This year's Roger Needham lecture - Computer Vision and
the Geometry of Nature - will examine the search for mathematical
models and algorithms that can explain and emulate the human visual
abilities most of us take for granted.
We can easily recognise thousands of objects, follow complicated
movements, and almost subconsciously build a three-dimensional view
of the world through stereo vision.
When a camera captures a scene, its rich visual complexity is
not lost and we can still enjoy the images and recognise the
picture's contents.
However, the visual patterns are translated into complex
numerical arrangements which current mathematics and statistics
strive to represent and understand.
Although science is far from having a complete understanding of
the processes of vision, the past decade has seen applications of
artificial vision move out of the lab into the real world.
In the lecture, Andrew Fitzgibbon will be talking about the use
of computer vision in obtaining a 3D representation of the world,
and the application of these techniques with regard to cinematic
special effects in films such as the Harry Potter and the Lord of
the Rings series.
It will begin by looking at various aspects of the human visual
system, and try to answer the question of whether it is reasonable
to expect to emulate human vision without first building an
artificial intelligence.
Fitzgibbon will describe several classic experiments which
suggest that not all tasks require artificial intelligence and will
consider applications where these tasks arise, for example robot
navigation and special effects.
He will also show how a combination of engineering and geometry
can provide reliable systems, after looking at how a man-made world
simplifies the solutions to these problems.
"We will be able to see how modern models of the statistics of
the irregular natural world can be brought to bear, in combination
with the paradigm of Bayesian inference, yielding powerful
algorithms, which work on trees and clouds as well as on buildings
and roads," said Fitzgibbon.
The final section of the lecture will speculate on the
tractability of some harder problems, such as object recognition
and unsupervised learning of visual competences.
The Roger Needham Lecture will take place on 23 October at the
Royal Society in London.
More information
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