Event

A gathering of more than 150 researchers in Paris, the Global Forum AI for Humanity has the aim of setting the foundations for a global think tank in AI. This year’s meeting took place at the end of October, with a set of professionals from varied disciplines who analysed future challenges and opportunities of this technology.

Organised by the ‘Programme national de recherché française en IA’ and coordinated by INRIA, the Forum had the patronage of France’s Republic president, Mr. Emmanuel Macron and was an opportunity for professionals from different sectors, such as industry, humanities or the public administration, to gain insight on the current advances of Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Dimosthenis Karatzas and Dr. Alicia Fornés were two of the more than 150 invited researchers who gave their expertise about this subject. Dr. Alicia Fornés was part of the expert panel dedicated to Digital History, in which she talked about the combination of computer vision and gamification for transcribing historical manuscripts. Dr. Dimosthenis Karatzas, on the other hand, took part in the future of the machines and social interaction & intervention session talking about “Surviving in man-made environments: the case for language and vision”.

The event was held within the framework of the French government’s national strategy for Artificial Intelligence, and was an opportunity to identify a set of guidelines for three main themes. Firstly, the development of an ecosystem of talent; secondly, the dissemination of AI and its transfer to the economy and public administration, and lastly, the implementation of an ethical model which fosters innovation whilst maintaining the protection of fundamental rights.

As stated by the main organisers of the event, “the Global Forum on AI for Humanity is essential to establish a common comprehension of the new perspectives offered by AI, of the problems that emerge and the methods used that will allow us to solve these new challenges”. Furthermore, it aims to “create a set of recommendations for national and international initiatives”.

Dr. Alicia Fornés and Dr. Dimosthenis Karatzas were not the only representatives of Spain in this gathering. Dr. Ramon López de Màntaras, Director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence, was also invited, along with Dr. Carme Torras, Director of the Institute of Research in Robotics, Dr. Ricardo Baeza Yates, Professor of the UPF, (the three of them also located in Barcelona) and Dr. Enrique Vidal, from the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

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The Computer Vision Center was present at this year’s IoT Solutions World Congress presenting its technology in Computer Vision. A high number of enterprises and companies visited our stand and technological demonstration at the Catalan Pavilion.  

The IoT Solutions World Congress is the largest international event dedicated to IoT (Internet of Things) solutions for industry. This year the event took place from the 29^th to the 31^st of October at Fira de Barcelona – in the framework of the Barcelona Industry Week – and was attended by more than 16.000 visitors and 350 exhibitors from a wide range of nationalities, with the aim of establishing new partnerships.

The Computer Vision Center highlighted its latest Computer Vision technologies for IoT, with a Smart Market demonstration: a closed circuit that uses new approaches in Deep Learning to detect different packages of grocery items. Without reading a barcode or price, by using computer vision, the system identifies, on site, the item shown from any angle or position, automatically exhibiting the price in the customer’s ticket.

Furthermore, the CVC was also present at the Catalonia AI demo zone with a demonstration on apparent personality detection. This technology has the ability of giving the viewer a profile of apparent personality after just 15 seconds of video. Both demonstrations were highly succesful giving CVC broad recognition within the IOT industry world.

Have a look at our IoT Solutions World Congress Moment in Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1191294755721875456

Once again, the Computer Vision Center took part in Barcelona’s Maker Faire, which took place on the first weekend of October 2019 at Nau Bostik, an emblematic citizen led cultural center in the neighborhood of La Sagrera (Barcelona). The Faire is visited by more than 5.000 people every year, mainly by families and makers who are enthusiastic of open source projects. The Faire offers diverse perspectives on the great challenges of our progressively complex society. It is a spot that gathers international and local makers, members of industry, universities and research centers who are willing to promote, share and explain their different initiatives and projects.

As in past editions, the CVC showcased some of its Open Source work. The star of the day was our demonstration on apparent personality detection, which uses a thorough analysis of tone, movement and facial microexpressions to predict an apparent personality within a 15-second video. We also presented our Computational Neural Network game, a demonstration aimed to all audiences in which we simplify how a neural network gathers data and takes a decision, which is the basics of how we teach a computer to understand the environment around it by means of cameras.

In the media:

Our participation in this year’s Maker Faire was featured at El País (in Catalan): https://cat.elpais.com/cat/2019/10/04/tecnologia/1570170723_757789.html

The 6^th Annual Catalan Meeting on Computer Vision (ACMCV2019) took place this year on the 17th of September at the Espai Bital, in Barcelona. It is organized every year by the Computer Vision Center and the coordinators of the Master in Computer Vision of several Catalan universities (UAB, UOC, UPC and UPF). The goals of these anual meetings are to strengthen the Catalan academic and industrial Computer Vision network, to highlight the most relevant research results and to allow students from the Master in Computer Vision to meet and interact with members of the Catalan CV community.

This edition, as always, hosted the master thesis presentations of the students of the Master in Computer Vision, a poster session and two keynote lectures carried out by Dr. Gerard Pons-Moll, from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, with the title ‘Learning from Digital Humans from Images, Videos and Scans’, and Dr. Agata Lapedriza, from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya whose talk was focused on the evolution of her research in Computer Vision during the last ten years.

Presentation of the Computer Vision Catalan Alliance

Furthermore, we had the kick-off presentation of the Computer Vision Catalan Alliance. This terriotorial alliance aims to promote and foster collaboration within the Computer Vision ecosystem, joining the expertise of  researchers and entrepreneurs in this discipline who are currently based in Catalonia. Dr. Josep Lladós, CVC’s Director, gave a brief introduction and context of the Alliance. Directly after that, there was a panel discussion on the pilars of the Computer Vision Catalan Ecosystem with actors from both industry and Academia: Dr. Elisenda Bou (Vilynx), Mr. Oscar Sala (MWC Barcelona), Dr. Marco Bressan (Satellogic) and Dr. Xavier Giró (IDEAI-UPC). The debate was moderated by Xantal Llavina (TV3 journalist) and closed by the Director of Innovation and Digital Economy of the Catalan Government, Mr. Daniel Marco.

The program and more details about the event can all be found here: http://acmcv.cat/

Have a look at our ACMCV 2019 Moment in Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1192056946683187200?s=13