ECCV 2020 Daily - Wednesday

2 Women in Computer Vision 28 DAILY W e d n e s d a y I don't think so. Did you ever ski for competition? No. [ laughs ] I only skied for fun. I grew up in the north of Italy, where skiing is also very popular. Have you ever skied in the Alps? I, unfortunately, have not made it to ski in Europe. I certainly want to. I can tell you about the nice places. [ both laugh ] You have touched several fields in your still quite short career as a scientist. Which other scientific fields appeal to you? My interest in robotics arose through a different research opportunity I had as an undergraduate, which was studying the dynamics of pigeon flight. Not many people go to robotics via pigeons, but that is the particular path of mine. What we looked at was understanding how pigeons can move. Pigeons, and all of their majesty, have the unique ability to make a sharp 90 degree turn in the air, and most birds would have to do an arch or a kind of locked turn. They can do it both to the left and right sides. Yeah, and it turns out it's because their flight dynamics are actually closer to a helicopter than an airplane. If I wasn't in robotics, I’d study these different types of animal locomotion and studying these kinematics systems of how animals move.