been extended for computing depth from
focus. I have extended the idea of direct and global scene radiance separation to extraction of crisp
shadows of objects immersed in scattering media using Hadamard projection patterns. I have also
worked on calibrating the point spread function (PSF) of a lens-less camera placed at a

10. xed distance
from a scene plane using LCD pixels as point light sources and illuminated as per Hadamard images.
Structure from Motion for Indoor Scenes: I have worked on the problem of computing struc-
ture from motion for indoor scenes given spherical projection images. The developed pipeline in-
volves feature extraction, 5-point estimation, minimum spanning tree based initial pose ans structure
computation and

11. nally bundle adjustment using CERES.
Vision System for Intermodal Freight Train Analysis: I have developed a machine vision
system which processes an inter-modal train video and calculates the length of gaps between loads
on the train. The gap lengths are critical for fuel consumption and our gap length analysis works as
a feedback for train loading yards. In this project, the core contribution has been a motion based
background subtraction method speci

12. cally targeted for inter-modal trains. The whole system has
been automated to run on a set of 3 computers at a site near Sibley, Kansas with minimal human
intervention. The project is funded by BNSF.
Computer Skills C, C++, Matlab, OpenCV
References Prof. Narendra Ahuja
Donald Biggar Willet Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer-
ing,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
n-ahuja@illinois.edu
Dr. David G. Stork
Distinguished Research Scientist and Research Di-
rector
Rambus
Sunnyvale, CA
dstork@rambus.com
Patrick R. Gill
Principal Research Scientist
Rambus
Sunnyvale, CA
pgill@rambus.com
Thomas Vogelsang
Technical Director
Rambus
Sunnyvale, CA
tvogelsang@rambus.com
Aravind Kalaiah
Co-Founder CTO
Sure

13. eld
Seattle, WA
aravind.kalaiah@gmail.com
David Eraker
Co-founder
Sure

14. eld
Seattle, WA
deraker@gmail.com

15. Prof. C. V. Jawahar
Department of Computer Science
International Institute of Information Technology
Hyderabad, India
jawahar@iiit.ac.in