Gabriel Zachmann

Business Address

Private Address

Bio

Here is a little list of my professional activities (PC memberships etc.)

My Erdös Number = 4 (see MR Collaboration Distance).

Personal Stuff

Do you want to know more (personal stuff) about me? Yes / No

Projects

• One of my passions is collision detection.
• Correction of tracking errors.
• VR System design and implementation (I have participated in the design and implementation of 3 VR systems)
• Virtual prototyping:
  • AIT (EU project for building a demonstrator showing the usefulness of VR in automotive industries)
  • Virtual Assembly Simulation (over many years, we developed an VAS application for BMW)
  • Integration of VR and CAD (Robcad/Man)
  • Volkswagen (VR system for automotive applications, including a virtual windtunnel)
• Shows:
  • Detroit Auto Show (featuring immersive visualization of time-varying flow-fields)
  • Miscellaneous shows (various exhibits, where we showed our VR system and our VR applications)
• Oldies
• During the years 2000 and 2001, I have helped start IGD's spin-off company VRCom (selling our VR system Virtual Design II) by giving all kinds of technical support and consulting.
• Image Manipulation using OpenGL
• Natural Interaction with Virtual Cities

Professional services

• Reviewer for numerous conferences such as Eurographics, Siggraph, IEEE VR, EGVE, ICRA, IEEE Visualization, IEEE InfoVis, Eurographics Workshop on Virtual Environments, VRST, etc., and numerous journals such as J. of Computational Geometry & Applications, ACM Trans. on Visualization, ACM Trans. on Graphics, IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Elsevier CG&A, Computer-Aided Design, ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, etc.
• Member of the Conference Committe of IEEE VR since 2008, and a member of the program committe since 2009.
• Dean of Students ("Studiendekan") for the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer science, and mechanical engineering from 2008 until 2011.
• Expert reviewer for the monitoring of EU STREP project 034691 Net-WMS within FP6 (\url{http://net-wms.ercim.org/}) in 2007-2011.
• Member of the ``Kuratorium der Innovationsallianz Virtuelle Techniken'' (advisory board for the innovation alliance for virtual technologies) in 2009-2014.
• Member of the review panel "Information and Communication Technologies" for the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation (RPF) in 2008-2009.
• I was, of course, external examiner or referee of several PhD theses and candidates, both in Germany and Europe.

Publications

Note 1: all Postscript files are gzip'ed. Most of them are level 3. Most PDF files are level 1.4 (or higher).
In case of problems, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Note 2: The copyright for most of the above papers has been transferred to a publisher. The ACM and IEEE grant permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of the works they publish for personal or classroom use. See any copyright notices on the individual papers for details.

