Computer Vision News - December 2019

Marc Pollefeys 21 grown in the last few years? There are many strong local communities in many countries which we don’t always see enough of internationally, but that’s an aspect that I really like about ICCV. The local community in the host country typically rises to the challenge. If we do ICCV in China at some point, I’m sure there will be a huge local presence too. In any country you go, you see the leaders of the local community really investing in organizing the best possible event. Having planned such a successful event this year, do you have any recommendations for the organizers of the next ICCV? Foresee enough space! What are you the proudest of about this ICCV? Over four years, attendance has grown by a factor of five and as an organization we’ve been able to cope with that. I think it’s fantastic that the event and the community have not been disturbed by it. Let’s move on to HoloLens and Microsoft now. You are probably the most popular figure identified with this Microsoft product and have invested a lot of yourself into the challenge. How did you come to bet so much of your time and career behind the project? On the computer vision side of things, I care a lot about HoloLens and invest a lot of effort in that. The main person is of course Alex Kipman, who is the person leading the HoloLens effort. He started that many years ago before I got involved. So, his bet was even bigger? Yes, he literally bet his whole career on it! Within Microsoft, there are many other people very much invested. Jamie Shotton in Cambridge is playing an important role in developing the computer vision capabilities for HoloLens. When Alex approached me in 2015, it took me a while to decide to dive in, but I realised that having been in academia for 20 years and having done a lot of work to try and make algorithms practical, that this really was an opportunity to do that for real. Also, at CVPR 2015, I noticed that the industry presence suddenly grew tremendously, so it felt like the right time to be thinking about exploring opportunities to contribute in a meaningful way. The obvious possibilities were in self- driving cars, augmented reality, mixed reality, robotics and so on. Looking at all of these opportunities, I decided to go for HoloLens and mixed reality. It will be a long journey, but HoloLens is already at a place where it can really make a difference. It’s not a device Best of ICCV 2019