Personal

I came to the U.S. in August 2000 as an exchange student from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, on a scholarship from the Federation of German-American Clubs. In August 2001 I changed to the Ph.D. program and received a Master's degree in Computer Science in December 2002. In Fall 2004 I was visiting the Autonomous Intelligent Systems lab of Wolfram Burgard at the University of Freiburg. In Fall 2005 I was an intern at the Interactive Visual Media Group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, working with Drew Steedly, Rick Szeliski and Michael Cohen on a project related to the bird's eye view in local.live.com.

I am interested in computer vision and autonomous robotics and work as a graduate research assistant in Georgia Tech's BORG lab, with Frank Dellaert as my advisor. In July 2002, our lab participated in the AAAI Urban Search and Rescue Competition. Previously, I have worked in Ron Arkin's Mobile Robot Lab. Besides learning for behavior based autonomous robot systems, I have done interesting work with 3D models from laser range data, combining computer graphics and robotics.

	Pictures Some nice pictures I have taken over the years.
	Electronics A long time ago I have built a laptop with a 286 processor out of single components, which includes development of PCBs, keyboard, casing, and a small operating system in assembler. A more recent project is a processor module with telephone interface for remote monitoring and control.
	Genealogy Another hobby includes genealogy. My current collection goes back to my great-great-...-great-grandfather Michael Kaess, born 1600... Currently only available to family members.
	World Student Fund (WSF) I have been involved in the Georgia Tech YMCA and have served in its student organization, the World Student Fund (WSF), as a technical officer since 2000. I have organized the traditional camping weekend for new WSF students in the North Georgia mountains as temporary president in 2002.