Event

AERFAI Summer Lectures & Colloquium on Deep Learning for Computer Vision

by

CVC has organised this year’s AERFAI Summer School that took place at UAB’s Casa Convalescència on the 17th and 18th of July. We had keynote lectures by Prof. Antonio Torralba (MIT – IBM), Prof. Joan Bruna (NY University), Dr. Eduard Vázquez (Cortexica), Dr. Marco Bressan (Satellogic) and Prof. Antonio M. López from UAB and C VC. The program and Summer School details can all be found at the event’s website: http://www.cvc.uab.es/aerfai/

Plenty of CVC members attended, with a number of colloquiums debating on Deep Learning and its use in Computer Vision. Dr. Dimosthenis Karatzas, from CVC, moderated an intense debate in which speakers were asked to reflect on the future of Computer Vision and the role of Deep Learning within this new paradigm.

Find the event’s Twitter moment here: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1019536110995861504

CARLA simulator and Crowd Counting at Maker Faire BCN 2018

by

CVC was present at this year’s Maker Faire Barcelona 2018 last weekend, 16th and 17th of June at the Italian Pavillion of the Fira de Barcelona.

More than 10.000 people visited this year’s Maker Faire in Barcelona, an expo dedicated to Open Source projects and makers that gathers a rapidly increasing community within the metropolitan area of Barcelona. CVC, along with other research centers, had a space in which it showcased its simulator for autonomous driving, CARLA, and its crowd counting technology, both technologies winning three Maker of Merit awards. PhD student Edgar Riba gave a talk on OpenCV, computer vision and deep learning, and how to embed computer vision in applications for all the maker community.

Have a look at our Maker Faire Twitter Moment

Our Communication manager was interviewed by La Hora Maker. See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03fZcHjwg8U&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

CVC Open Day 2018

by

CVC celebrated its Open Day last Friday 25th of May in a three turn visit. More than 60 students from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona visited our center and had the opportunity to know, first hand, the research we are developing in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence.

Building communities and innovation networks with robotics at schools – Steam Conference 2018

by

Dr. Fernando Vilariño and Alexandra Canet presented a workshop at last week’s Steam Conference in Cosmocaixa, Barcelona. They presented the Library Living Lab to High School science and technology teachers and dedicated a session on how to build a community with local actors and thus actively work on societal challenges within their towns or neighbourhoods, all of this with the use of robotics. The public was highly commited with their local communities and eager to explore different ways to effectively engage with stakeholders and thus trigger change at a local scale.

Two computational neuroscience PhD students at CVC, E-life ambassadors

by

Xim Cerdà-Company and David Berga are on their last year of their computational neuroscience PhD and have recently become ambassadors of E-life, one of the most renowned open science journals worldwide. E-life has an ambassador network which is in charge of promoting the values and vision of Open Science and the philosophy of the journal. … Read more

Computer Vision and Deep Learning at the Mobile World Congress 2018

by

The Computer Vision Center took part of this year’s edition of the Mobile World Congress presenting a new crowd counting technique that uses Computer Vision and Deep Learning for the estimation of people in gatherings. The CVC had an important presence in the media and participated in the Mobile Talks organised by Moble World Capital Barcelona.

More than 100.000 people attended this year’s Mobile World Conference, more exactly 107.000 attendees, a few less than past years, but with higher and more interesting profiles. The Computer Vision Center attended with a stand within the Catalonia pavilion, as has been doing for the past 5 years, and presented a demo based on the work of Xialei Liu and Dr. Joost Van de Weijer, which will be presented at this year’s CVPR. The demo counted, real time, the amount of people gathered within the congress square and was a huge success both for the media as for business.

Dr. Joost Van de Weijer gave a press Conference on the second day of the Mobile to more than 20 different media and newspaper journalists presenting his novel technique. The Press Conference was introduced by Mr. Jordi Puignero, the Telecommunications, Cybersecurity and Digital society Secretary of the Government of Catalonia and president of CVC, and presented by Dr. Josep Lladós, CVC director.

Dr. Fernando Vilariño participated at this year’s Mobile Talks, invited by Mobile World Capital Barcelona, in a discussion about Digital Economy with the innovation journalist Roc Fages. Mobile Talks are intended to give visitors the opportunity of in depth views of different current situations. Dr. Vilariño explained the importance of digital transformation along with social innovation, and the need of both of them to evolve alongside.

The CVC team came back from Mobile World Congress with a good impression of the event and plenty of new contacts to be worked on from now. Mobile World Congress 2019 will soon be right by the corner.

Find CVC’s MWC presence in the Media here.

