Daniel Kurz

Engineer and Manager in Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Augmented Reality

Daniel Kurz is an engineer and manager who has helped shape Augmented Reality for nearly two decades. From Spatial AR in academic research labs in Germany and Japan, to Mobile AR at the pioneering software startup Metaio, to building Apple's first spatial computer with Vision Pro and visionOS. Across these roles, he and his teams delivered advances in Computer Vision and Machine Learning that shipped as features used by millions. As a Senior Engineering Manager at Apple, Daniel now also contributes to a modern, LLM-based Siri.

Experience

Education

Publications

1. Reconstructing training data from diverse ML models by ensemble inversion Qian Wang, Daniel Kurz Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, 2022 @arXiv
2. ARKitScenes: A diverse real-world dataset for 3d indoor scene understanding using mobile RGB-D data Gilad Baruch, Zhuoyuan Chen, Afshin Dehghan, Tal Dimry, Yuri Feigin, Peter Fu, Thomas Gebauer, Brandon Joffe, Daniel Kurz, Arik Schwartz NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks, 2021 @arXiv
3. HDR environment map estimation for real-time augmented reality Gowri Somanath, Daniel Kurz Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, 2021 @arXiv
4. Leveraging the user's face for absolute scale estimation in handheld monocular SLAM Sebastian B Knorr, Daniel Kurz 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2016 Preprint @IEEE
5. [Poster] Towards mobile augmented reality for the elderly Daniel Kurz, Anton Fedosov, Stefan Diewald, Jörg Güttier, Barbara Geilhof, Matthias Heuberger 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2014 Preprint @IEEE
6. Absolute spatial context-aware visual feature descriptors for outdoor handheld camera localization overcoming visual repetitiveness in urban environments Daniel Kurz, Peter Georg Meier, Alexander Plopski, Gudrun Klinker 2014 International conference on computer vision theory and applications (VISAPP), 2014 Preprint @SCITEPRESS
7. [Poster] A Mobile Augmented Reality System to Assist Auto Mechanics Darko Stanimirovic, Nina Damasky, Sabine Webel, Dirk Koriath, Andrea Spillner, Daniel Kurz 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2014 Preprint @IEEE
8. [Poster] Smartwatch-aided handheld augmented reality Darko Stanimirovic, Daniel Kurz 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2014 Preprint @IEEE
9. Real-time illumination estimation from faces for coherent rendering Sebastian B Knorr, Daniel Kurz 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2014 Preprint @IEEE
10. Thermal touch: Thermography-enabled everywhere touch interfaces for mobile augmented reality applications Daniel Kurz 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2014 Preprint @IEEE
11. An outdoor ground truth evaluation dataset for sensor-aided visual handheld camera localization Daniel Kurz, Peter Georg Meier, Alexander Plopski, Gudrun Klinker 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2013 Preprint @IEEE
12. Representative feature descriptor sets for robust handheld camera localization Daniel Kurz, Thomas Olszamowski, Selim Benhimane 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2012 Preprint @IEEE
13. Handheld augmented reality involving gravity measurements Daniel Kurz, Selim Benhimane Computers & Graphics, 2012 @Elsevier
14. Benchmarking inertial sensor-aided localization and tracking methods Daniel Kurz, Sebastian Lieberknecht, Selim Benhimane Proc. TrakMark Workshop, 2011 Preprint
15. Gravity-aware handheld augmented reality Daniel Kurz, Selim Benhimane 2011 10th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, 2011 Preprint @IEEE
16. Inertial sensor-aligned visual feature descriptors Daniel Kurz, Selim Benhimane CVPR 2011, 2011 Preprint @IEEE
17. Color invariant chroma keying and color spill neutralization for dynamic scenes and cameras Anselm Grundhöfer, Daniel Kurz, Sebastian Thiele, Oliver Bimber The Visual Computer, 2010 Preprint @Springer
18. Fast and robust CAMShift tracking David Exner, Erich Bruns, Daniel Kurz, Anselm Grundhöfer, Oliver Bimber 2010 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition-Workshops, 2010 @IEEE
19. Closed-loop feedback illumination for optical inverse tone-mapping in light microscopy Oliver Bimber, Daniel Klöck, Toshiyuki Amano, Anselm Grundhöfer, Daniel Kurz IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2010 @IEEE
20. Projected light microscopy Oliver Bimber, Anselm Grundhöfer, Daniel Kurz, Sebastian Thiele, Ferry Häntsch, Toshiyuki Amano, Daniel Klöck SIGGRAPH 2009: Talks, 2009 @ACM
21. Improving Interaction Performance for Ray Tracing Daniel Kurz, Christopher Lux, Jan P Springer, Bernd Fröhlich Eurographics (Short Papers), 2008 Preprint @Eurographics
22. Mutual occlusions on table-top displays in mixed reality applications Daniel Kurz, Kiyoshi Kiyokawa, Haruo Takemura Proceedings of the 2008 ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology, 2008 Preprint @ACM
23. Laser pointer tracking in projector-augmented architectural environments Daniel Kurz, Ferry Hantsch, Max Große, Alexander Schiewe, Oliver Bimber 2007 6th IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, 2007 Preprint @IEEE

