Computer Vision News - July 2016

Regarding challenges to be faced, vision technologies work under certain conditions and do not function very well under different conditions. That means that you should figure out where vision falls short of solving a problem. For example, you cannot see in the dark and cameras can’t either, so you might want to use an IR camera; passive stereo cameras cannot see large glass surfaces, so you need to use sonar sensors. You want to think in terms of solutions, without limiting yourself to vision solutions only. A good, practical solution may be the combination of computer vision and some other technology. If you think like this, looking at the entire system’s solution, your response to these challenges will be much more effective. Every single technology has limitations, so that problems are better solved by combining technologies. CVN: Could you tell us some of the funny things that you certainly have seen while working with drones? Modali: A short story that I can tell is about a guy I have met, who wanted to use drones for fishing . So he put a line in the water to catch fish and attached it to the drone. He caught a fast fish that way. I thought: what happens if the fish is too big or it grabs the drone and makes it fall? And then I met another guy who improved this solution: he uses the cameras on the drone to see where the fish is through the water, so that he could detect and move to the best fishing areas. “ Every single technology has limitations, so that problems are better solved by combining technologies ” 18 Computer Vision News Guest CVN: Is that fair to the fish? Modali: Probably not! [ he laughs ] But I felt that this innovation is amazing because we, as hardware or software providers, build some solutions and then people use them to solve all kind of different problems that you couldn’t even imagine, when you built them. Another example comes from a sport I love: skiing . I have found a company selling a service by which they fly a drone behind you to take a video of you while you are skiing, the end result of which is a very nice 2-minutes video of your descent . A last use case that you and your readers might like comes from my country of origin, India: one of the most popular uses of drones in India is to take wedding videos . People enjoy the different prospective, with a new angle that you never had before and which generates a different kind of memories stored in that video. People take their vacation video via drones, with drones following their cars and so on. I just received a video by one guy who proposed to his girlfriend while the drone delivered the ring. CVN: What was her answer? Modali: Of course she said yes! Guest