• Stable 6-DOF Haptic Rendering with Inner Sphere Trees ,
  ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, (IDETC/CIE), San Diego, CA, USA, Septemeber 2009. (Best paper award)
• Visual Computing for Medical Diagnosis and Treatment ,
  Computers & Graphics, Vol. 33, Issue 4, August 2009, pp. 554 - 565.
• A Unified Approach for Physically-Based Simulations and Haptic Rendering ,
  ACM SIGGRAPH Video Game Proceedings, New Orleans, LA, USA, Aug 2009.
• Inner Sphere Trees for Proximity and Penetration Queries ,
  Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), Seattle, WA, USA, June 2009.
• Continuous Edge Gradient-Based Template Matching for Articulated Objects ,
  International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (VISAPP), Lisbon, Portugal, February 2009.
• Segmentation of Distinct Homogeneous Color Regions in Images ,
  12th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (CAIP), Vienna, Austria, Aug 2008.
• IEEE VR 2007 Workshop on "Trends and Issues in Tracking for Virtual Environments" ,
  IEEE VR, Charlotte, NC, USA, March 2007.
• A Benchmarking Suite for Static Collision Detection Algorithms ,
  WSCG, Plzen, Czech Republic, Feb 2007.
• Kinetic Separation Lists for Continuous Collision Detection of Deformable Objects ,
  Vriphys, Madrid, Spain, November 2006.
• Kinetic Bounding Volume Hierarchies for Deformable Objects ,
  VRCIA, Hong Kong, China, June 2006.
• A Model for the Expected Running Time of Collision Detection using AABB Trees ,
  EGVE, Lisbon, Portugal, May 2006.
• Book: Geometric Data Structures for Computer Graphics ,
  AK Peters, 2006.
• GPU-ABiSort: Optimal Parallel Sorting on Stream Architectures ,
  IPDPS, Rhodes Island, Greece, April 2006.
• Space-Efficient FPGA-Accelerated Collision Detection for Virtual Prototyping ,
  DATE, Munich, Germany, March 2006.
• Hardware-Accelerated Collision Detection using Bounded-Error Fixed-Point Arithmetic ,
  WSCG, Plzen, Czech Republic, Feb 2006.
• Kinetic Bounding Volume Hierarchies for Collision Detection of Deformable Objects ,
  Technical Report, IfI-06-02, TU Clausthal 2006, ISSN 1860-8477.
• Patent on Collision Detection , May 2005, US Patent and Trademark Office.
• The Expected Running Time of Hierarchical Collision Detection ,
  SIGGRAPH Poster, Jul 2005, Los Angeles, USA.
• Hardware Accelerated Collision Detection --- An Architecture and Simulation Results ,
  Design Automation and Test (DATE), March 2005, Munich, Germany.
• Collision Detection for Deformable Objects ,
  Computer Graphics forum, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 61-81, March 2005.
• Interpolation Search for Point Cloud Intersection ,
  Proc. of WSCG 2005, University of West Bohemia, Plzen, Czech Republic.
• Hardware-Accelerated Ambient Occlusion Computation ,
  VMV 2004, Nov 2004, Stanford, California, USA.
• Collision Detection for Deformable Objects ,
  Proc. Eurographics, State-of-the-Art Report, Aug/Sep 2004, Grenoble, France.
• Point Cloud Surfaces using Geometric Proximity Graphs ,
  Computers & Graphics, vol. 28, no. 6, 2004.
• Point Cloud Collision Detection ,
  Computer Graphics forum (EUROGRAPHICS), Aug/Sep 2004, Grenoble, France.
• Nice and Fast Implicit Surfaces over Noisy Point Clouds ,
  SIGGRAPH 2004, Sketches and Applications, Aug 2004.
• Object-Space Interference Detection on Programmable Graphics Hardware ,
  Technical Report, University Bonn, 2004.
• Proximity Graphs for Defining Surfaces over Point Clouds ,
  SPBG, June 2004, Zürich, Switzerland.
• Visual-fidelity dataglove calibration ,
  CGI, June 2004, Crete, Greece.
• Consistent Normal Orientation for Polygonal Meshes ,
  CGI, June 2004, Crete, Greece.
• ADB-Trees: Controlling the Error of Time-Critical Collision Detection ,
  VMV 2003, Nov 2003, Munich, Germany.
• Object-Space Interference Detection on Programmable Graphics Hardware ,
  GD 2003, Nov 2003, Seattle, Washington, USA.
• Time-Critical Collision Detection Using an Average-Case Approach ,
  VRST 2003, Oct 2003, Osaka,Japan.
• High-Performance Collision Detection Hardware ,
  Technical Report, Aug 2003, University Bonn.
• An Architecture for Hierarchical Collision Detection ,
  WSCG 2003, Feb 2003, University of West Bohemia, Plzen, Czech Republic.
• Minimal Hierarchical Collision Detection ,
  ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST), Nov. 2002, Hong Kong, China.
• Natural Interaction in Virtual Environments ,
  Workshop über Trends und Höhepunkte der Graphischen Datenverarbeitung (Proc. are English mostly), Nov. 2001, Universität Tübingen; GI Fachausschuß 4.1 Graphische Datenverarbeitung.
• Natural and Robust Interaction in Virtual Assembly Simulation ,
  Eighth ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications (ISPE/CE2001), July 2001, West Coast Anaheim Hotel, California, USA.
• Optimizing the Collision Detection Pipeline ,
  Proc. of the First International Game Technology Conference (GTEC), Hong Kong, 18-21 January 2001.
• Virtual Reality in Assembly Simulation -- Collision Detection, Simulation Algorithms, and Interaction Techniques ,
  PhD thesis, Darmstadt University of Technology, Summer 2000. Fraunhofer IRB Verlag, ISBN 3-8167-5628-X;
• Virtual Reality as a Tool for Verification of Assembly and Maintenance Processes ,
  Computers & Graphics, volume 23, number 3, June 1999, pages 389 - 403.
• Integrating Virtual Reality for Virtual Prototyping ,
  Proc. of the 1998 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, September 13-16, 1998, Atlanta, Georgia Paper # CIE-5536.
• Rapid Collision Detection by Dynamically Aligned DOP-Trees ,
  Proc. of IEEE Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium; VRAIS '98. Atlanta, Georgia; March 1998. Pages 90-97.
• VR-Techniques for Industrial Applications ,
  In: Fan Dai (Ed.): Virtual Reality for Industrial Applications. Springer 1998. Chapter 1, pages 13 - 38.
  (The layout differs somewhat from the book.)
• Real-time and Exact Collision Detection for Interactive Virtual Prototyping ,
  Proc. of the 1997 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, September 14-17, 1997, Sacramento, California. Paper # CIE-4306.
• Distortion Correction of Magnetic Fields for Position Tracking ,
  Proc. Computer Graphics International (CGI'97), June 23-27 1997, Hasselt and Diepenbeek, Belgium.
• A Language for Describing Behavior of and Interaction with Virtual Worlds ,
  Proc. ACM Conf. VRST, July, 1996.
  (postscript and PDF)
  Color plates (postscript and PDF)
• Virtual Prototyping Examples for Automotive Industries ,
  Virtual Reality World '96. Stuttgart, Germany, Feb. 13. - 15. 1996
• The BoxTree: Exact and Fast Collision Detection of Arbitrary Polyhedra, SIVE95 (First Workshop on Simulation and Interaction in Virtual Environments), University of Iowa, July 1995.
  An improved version
  with an appendix for the mathematical details.
• My diploma thesis on Exact and Fast Collision Detection,
  Technical University Darmstadt, Dept. of Computer Science, 1994.
• Realism in Virtual Reality ,
  In: Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Daniel Thalmann (Eds.): Artificial Life and Virtual Reality. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Chapter 13, pages 189 - 210.

Tutorials / Talks

• Fundamental Algorithms for Virtual Prototyping -- Real-Time Collision Detection & Markerless Tracking of the Human Hand
  FH Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Sankt Augustin, Germany, Dec 2009.
• Technologies for Making the Hand Usable as an Interaction Device in VR
  Dagstuhl Seminar ``Virtual Realities'', Dagstuhl, Germany, June 2008
• Collision Detection for Medical Applications
  as part of the state-of-the-art report (STAR) Advanced Algorithms in Medical Computer Graphics at
  Eurographics, Crete, April 2008, ST #2.
• Kinetic Bounding Volume Hierarchies and Collision Detection Kolloquium der Informatik in Bonn, 25. January 2008.
• Collision Detection as a Fundamental Technology in VR Based Product Engineering: paper, slides.
  2nd Advanced Study Institute "Product Engineering: Tools and Methods Based on Virtual Reality", Chania, Crete, 30 May - 6 June 2007 (sponsored by the INTUITION Network of Excellence).
• Invited Talk .
  8th Corporate Workshop Virtual and Augmented Reality at Volkswagen, Sep 13-14, 2006.
• Collision Handling and its Applications .
  Eurographics, Wien, Austria, Sep 2006, Tutorial #13.
• Collision Handling in Dynamic Simulation Environments .
  Eurographics, Dublin, Ireland, 29 Aug 2005, Tutorial #2.
• Real-Time Collision Detection for Dynamic Virtual Environments .
  IEEE VR 2005, 12 - 16th March, Bonn, Germany (Tutorial #4).
• Efficient collision detection for VR and simulation software .
  Invited talk at MOVIE Workshop, 7.-8. January 2005, Toulouse, France.
• Tutorial "Geometric Data Structures for Computer Graphics" .
  Siggraph 2003, 27-31 July 2003, San Diego, California, USA.
• Tutorial "Geometric Data Structures for Computer Graphics" (PDF 1.2 MB). Handouts (PDF 500 kB).
  Eurographics 2002, 2-6 September 2002, Saarbrücken, Germany.
• Tutorial "Virtual Reality for Virtual Prototyping" (PDF 600 kB).
  1st Ibero-American Symposium in Computer Graphics (SIACG), 1-5 July 2002, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal, http://www.siacg.ccg.pt/
  Eurographics Portuguese Chapter, ISBN 972-98464-1-3.
• Invited Tutorial "How to calibrate a CAVE" (PDF, 1 MB).
  First CAVE Programming Workshop, 1-3 Oct 2001, Center for Parallel Computers at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
• Invited Talk "Virtual Reality in Assembly Simulation -- Collision Detection, Simulation Algorithms, and Interaction Techniques" (PDF, 500kB).
  GMD IMK, Oct 2000, Sankt Augustin, Germany.

