Special Event

Prof. Katsushi Ikeuchi (CEO, Irobomation LLC)

My Personal Journey of Artificial Intelligence Research: Modeling Cultural Heritage and Learning-from-Observation

Abstract

In this talk, I shall conceptualize my research career as a journey, chronicling the paths traveled, the encounters that shaped my path, the inquiries pursued, and the insights garnered along the way. Rather than delving into the technical intricacies of the work, this discourse will illuminate the evolution of my research themes—exploring the underlying motivations, the catalysts for discovery, and the ways in which each endeavor naturally catalyzed the next.

This journey unfolds along two parallel paths that intertwined and progressed concurrently over time. The first of these paths traces my itinerary through the field of computer vision, commencing with my work on shape-from-brightness at MIT, progressing to object modeling at CMU, and culminating in the digital archiving of cultural heritage at the University of Tokyo. For those who wish to examine the technical foundations of these endeavors, I invite you to refer to Ikeuchi and Miyazaki: Digitally Archiving Cultural Objects (Springer, 2008).

Running alongside this visual exploration is my odyssey through the realm of robotics. This concurrent path encompasses bin-picking at MIT, learning-from-observation at CMU and the University of Tokyo, and ultimately, our recent advancements in Learning-from-Observation 2.0 utilizing LLMs and VLMs at Microsoft. The underlying details of this research are grounded in Ikeuchi, Wake, Takamatsu, Sasabuchi: Learning-from-observation 2.0 (Springer, 2026).

In closing, I intend to synthesize these twin, parallel journeys through the lens of Aristotelian holism, ultimately offering my perspective on the future horizon of our field.

Biography

Katsushi Ikeuchi received his B.E. degree in Mech Eng from Kyoto U., and his Ph.D. degree in Info Eng from UTokyo. After working at the MIT AI Lab, ETL (AIST), CMU RI, IIS-UTokyo, MSRA (Beijing), and MSFT-TnR (Redmond), he founded Irobomation LLC: has been engaged in research on computer vision, robotics, and Intelligent Transport Systems: has served as GC for conferences such as IROS95, ITSC99, ICCV05, and ICCV17, and as PC for CVPR96, ICCV03, ICRA09, and ICCV15: is also a former EIC of IJCV and IJITS: is an IEEE Life Fellow, an IAPR Fellow, an IPSJ Fellow, an RSJ Fellow, and an Honorary Member (Fellow) of the IEICE. His awards include the IEEE-PAMI Distinguished Researcher Award, the Okawa Prize, the Funai Achievement Award, the Medal with Purple Ribbon, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon.