Honorary Member

  Professor Kanade completed the doctoral course at Kyoto University Graduate School in 1973, became an assistant professor at the same university, and was transferred to the Robotics Institute, the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University in 1980, and became a professor in 1985. In 1998, he was appointed as the Helen Whitaker University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University where he still serves. At the same university he was appointed the Director of the Robotics Institute and the Director of the Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) center. In Japan, he was also the Director of the Digital Human Research Lab of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and also held important positions on governmental committees, Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), OSAKA UNIVERSITY, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Kyoto University, etc. He has been driving progress in research and development in the field of computer vision and robotics and its industrial application.
   He has always opened up new fields with pioneering approaches. At the 1970 Osaka World Expo (EXPO'70), he carried out a demonstration in which each person took 10 seconds to recognize the facial images of the visitors and to perform a personality analysis. Today, due to the progress of technology, facial recognition at the level of tens of millions of people per second has been put to practical use. It can be said that his pioneering work at EXPO’70 was the beginning of computer-aided biometric authentication. More than 1000 images collected at EXPO'70 were stored in a database, which was an unprecedented number at that time, and this led to progress of next-level research. It can be said that this was a pioneering work in data driven R&D. In terms of theory, "A Theory of the Origami World" that derives the original three-dimensional shape from a two-dimensional line drawing and the "Lucas-Kanade Method" that tracks where a point in the previous image moves in the next image in video processing were derived. In particular, the latter is still widely used in MPEG and supports the basics of image processing.
   　In addition, he made a great contribution in the field of autonomous driving. He started research as early as the mid-1980s, and in 1995 he achieved transcontinental driving across the Americas mostly (98%) covered by autonomous driving. It can be said to really be a pioneering work, as we are still challenging to introduce various driving support and autonomous driving systems. At the 2001 American Football Super Bowl, 33 cameras were used, and a system was provided that can synthesize and provide images from any viewpoint. This technology, called "virtualized reality," is currently being actively used in many scenes including a variety of sports.
   　Based on the idea of "Think Like an Amateur, Do As an Expert", he has always been aiming to create value, and has been working on research with the aim of creating something that is user-friendly, fun and safe. In the process of advancing many research projects, he has conveyed this awareness and nurtured many human resources globally, mainly in Japan and the United States. While still participating in many R&D projects as a leader and advisor, he is continuously suggesting novel R&D approaches, and continues to guide many people.
   With these achievements, he was elected as a fellow of the Robotics Society of Japan, IEEE, ACM, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, as well as the IEICE, and also received numerous awards including the Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award, C&C Prize, FUNAI Achievement Award, Okawa Award, Franklin Institute Bower Award, Kyoto Prize, and IEEE Founder Memorial Medal. In addition, he was selected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was honored as a Person of Cultural Merit in 2019.
   As mentioned above, his achievements in the development of electronic information communication technology and its global social development are extremely remarkable, and we recommend him as an Honorary Member of the IEICE.