Skolkovo’s Robocenter is teaming up with IT cluster resident VisionLabs to present Russia’s first computer vision Olympics.
The event, set for March 27 at the Baumann Moscow State Technical University, aims to promote understanding of the field, which deals with capturing and processing images automatically.
Visionlabs technology. Photo: visionlabs.ru
“Our goal is to popularize the mega-promising areas of research such as computer vision and machine learning, as well as offering students and young scientists from the top technical universities the chance to test themselves,” said VisionLabs general director Alexander Khanin.
The company, which joined the Skolkovo project in May 2012, has two market-ready products – face-recognition technology and car license plate identification. But it is also researching the highly promising fields of banking, retail and biometrics, where automated object recognition could cut down drastically on human labor costs.
The prize on offer for the top-three finishers is an internship with VisionLabs, while the outright victor will spend a week in Paris at the INRIA computer vision lab, Khanin said.
Participants must be math-savvy and understand computer programming platforms C++ and MATLAB, he added. They will be set tasks to solve during the daylong event, but upon registration will get the chance to bone up with sample questions.
Alexander Khanin
Computer vision technology is currently at the stage where machines can recognize objects and determine basic information about them. The trick now is how to combine data sets to understand the bigger picture, Khanin said. It’s a path that veers into artificial intelligence, potentially arming robots with the ability to react more appropriately to changes in their environment.
“With the help of computer vision it will become possible to realize natural human-machine interaction and make robots fully fledged members of society,” Khanin said.
“This is what scientists have been trying to achieve all these years.”
Registration for the computer vision Olympics is accessible here (Russian)