電腦視覺與超自然物種 by Peter Tu

這篇有趣的文章是從Tomasz Malisiewicz的blog看到的。是Peter Tu的一篇blog（原文見此）。

 

Peter Tu來自GE Global Research的Computer VisionGroup。

Tu把學術界、產業界的研究人員跟狼人、吸血鬼、不死這些超自然物種進行類比，真是有才。

其實，戲謔之中也說明了一些問題，於是轉載過來，廖有啟發，權當娛樂。

下面是原文+簡單摘譯。

A few weeks ago I attended two conferences:the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) and the IEEE Conference onAdvanced Video and Signal-Based Surveillance (AVSS). At both events I wasinvited to participate on the vision and industry discussion panels, where weconsidered how computer vision research relates to the business community.During these debates it became clear to me that academic researchers or theProfessors and Industrial Researchers (IRs) view themselves as distinctlydifferent breeds. I came to the conclusion that there is a good analogy betweenComputer Vision researchers and the supernatural.

 

Peter Tu在ECCV和AVSS中參加完視覺產業組的討論後，得出一個觀點：學術界搞研究的和產業界搞研究的可以類比成兩種不同的超自然物種（吸血鬼和狼人）。

 

Let’s start with the Professors, whoseanalog would be vampires(吸血鬼). Vampirestend to be solitary creatures(獨居物種) skulkingaround in their musty castles. Professors also tend to keep to themselves, but insteadof castles they are found lurking in universities. Vampires need blood fromhuman donors. Professors need publications, which they extract from their gradstudents. While vampires are immortal, Professors have tenure.

 

Professors相當於是離群索居的吸血鬼，只不過吸血鬼潛藏在城堡裡，而Professors則在各個Universities中。如同吸血鬼需要吸人的血，Professors需要榨取研究生的勞動力來獲得publications。吸血鬼是不死的，教授卻是有任期的。

 

Vampire and academic societies are bothvery hierarchical. The position of a given Professor can be directly inferredby observing where he or she sits during the conference dinners. Manyenthralled mortals(受蠱惑的凡人) hope tobecome vampires, but few ever do. Likewise many grad students hope to becomeProfessors, however at any given time one can count on one’s fingers the numberof open computer vision Professorships. Many grad students end up drifting awayfrom the field all together. Some end up on Wall Street solving differentialequations for their financier and money-lending masters. However others canmake the conversion to industry, where they become the research equivalent ofwerewolves.

 

吸血鬼群族跟學術界相似點還有一個，都是分等級的。如同很多被迷惑的凡人想變成吸血鬼一樣，很多研究生想成為Professor，但只有少數可以，有些從事了金融業，其他的一些就到了產業界，便成了“狼人”。

 

Werewolves have larger physiques whencompared to the diminutive Vampires. In the research world muscle is equated togear and big working systems, which IRs spend much of their time collecting andbuilding. Werewolves live in packs, for IRs such communities are known ascorporate research labs.

 

在產業界，那些“狼人”們需要健碩的肌肉和體格，這就是產業界的研究人員花費大量時間所致力於構建的生產鏈系統。“狼人”是群居的，他們的群居處所就是各大公司research labs。

 

Like Vampires, Professors tend to havearistocratic tastes and interests such as how to make proper measures onRiemannian manifolds, in contrast werewolves and IRs are a little earthier –IRs will talk at length about such issues as runtime and robustness.

 

Professors身上表現出類似於吸血鬼貴族氣質的品味，如，他們考慮如何在黎曼流行上進行嚴格的測算，而產業界的“狼人”們所關心的問題相對粗俗一些，他們所關心的是運行效率和魯棒性的問題。

 

Werewolves must periodically make ametamorphosis into hideous monsters. IRs are equally cursed. Instead of thefull moon they have quarterly reviews. During such distressing times they mustput down their slide rules and compasses to become power-point spewingcorporate stooges. For senior IRs the transformation can be so complete thatthey can be seen dawning both jacket and tie!

 

狼人每在月圓之夜就會變成狂暴之獸，同樣，產業界的研究人員們也有他們的“大姨媽”，只不過是季度性的。每當季度報表的時候，他們就得放下“算尺”和“圓規”，轉而周轉糾結於Power-point的製作。

 

There has always been animosity betweenvampires and werewolves. Professors and IRs also share a certain amount ofcontempt for each other. Professors feel that they are the only one’s fit toconsider fundamental problems and that once they have figured things out, theproblems can then be sent to IRs who should be relegated to working out thefine details. While IRs assert that the professors simply play around withproblems, come up with solutions that don’t really work, subsequently claim theproblem to be no longer interesting and then move on the next topic de jour.Like all prejudices, both views are neither charitable nor accurate.

 

“狼人”和“吸血鬼”之間是互有敵意的。Professors和產業界研究者們也是相互BS。Professors認為他們才能解決基本問題，而之後，拿到產業界就只是剩填充細節而已。而產業界的研究人員們則認為，教授們只是把問題拿來玩一下，得出的方案拿到實際中根本不work。當然，他們都是片面的。

 

Wherever there are vampires and werewolvesthere too are vampire and werewolf hunters. Researchers also have their nemesesand they are known as Masters of Business Administration (MBAs). Instead ofstakes and silver bullets, MBAs come armed with spreadsheets, schedules andmarket surveys. Their zealous attacks can come from any angle includingquestions regarding relevance to society, projections of customer return oninvestment and concerns regarding the timeliness of results.

 

In the movies, the young starlets alwaysfall in love with the supernatural heartthrob – well I guess all analogies havetheir breaking points… As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece I recentlyattended a convening of computer vision researchers. At all such events one mustflex a little muscle – see the video below…

 

……扯了這麼多，該迴歸正題了，正如我開始所言，我(PeterTu)參加了兩場CV會議，給大家看點兒給力的東西吧，請看下面的示範視頻……

 

(視頻在youtube上，感興趣的同學翻牆看)

 

主要涉及：

Action Recognition, Action Analysis, BehaviorAnalysis, Behavior Recognition, Tracking, Facial Analysis, Biometrics

 看著很熟吧，相信國內很多實驗室也都在做相關的東西。

幾張：