SEECS Colloquium

The recognition community in Computer Vision has long avoided bridging the representational gap between traditional, low-level image features and generic models. Instead, the gap has been artificially eliminated by either bringing the image closer to the models, using simple scenes containing idealized, textureless objects, or by bringing the models closer to the images, using 3-D CAD model templates or 2-D appearance model templates. In this paper, we begin by examining this trend and track its evolution over the last 30 years. We argue for the need to bridge (not eliminate) this representational gap, and review our recent progress for the domain of model acquisition. Specifically, we address the problem ofautomatically acquiring a generic 2-D view-based class model from a set of images, each containing an exemplar object belonging to that class. We introduce a novel graph-theoretical formulation of the problem, and demonstrate the approach on real imagery.

Sven Dickinson received the B.A.Sc. degree in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo, in 1983, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Maryland, in 1988 and 1991, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. From 1995-2000, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University, where he also held a joint appointment in the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS) and membership in the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS). From 1994-1995, he was a Research Assistant Professor in the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, and from 1991-1994, a Research Associate at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Toronto. He has held affiliations with the MIT Media Laboratory (Visiting Scientist, 1992-1994), the University of Toronto (Visiting Assistant Professor, 1994-1997), and the Computer Vision Laboratory of the Center for Automation Research at the University of Maryland (Assistant Research Scientist, 1993-1994, Visiting Assistant Professor, 1994-1997). Prior to his academic career, he worked in the computer vision industry, designing image processing systems for Grinnell Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, 1983-1984, and optical character recognition systems for DEST, Inc., Milpitas, CA, 1984-1985.

His major field of interest is computer vision with an emphasis on shape representation, object recognition, and mobile robot navigation. Dr. Dickinson was co-chair of both the 1997 and 1999 IEEE Workshops on Generic Object Recognition, held in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Corfu, Greece, respectively, while in 1999, he co-chaired the DIMACS Workshop on Graph Theoretic Methods in Computer Vision. In 1996, he received the NSF CAREER award for his work in generic object recognition, and since 1998 serves as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, in which he also co-edited a special issue on graph algorithms and computer vision in 2001.