Research interests
- Computer graphics
- Computer animation
- Human motion
- Human motion modeling
- Grasping and manipulation
- Robotic grasping and manipulation
- Motion capture
I am broadly interested in the use of math and algorithms in order to generate interesting visual outputs, so I find a lot of various computer graphics problems (e.g. rendering, animation, appearance modeling, image processing, etc.) very interesting.
I am also particularly interested in the question of how to create artificial agents capable of manipulating the world around them and performing activities of daily living, and am interested in any kind of smaller problem trying to work toward this goal. This includes animated characters and robots being capable of grasping and manipulation skills; household tasks like cooking, cleaning, dressing, etc.; gesturing and human interaction with agents; specialized skills like dancing and instrument-playing; etc.
I do not supervise PhD students, but I supervise undergraduate final year projects and MSc summer projects. If my research interests seem interesting to you, please email me and we can set up a meeting to discuss possible projects.
Publications
- C. Daly, Y. Nakamura, and T. Ritschel. "Deep Generative Modelling of Human Reach-and-Place Action," arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.02345, 2020.
- (Thesis) Y. Nakamura. "Understanding and applying human grasping to artificial manipulators," PhD dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University, 2018.
- Y. Nakamura, C.A. O'Sullivan, and N.S. Pollard. "Effect of object and task properties on bimanual transport," Journal of Motor Behavior, 51(3), pp. 245-258, 2019.
- Y. Nakamura, D. Troniak, A. Rodriguez, M.T. Mason, and N.S. Pollard. "The Complexities of Grasping in the Wild," IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robotics (Humanoids 2017), pp. 233-240, 2017. [project] [pdf]
- J. Liu, F. Feng, Y. Nakamura, and N.S. Pollard. "A Taxonomy of Everyday Grasps in Action," IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robotics (Humanoids 2014), pp. 573-580, 2014.