 

CVC at the Smart City Expo 2017

by

CVC was present at this year’s edition of the Smart City Expo in Barcelona within the Catalonia booth. We presented CARLA, an open-source simulator for autonomous driving research and also brought in our small prototype of autonomous vehicle in order to show the work the CVC is doing within this area.

Have a look at our Smart City Expo Moment in Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/moments/935551269154025472

Computer Vision, a strategic technology for Catalonia

by

The Telecommunications, Cybersecurity and Digital Society Secretary, Jordi Puigneró, closed last Thursday, 13th of July, the presentation act of the study of the state of Computer Vision in Catalonia, carried out by Cluster Development. The study clearly concluded that there is a strong and innovative ecosystem within Artificial Intelligence applied to vision and that Computer … Read more

Living labs: including communicators in the quadruple helix ecosystem

by

Last 26th of June, we organised a session at the European Conference of Science Journalists (ECSJ2017) in Copenhagen, Denmark. The session was titled ‘Citizen Experience as a powerful communication tool: Open Innovation and the role of Living Labs in EU’ featuring key speakers who presented a novel way of crafting citizen innovation: living labs. Our … Read more

Boosting entrepreneur projects within Smart mobility

by

In order to highlight the key technologies and thus respond to the challenges of smart mobility and promote entrepreneurship, the UAB Research Park (PRUAB), the Computer Vision Center and the UAB School of Engineering, have organized a course dedicated to smart mobility and enterpreneurship, the “Intelligent Vehicle and Business Opportunities” program, with the direct support of the Department of Enterprise and Occupation of the Generalitat of Catalonia (Departament d’empresa i ocupació de la Generalitat de Catalunya), through the Catalunya Emprèn Program.

The course’s Demoday took place on the 27th of June, and the whole program counted with the participation of 38 students with different profiles, such as researchers, entrepreneurs, engineering students, designers and various professionals. During six months, the students have received training on emerging technologies in the area of smart transport and business management and new business models. Concurrently, they have worked in their own project, designing new solutions accompanied by technology and business experts, who have been giving them support in order to bring their idea closer to the market. 

Innovative projects for sustainable mobility

The six projects developed throughout the Program were presented on Tuesday 27th  of June at the Eureka building (UAB Research Park) in a Demoday and evaluated by a specialized jury: Felipe Jiménez, Director of the Intelligent System Unit at the Institute of Automobile Research of the Polytechnic University of Madrid; José Manuel Barrios, head of the department of Innovation of the company Applus+ IDIADA; Eduardo Urruticoechea, Director of Innovation at IDNEO, Antoni Espinosa, associate professor at the UAB and researcher in the field of the autonomous vehicle, and Meritxell Bassolas, head of Technological Transfer at the Computer Vision Center.

The selected project and winner of the event was CheckUp, mechanism for the automatic diagnosis of damage in rented cars. Currently, car rental companies stil rely on the visual perception of their staff for the vehicle inspection, registering the damage manually and on paper.  The solution proposed by CheckUp is based on automating and accelerating this process through computer vision in order to maintain the customer’s confidence and the impartiality of the company.

This project has obtained a prize of 1,000 euros, sponsored by the accelerator mVenturesBCN.

The other developed projects are:

Apparka: a web and mobile platform for the management of shared electric bicycles, which allows users to find, rent and unlock a bicycle through a mobile application. Furthermore, the application analyses and manages the data registered in the routes in real time, such as distance, time, consumed calories or the state of the battery of the bicycle, proposing the users the optimal route. This project is born to offer a new concept of mobility, being a great complement for public transport and replacing private transport.

Accsint: a system for helping the driving of electric wheelchairs for people with reduced mobility. The mechanism incorporates sensors and satellite connectivity to detect obstacles, slopes, holes, etc. and notify emergency services in case of an accident.

Urban Charge intends to make private electric vehicle recharging points profitable during the time frames in which they are empty. It is a collaborative platform that connects users seeking for parking and recharging their electric vehicle in available private charge points.

Drivvisor focuses on the driver and proposes a monitoring system in order to evaluate its state during driving. Their idea is to develop a mobile application based on computer vision that detects the tiredness and the distractions of the driver, issuing alerts in real time.

Finally, Smart Clean Technologies proposes to use autonomous vehicles capable of cleaning large surfaces autonomously. Its innovative characteristic is that the robot knows in every moment where is it located and thus reaching all points. Moreover, the system is flexible and non intrusive.

Continuous support

Although the course has reached its end, the projects will continue receiving support from the UAB Research Park in order to effectively reach market. Most of the projects have already developed a fist prototype and have attracted the interest of different institutions.

You’ll find all the Demoday pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pruab/sets/72157685506538076/with/35585348325/