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Summer 2018 Interns at HP Labs - Matthew Ronnenberg

By Simon Firth, HP Labs Correspondent — June 21, 2018

Matthew Ronnenberg grew up just outside Rochester, New York. After studying for a bachelor’s degree in Communications at the University of Tampa, he returned to his hometown to study for an M.Sc. in Sustainable Systems at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He is now enrolled in RIT’s Color Science Ph.D. program. When he is not studying, Ronnenberg likes to play board and video games. “I also have a new puppy at home,” he says. “She takes up most of my free time right now.”

 

HP: Tell us about your project at HP Labs this summer

I'm building on a project that was started by an intern here last year named Michael Ludwig. He was working with color 3D printing and what we call appearance modeling and I'm extending some of what he did further into the modeling side of things. His focus was on data gathering and he did a visual experiment with human observers. I’m now using his psychophysical data along with measurement data to create a model for an appearance metric.

HP: Can you say a bit more about what appearance modeling is?

We want to be able to feed the computer an image of an object and have it tell us how the object would appear to a person when it is printed. So we're trying to model not just color but also texture and gloss, all those different parameters that influence how we view everyday objects.

HP: What's the potential value here?

The end goal is further optimization of the 3D printing processes. If you know how a person is going to perceive an object – such as if it is more or less glossy – you can set your printing parameters to work with that information and get a 3D print that matches that perception. If you can digitally model something based on this information you are more likely to get an optimal print from your printer.

HP: How far are you along?

We’re in the process of correlating the human observations of images with measurement data. Then once we have that correlation, we are going to use a neural network to take the images and the correlations and build a model for appearance uniformity. Eventually, we should be able to start with digital images of a set of 3D objects, feed them into the model, and have it tell us how a human would observe the differences. Then we can tweak some of the printing parameters to make them, for example, more or less different.

HP: How are you enjoying being at HP Labs?

I love it here. It’s a great mix of topics that I've worked on and topics that are new. So, it is pushing my boundaries, which is exactly what I was looking for. And it is nice that I am encouraged to communicate with the people around me and that I get to see the other projects that are happening - it's just neat how everybody seems excited about what they're doing as well as what everyone else is doing. Everybody's super positive.

HP: What has surprised you about being an intern here?

It's not as stressful as I thought it would be. Every other job I've had I’ve been told exactly what to do. Here I’m not micro-managed. So, I feel like I'm working with people as opposed to working for people. I feel like I have the freedom to play with the data and have fun with the stuff I’ve learned in my classes.

HP: Is the internship influencing what you might do in your Ph.D. thesis work?

I would say it is definitely influencing me. I had an idea that I had wanted to go in the direction of 3D printing, which I had already done a little bit in my second year Ph.D. projects. But this has just further reinforced my interest.