Other

• Bonner Thesen -- Ein Aktionsplan der Jungen Informatik Bonn, 2006. (als Kopie in PDF)

Teaching

WS 09/10	Virtuelle Realität und physikalisch-basierte Simulation
	Computergraphik I
	Werkzeuge der Informatik (Unix-Teil)
SS 09	Geometric Datastructures for Computer Graphics
WS 08/09	Virtuelle Realität und physikalisch-basierte Simulation
	Werkzeuge der Informatik (Unix-Teil)
SS08	Computergraphik II
WS07/08	Computergraphik I
	Werkzeuge der Informatik (Unix-Teil)
	Virtuelle Realität und Simulation
SS07	Computergraphik II
WS06/07	Computergraphik I
	Werkzeuge der Informatik (Unix-Teil)
SS06	Informatik II Algorithms and Data Structures)
WS05/06	Informatik I ("computer science 101" )
	Intro to Programming I
WS04/05	Programming I
SS2004	Virtual Reality
WS03/04	Programming I
SS2003	Virtual Reality
WS02/03	Hierarchical Methods in Computer Graphics
SS2002	Virtual Reality
WS01/02	Hierarchical Methods in Computer Graphics
SS2001	Virtual Reality

Here are Ten Golden Rules for Presentations.

Technical Parerga et Paralipomena ...

Some benchmarks comparing C++ and native compiled Java on SGI's (as of Spring 1997)

CPU benchmarks (R10000, UltraSPARC-II, Pentium II, G3) which try to find out the average time of several operations (like multiplication, fabfs(), cache fault penalties, etc...)

I have written up some programming guidelines for C and C++ (in German) of our programming team.
They are somewhat biased towards Unix.
If you have any suggestions, corrections, etc., please let me know.

Here are the templates for C files, header files, and C++ files, mentioned in my programming guidelines.

I am a vi lover, well, actually I am a vim lover :-)
On my vim page you can find some macros, my vimrc files, vim precompiled for SGI (IRIX) and other (hopefully) useful stuff.

On my mutt page you can find my muttrc files, mutt precompiled for SGI (IRIX), and MSWordView, a Word-to-HTML/Text converter, precompiled for IRIX.

I write almost all documents in LaTeX (and avoid M$ Word if possible). So, here is some Latex related stuff, mainly an example for newbies and some macros I found useful over time.

Conference Presentation Judo, an entertaining and educating talk about the Do's and Dont's in giving presentations.

Change Monitoring

Statistics

Old Statistics of all of my pages (until March 2001). Old Error log .
Old List of requests of one of my papers. Same old list sorted by date (includes hosts).

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