Computer Vision (CSE 455)
Staff
Web Page
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse455/08wi/
Handouts
signup sheet
intro slides
image filtering slides

Today
Intros
Computer vision overview
Course overview
Image processing
Readings for this week
Forsyth & Ponce, chapter 7 (in reader, available at UW Bookstore in the CSE textbook area)
Mortensen, Intelligent Scissors (online)

What is computer vision?

What is computer vision?

Every picture tells a story
Goal of computer vision is to write computer programs that can interpret images

Can computers match (or beat) human vision?
Yes and no (but mostly no!)
humans are much better at “hard” things
computers can be better at “easy” things

Human perception has its shortcomings…

Slide 8

Current state of the art
The next slides show some examples of what current vision systems can do

Earth viewers (3D modeling)

Photosynth

Optical character recognition (OCR)

Face detection
Many new digital cameras now detect faces
Canon, Sony, Fuji, …

Smile detection?

Object recognition (in supermarkets)

Face recognition

Vision-based biometrics

Login without a password…

Object recognition (in mobile phones)
This is becoming real:
                      Microsoft Research
Point & Find, Nokia

Special effects:  shape capture

Special effects:  motion capture

Sports

Smart cars
Mobileye
Vision systems currently in high-end BMW, GM, Volvo models
By 2010:  70% of car manufacturers.
Video demo

Vision-based interaction (and games)

Vision in space

Robotics

Medical imaging

Current state of the art
You just saw examples of current systems.
Many of these are less than 5 years old
This is a very active research area, and rapidly changing
Many new apps in the next 5 years
To learn more about vision applications and companies
David Lowe maintains an excellent overview of vision companies
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/lowe/vision.html

This course
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse455/08wi/

Project 1:  intelligent scissors

Project 2:  panorama stitching
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/455/06wi/projects/project2/results.html

Project 3:  3D shape reconstruction

Project 4:  Face Recognition

Grading
Programming Projects (70%)
image scissors
panoramas
3D shape modeling
face recognition
Midterm (15%)
Final (15%)

General Comments
Prerequisites—these are essential!
Data structures
A good working knowledge of C and C++ programming
(or willingness/time to pick it up quickly!)
Linear algebra
Vector calculus
Course does not assume prior imaging experience
computer vision, image processing, graphics, etc.