Attention:

We are currently looking for social and behavioral science research assistants. Those interested can contact Nikos Papanikolopoulos

Mental illness causes a great deal of human suffering and creates a major burden to society. In many cases early intervention can lead to better outcomes and an increase in the quality of life of those suffering from a mental illness. Because of this there is a great benefit to early detection of mental illness, such as during the period of risk before the onset of illness.

Certain mental illnesses have been shown to be preceded in development by certain neuromotor abnormalities. Past approaches have utilized childhood video recordings of adults with mental illness to detect certain motor abnormalities while other approaches have used tests conducted by trained clinicians. However, in both cases painstaking effort has to be invested by trained professionals. Not only could an automated system provide more accuracy and quicker response times, it could also provide data that previously was unattainable or impractical to collect.

A unique opportunity at the University of Minnesota has provided researchers from different fields to collaborate and create a new systems for monitoring the behavior of children in order to detect precursors to mental illness such as motor abnormalities and also to identify new risk markers.

Creating a 3D reconstruction of a scene using multiple RGB+D sensors to detect risk markers in children

N. Walczak, J. Fasching, W. Toczyski, V. Morellas, G. Sapiro, and N. Papanikolopoulos, "Locating Occupants in Pre-school Classrooms Using a Multiple RGB-D Sensor System" In: IROS 2013

J. Fasching, N. Walczak, R. Sivalingam, K. Cullen, B. Murphy, G. Sapiro, V. Morellas, N. Papanikolopoulos,"Detecting Risk-markers in Children in a Preschool Classroom " In: IROS 2012

R. Sivalingam, A. Cherian, J. Fasching, N. Walczak, V. Morellas, B. Murphy, G. Sapiro, and N. Papanikolopoulos, "A Multi-Sensor Visual Tracking System for Behavior Monitoring of At-Risk Children" In: ICRA 2012

N. Walczak, J. Fasching, W. Toczyski, R. Sivalingam, N. Bird, K. Cullen, V. Morellas, B. Murphy, G. Sapiro, and N. Papanikolopoulos, "A Nonintrusive System for Behavioral Analysis of Children using Multiple RGB+Depth Sensors" In: WACV 2012

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People

Faculty
Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos
Vassilios Morellas
Kelvin Lim
Barbara Murphy
Guillermo Sapiro
Kathryn Cullen

Postdocs
Mariano Tepper

Graduate Students
Anoop Cherian
Ravishankar Sivalingam
Guruprasad Somasundaram
Nicholas Walczak
Joshua Fasching
Jordan Hashemi
Thiago Vallin Spina

Undergraduate Students
Alexander Hambrock
Daniel Tormoen

Alumni
Nathaniel Bird