Intelligent and automated systems

Dr. Clausi runs the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Lab along with Dr. Paul Fieguth, Dr. John Zelek, and Dr. Alex Wong as co-Directors. The VIP Lab is dedicated to understanding visual processes and finding solutions for the outstanding problems in visual processing and perception, as well as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and intelligent systems for a wide variety of applications.

Professor Zelek is an Associate Professor and co-director of the VIP (Vision Image Processing) lab. Professor Zelek’s current main research interests include autonomous robotic mapping and localization, 3D scene understanding, manmade infrastructure assessment (e.g., roads, buildings, bridges), eye (fundus, OCT) image understanding for disease, learning 3D models from single-views, athletic sport tracking & biomechanical understanding of play & ability from video feeds to name a few. Some of these projects make use of AI & deep learning techniques.
Prof. Zelek’s interests in the past have included assistive devices, social engineering, haptics, robot navigation to name a few.

Professor Zelek has been the co-founder of two startup companies: Tactile Sight and Sweep3D. Tactile Sight commercialized a haptic navigation device for people who are cognitively (e.g., dementia) or perceptually (e.g., blind) disabled. Sweep3D commercialized technology that produces 3D models by sweeping a camera around objects or spaces for various applications including clothes fitting, orthotics as well as well as exploring real estate premises remotely.

Nasser Lashgarian Azad is a Professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering. Before joining the Systems Design Engineering Department, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary research interests lie in: (i) intelligent controls and automation with applications to automotive systems as well as autonomous systems like automated vehicles and drones, and (ii) innovative applications of AI methods to solve complex modeling, optimization, control, and automation problems.

Prof. Nasser L. Azad directs the Automation and Intelligent Systems (AIS) Group, a centre of excellence in vehicle control systems design and optimization. In addition, he has investigated the application of computational intelligence and evolutionary optimization techniques to the solution of a variety of engineering problems.

Dr. Eliasmith's lab is the Computational Neuroscience Research Group (CNRG). The CNRG is interested in understanding how the brain works and exploiting that understanding to improve AI. Research at the CNRG focusses on perception, action, cognition, navigation, and key theoretical issues from a neural perspective. Much of this research is carried out by building large-scale neural models of various brain areas. The main software tool we use and developed for this purpose is Nengo (nengo.ca). The books Neural Engineering and How to Build a Brain summarize the main theoretical approaches we take. We recently proposed the Legendre Memory Unit (LMU) and Spatial Semantic Pointers (SSPs) based on our understanding of brain function. Both are helping to improve state-of-the-art results in deep learning.

Paul Fieguth is (as of April 2023) the Associate Vice President - Academic Operations at the University of Waterloo, and (since 1996) a Professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering. He is also a co-director of the Vision and Imaging Processing Lab and the director of the Statistical Image Processing Lab at the University of Waterloo. His undergraduate studies were in Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and his graduate studies were in Engineering at MIT.