Dr Andreas Aristidou is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cyprus, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the RISE centre of excellence with special interest in computer graphics and character animation. Previously, he served as Senior PostDoc Researcher at the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science, The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel (2016-2018), the Interdisciplinary Research Center, Shandong University in China (2015), the Graphics Virtual Reality Lab, University of Cyprus (2012-2014,2019), and the Digital Heritage Research Lab, Cyprus University of Technology (2015). He had been a Cambridge European Trust fellow, at the Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory, University of Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD (2011). Andreas has a BSc in Informatics and Telecommunications from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2005) and he is an honor graduate of Kings College London (2006), where he obtained his MSc degree in Mobile and Personal Communications (2006).
His main research interests are focused on 3D motion analysis and classification, motion synthesis, human animation, and involve motion capture, inverse kinematics, and applications of conformal geometric algebra in graphics. Andreas is on the editorial board of The Visual Computer (TVC) journal, and serves as an Associate Editor. He participated in a number of EU funded projects, serving as Deputy Manager of the ITN-DCH (Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage) at the Digital Heritage Research Lab, Cyprus University of Technology, and Principal Investigator of the Vi.Da.Pe (Visual Dance Performance for Interactive Characters), SCHEDAR (Safeguarding the Cultural HEritage of Dance through Augmented Reality), and SIM.POL.VR (Virtual Reality Police Simulator) projects, at the Graphics Virtual Reality Lab, University of Cyprus. He collaborates with EU creative industries to design innovative algorithm for motion synthesis and character retargeting. Finally, he is the co-author of the FABRIK Inverse Kinematics solver that been integrated in all major game engines (e.g., Unity, Panda, and Unreal engines), and published in open-source libraries.
Motion capture is a technology used for turning the observations of a moving subject into 3D position and orientation information, stimulating our ability to define and virtually portray complex movements. The ALADDIN project aims at the development of such a technology that goes beyond conventional methods, is cost-effective, and minimizes the risks associated with capturing in dynamic situations. The proposed system is easily scalable and intrinsic, in the sense that measurements are not taken by external devices, enabling efficient capturing in outdoor environments, with state-of-the-art acquisition accuracy.
The project «CINERAMA: Can artIficial iNtelligence gEnerate aRts in character AniMAtion» covers a wide range of multidisciplinary topics that are in line with the recent tendencies in computer graphics, character animation, and virtual reality. It aims at investigating modern trends in machine (deep, convolutional, adversarial, and reinforcement) learning, with ultimate target to provide ingenious solutions for overcoming the current limitations in character animation, and essentials for future improvements in a wide range of ambitious and challenging projects, such as interactive dance motion synthesis, and motion summarization via internal contextual distribution matching.
© 2017 Andreas Aristidou