Wright's day begins at 6:45 A.M., when he arrives for work at JPL in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, Calif. He commutes to
Pasadena in a vanpool that starts in Seal Beach, his hometown south of Los Angeles. According to Wright, the first task begins when he "checks voice-mail and email. Then I eat breakfast while reading my computer science
newsgroups." As the principle investigator for the Digital Personnel Project, he states that much of his time is spent keeping four part-time employees on task.
Besides aerospace, JPL projects have an impact on other
fields as well. "We have lots of ties with the entertainment industry," said Wright. "A lot of people have left our group and gone to the film industry."
The digital human-image animation system under
development at JPL uses the smallest units of speech called phonemes, to manipulate a person's facial movements in an image. Language rather than manual animation controls drive the Digital Personnel system.
"The image
morphs in response to a voice or equivalent input," said Wright. "This system has a higher level of realism with a simpler control mechanism or paradigm. In the film 'Hollow Man,' the 3-D model of Kevin Bacon showed him
walking around with no skin [invisible]. It still looked like Bacon."
For this effect to occur, a number of low-level mathematical controls were developed for each motion, a labor-intensive process. "The system records
video of the actor speaking into the camera. Then the software takes another voice or text and animates the actor's face to say different words. It looks realistic and is easy to control," said Wright.
With his team of
software engineers, Wright can create images of anyone saying anything. "The Digital Personnel Project has many applications for e-commerce, for video teleconferencing, videophones, and [video] press releases."
Wright
also has other responsibilities at JPL. He is involved in the Tropospheric Emissions Spectrometer Project, which focuses on a spacecraft that seeks infrared ground radiation. Elements and compounds that the atmosphere absorbs are
then measured, allowing researchers to figure the component amounts in the atmosphere.
This project aims to calculate the level of carbon dioxide (and other components) over the earth's surface. "This has never been done
before to this level of detail. My role is to develop the visualization software," Wright said. "The practical application of this project is that scientists will be able to see how various components move through the
atmosphere. This information will give us a better understanding of global warming and the ozone layers."
Another of Wright's projects is the Mars Pathfinder mission. "On this mission, the scientists want to look for
water on Mars. On the last mission, we weren't able to prove the Rover can navigate up valleys. We were able to look off at peaks and horizons but in the valley we couldn't see. Now we will try to show our current navigation
algorithms will work in the valleys," he said.
An outgrowth of the Pathfinder project is to find a way to merge the old information from the Mars mission with new information. "My task is coming up with ways of
accomplishing it. I write the software and integrate the information," said Wright.
"I consider myself an engineer, not a scientist., the difference being a scientist addresses the problem, the engineer comes up with
the solution. I'm here to make things work," stated Wright. "I have the ability to see the overall picture and details with the ability to switch between the two."
Wright started at JPL in 1994. He has a B.A. in
chemical engineering from Purdue University and a master's degree in computer science from (coincidentally enough) Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
His interest in science began before he entered kindergarten. "I've
been taking things apart since then. Sometimes I actually managed to put them back together," he said.
No surprise that Wright enjoys his position with JPL. His brass ring is the right combination of flexibility and
creative freedom mixed with a challenging environment and exceptional co-workers. Said Wright: "Sometimes I just like to sit down and write a piece of software code myself. And at other times, I like to talk with one or two
other people and tackle problems and figure out what we need to do next."