Patents

1. Dynamic frame selection for scene understanding Daniel Kurz US Patent 12,536,737 · 2026
2. Specular surface mapping Luke A Pillans, Aleksandr M Movshovich, Nicholas C Soldner, Daniel Kurz, Arthur Y Zhang US Patent 12,373,969 · 2025
3. Shared event recording and rendering Daniel Kurz, Michael J Rockwell US Patent Application 18/807,283 · 2025
4. Immersive virtual display Mark B Rober, Sawyer I Cohen, Daniel Kurz, Tobias Holl, Benjamin B Lyon, Peter Georg Meier, Jeffrey M Riepling, Holly Gerhard US Patent 12,347,047 · 2025; US Patent 11,790,616 · 2023; US Patent 10,643,391 · 2020
5. Image-based detection of surfaces that provide specular reflections and reflection modification Peter Meier, Daniel Kurz, Brian Chris Clark, Selim Benhimane US Patent 11,900,569 · 2024; US Patent 11,462,000 · 2022
6. Method and system for presenting a digital information related to a real object Daniel Kurz, Anton Fedosov US Patent 12,039,644 · 2024; US Patent 11,030,784 · 2021
7. Transparent insert identification Daniel Kurz, Anselm Grundhoefer, Tushar Gupta US Patent 11,948,043 · 2024
8. Method and device for eye tracking using event camera data Branko Petljanski, Raffi A Bedikian, Daniel Kurz, Thomas Gebauer, Li Jia US Patent 12,105,280 · 2024; US Patent 11,474,348 · 2022; US Patent 11,150,469 · 2021
9. Method and device for detecting a touch between a first object and a second object Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,797,132 · 2023; US Patent 10,877,605 · 2020; US Patent 10,719,170 · 2020
10. Global reference direction detection for orienting three-dimensional models Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,935,263 · 2024
11. Method and system for generating at least one image of a real environment Sebastian Knorr, Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,877,086 · 2024; US Patent 11,212,464 · 2021
12. Light probe placement for displaying objects in 3D environments on electronic devices Daniel Kurz, Gowri Somanath, Tobias Holl US Patent 12,002,165 · 2024
13. Detecting specular surfaces Anselm Grundhoefer, Selim Benhimane, Daniel Kurz US Patent 12,073,533 · 2024
14. Multiple device model augmentation Daniel Kurz US Patent Application 18/441,274 · 2024
15. Method and system for determining at least one property related to at least part of a real environment Darko Stanimirovic, Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,727,661 · 2023; US Patent 10,719,727 · 2020
16. Method of and system for projecting digital information on a real object in a real environment Peter Meier, Selim Benhimane, Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,652,965 · 2023; US Patent 10,819,962 · 2020
17. Method and system for determining spatial coordinates of a 3D reconstruction of at least part of a real object at absolute spatial scale Sebastian Knorr, Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,741,624 · 2023; US Patent 10,846,871 · 2020; US Patent 10,445,895 · 2019
18. Environment synthesis for lighting an object Daniel Kurz, Gowri Somanath, Tobias Holl US Patent 11,694,392 · 2023
19. Partial image completion Daniel Kurz, Gowri Somanath, Tobias Holl US Patent 11,636,578 · 2023
20. Devices and methods for motion planning of computer characters Daniel Kurz, Novaira Masood, Shem Nguyen, Jeremy R Bernstein US Patent Application 18/174,560 · 2023
