CVC History (1995-2025)

As collaborations with companies expanded, the need for a more agile structure became clear. In response, a consortium was formed by the UAB, the Catalan Department of Industry, and the CIRIT. This new framework strengthened ties with the business sector and boosted the group's innovation capacity.

The Statutes of the Computer Vision Center (CVC) were officially approved on July 13, 1994.

The new building of the Computer Vision Center was finally completed.

At that time, the CVC had a team of 46 professionals and was managing around 70 projects per year, combining research and innovation with a strong focus on medical and industrial applications.

The CVC and the UPC co-organized the 15th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2000), held in Barcelona. The event brought together professionals from around the world.

In 2000, CVC also won the Emprenedors-e Award, promoted by the Catalan Information Society Commission, for developing an automatic ID document reading system. This research later led to the creation of CVC’s third spin-off, ICAR Vision Systems.

ICAR Vision Systems, the CVC’s third spin-off, was founded in 2002 to meet Grup Peralada’s need to improve access control at its casinos. The company developed an automatic ID document reading system.

On 2017 Icar was acquired by Mitek Systems, a San Diego based transnational company, strengthening its position as a global leader in digital identity verification.

CVC received the Narcís Monturiol Award from the Government of Catalonia for its scientific and technological contributions to computer vision and for being a pioneering model of R&D organization.

The award, which honors individuals and institutions advancing research in Catalonia, was presented on March 5 at the Palau de la Generalitat.

INSPECTA, S.L. was a private company dedicated to the development of Computer Vision solutions. Established on January 2003 as a spin off from the CVC, INSPECTA focused its activities on the development, manufacture and sale of Artificial Vision Systems based on Colour Images Processing and self-learning methods.

During its first decade, the CVC focused on consolidating its theoretical model and transferring knowledge to industry by offering applied technological services and solutions. Projects from that period were mainly centered on computer vision in industrial settings, quality control, OCR (optical character recognition), text analysis in images, and motion tracking in video.

Gradually, new lines of work also began to emerge in areas such as medicine and mobility.

CVC organized ICDAR 2009, the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, at the UAB from July 26 to 29, with over 300 attendees.

Cloud Sizing Services marketed Verisize, a virtual fitting tool launched in 2012 by CVC researchers. It estimated body measurements to recommend accurate clothing sizes, helping reduce returns in online shopping. Verisize was unique in solving the online apparel sizing problem.

The first edition of the interuniversity Master's in Computer Vision (MCV) was launched. With a strong focus on computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning, the MCV has trained over 300 highly skilled professionals and earned a reputation for excellence.

Coordinated by Dr. Vanrell, it has played a key role in strengthening Catalonia’s AI ecosystem by fostering collaboration between universities, research centers, and industry, while promoting high-value talent transfer to the tech sector.

Crowdmobile, founded in 2014, was a tech company offering crowdsourcing solutions for data acquisition. It developed Knowxel, a platform connecting a mobile user community to perform client tasks via human feedback on demand. Challenges are broken down into tasks distributed to many users, who are rewarded for each completed task. Knowxel then collects, evaluates, and delivers the final results to clients.

The Library Living Lab, an open innovation space at Miquel Batllori Library in Volpelleres, Sant Cugat, was inaugurated. The project is coordinated by a consortium including CVC, UAB, and the Sant Cugat City Council, with participation from local associations and companies. 

Care Respite was an ambient intelligent device designed to assist in caring for patients and dependent people at home and in institutions. Founded in 2015 by the CVC, Care Respite was supported by the Caixa Impulse Programme and European Commission initiatives such as Innolabs and EIT Head Start.

The CVC received the TECNIO Seal, an accreditation promoted by the Government of Catalonia to recognize entities that develop or transfer technology to industry. The CVC was one of the 54 organizations awarded the seal in its first phase.

Since then, the center has successfully maintained and renewed this accreditation over the years.

Orain is a Fintech platform founded in 2016 that blends Artificial Intelligence and IoT to enable easy, dynamic interaction with everyday machines via mobile devices. Initially created to meet vending market needs, Orain enhances the user experience in self-service machine purchases.

The CVC, with support from the Catalan Government, created the Computer Vision Catalan Alliance to boost talent, innovation, and impact through collaboration in the field of computer vision in Catalonia. 

A highlight of this initiative was an institutional mission to Montreal, featuring strategic meetings with public institutions such as Quebec’s Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Research, and leading research and innovation centers like IVADO Labs, Next AI, and various Canadian AI companies.

AllRead MLT is a Computer Vision deep tech startup founded in 2019 in collaboration with the Mobile World Capital Innovation Programme (Collider) and the CVC. It develops advanced character recognition technology based on deep learning neural networks. AllRead extracts and converts alphanumeric text from operational environments into Big Data, boosting efficiency by reducing manual tasks and enabling instant digitization. 

Ekiter, founded in 2020, was a digital ecosystem connecting entrepreneurs, sponsors, collaborators, utility companies, investors, incubators, and institutions to facilitate funding and collaborations for pre-seed stage startups.

The UAB launched a new Bachelor's Degree in Artificial Intelligence to meet the growing demand for experts in the field. Supported by the Catalonia.AI strategy, the multidisciplinary program involves several UAB faculties and key research centers like CVC and IIIA-CSIC.

The RDI-IA Network (Xarxa RDI-IA) was created under the coordination of CVC to provide Catalonia’s AI ecosystem with effective tools for technology transfer and knowledge valorization from universities and research centers. Dr. Dimosthenis Karatzas serves as its scientific director.

In 2023, the UAB-Cruïlla Chair in AI in Music and Arts was also launched—a pioneering initiative by UAB and Cruïlla in collaboration with the CVC. Led by Dr. Fernando Vilariño, it explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and artistic creativity.

The decade from 2015 to 2025 has been marked by a true revolution in the field of computer vision, driven by the emergence and consolidation of deep learning. This set of machine learning techniques, based on deep neural networks, has radically transformed how machines interpret images and videos.

From 2015 onward, thanks to the availability of large volumes of data (big data), increased computational power, and advances in algorithms, computer vision systems have reached levels of accuracy and reliability that were unimaginable years before. 

During this third decade, CVC research has been applied across a wide range of sectors, such as healthcare, mobility, industry, agriculture, civil security, social sciences, heritage, sustainability, and health. This broad applicability has opened the door to sustained growth in the social and economic impact of the discipline.