Computer Vision News - September 2016

Are our eyes going to be the most powerful of our organs? That might happen with gaze tracking , one of the hottest issues in computer vision. A very much talked about start-up in the field is Italian-based and European- funded Cogisen , headed by Christiaan Erik Rijnders . Trained as an aerospace engineer, Rijnders later worked for the Ferrari Formula 1 team , when they were dominating with Michael Schumacher . With Ferrari, Rijnders developed simulations and simulators. He was also a technical reference at the circuits. In those years, simulations were very different from today, when a simulation engineer opens up a software package and puts in parameters. Back then, they had to develop the simulations and the simulators by themselves. It was nonlinear and transient cross physics and Rijnders explains how they were very difficult to model. He came to the conclusion that engineering needed to make a change when it came to what could be modeled. At a certain point, he started modeling algorithms which he considered necessary, taking the ideas from computational neuroscience, while the actual model itself is inspired by biology. He developed it trying to model what our visual cortex impressively does, when it preprocesses before our consciousness, solving signal to noise problems and recognizing single photons. 8 Computer Vision News Application Cogisen Application Cogisen CEO Christiaan Erik Rijnders controlling a smartphone with gaze tracking from a 2m distance