21. Training a network to inhibit performance of a secondary task Daniel Kurz, Thomas Gebauer, Dewey H Lee, Muhammad Ahmed Riaz, Qian Wang US Patent 11,734,570 · 2023
22. Posture detection and correction Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,544,865 · 2023
23. Classification for image creation Gowri Somanath, Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,423,308 · 2022
24. Immersive display of motion-synchronized virtual content Mark B Rober, Sawyer I Cohen, Daniel Kurz, Tobias Holl, Benjamin B Lyon, Peter Georg Meier, Jeffrey M Riepling, Holly Gerhard US Patent 11,321,923 · 2022
25. Rendering objects to match camera noise Daniel Kurz, Tobias Holl US Patent 11,308,652 · 2022
26. Deformable object tracking Peter Kaufmann, Daniel Kurz, Brian Amberg, Yanghai Tsin US Patent 11,379,996 · 2022
27. Generating a computer graphic for a video frame Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,282,171 · 2022
28. Federated learning using local ground truth estimation Daniel Kurz, Muhammad Ahmed Riaz US Patent 11,507,836 · 2022
29. Postponing the state change of an information affecting the graphical user interface until during the condition of inattentiveness Sebastian Knorr, Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,334,156 · 2022; US Patent 11,016,565 · 2021; US Patent 10,671,159 · 2020
30. Modeling a geographical space for a computer-generated reality experience Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,488,352 · 2022
31. Rendering virtual objects with realistic surface properties that match the environment Bradley W Peebler, Daniel Kurz US Patent 10,930,049 · 2021
32. Rendering virtual content with coherent visual properties Daniel Kurz US Patent 11,182,978 · 2021
33. Method of detecting and describing features from an intensity image Daniel Kurz, Peter Meier US Patent 10,607,350 · 2020; US Patent 9,679,384 · 2017
34. Method of providing image feature descriptors Selim Benhimane, Daniel Kurz, Thomas Olszamowski US Patent 10,528,847 · 2020; US Patent 10,402,684 · 2019; US Patent 10,192,145 · 2019
35. Augmented virtual display Mark B Rober, Sawyer I Cohen, Daniel Kurz, Tobias Holl, Benjamin B Lyon, Peter Georg Meier, Jeffrey M Riepling, Holly Gerhard US Patent 10,825,255 · 2020; US Patent 10,482,669 · 2019
36. Depth-based touch detection Lejing Wang, Daniel Kurz US Patent 10,572,072 · 2020
37. Method of providing a descriptor for at least one feature of an image and method of matching features Daniel Kurz, Selim Benhimane US Patent 10,650,546 · 2020; US Patent 8,942,418 · 2015
38. Method and system for determining a model of at least part of a real object Daniel Kurz, Lejing Wang US Patent 10,297,083 · 2019
39. Augmented safety restraint Daniele Casaburo, Daniel Kurz, Sebastian Knorr US Patent 10,189,434 · 2019
40. Method and system for providing information associated with a view of a real environment superimposed with a virtual object Daniel Kurz, Lejing Wang US Patent Application 15/100,355 · 2016
41. Method of matching image features with reference features Daniel Kurz, Peter Meier US Patent 9,400,941 · 2016
42. Method for registering at least one part of a first and second image using a collineation warping function Selim Benhimane, Daniel Kurz US Patent 9,213,908 · 2015

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