计算机视觉与超自然物种 by Peter Tu

这篇有趣的文章是从Tomasz Malisiewicz的blog看到的。是Peter Tu的一篇blog（原文见此）。

 

Peter Tu来自GE Global Research的Computer VisionGroup。

Tu把学术界、产业界的研究人员跟狼人、吸血鬼、不死这些超自然物种进行类比，真是有才。

其实，戏谑之中也说明了一些问题，于是转载过来，廖有启发，权当娱乐。

下面是原文+简单摘译。

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中参加完视觉产业组的讨论后，得出一个观点：学术界搞研究的和产业界搞研究的可以类比成两种不同的超自然物种（吸血鬼和狼人）。

 

Let’s start with the Professors, whoseanalog would be vampires(吸血鬼). Vampirestend to be solitary creatures(独居物种) 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相当于是离群索居的吸血鬼，只不过吸血鬼潜藏在城堡里，而Professors则在各个Universities中。如同吸血鬼需要吸人的血，Professors需要榨取研究生的劳动力来获得publications。吸血鬼是不死的，教授却是有任期的。

 

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(受蛊惑的凡人) 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.

 

吸血鬼群族跟学术界相似点还有一个，都是分等级的。如同很多被迷惑的凡人想变成吸血鬼一样，很多研究生想成为Professor，但只有少数可以，有些从事了金融业，其他的一些就到了产业界，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.

 

在产业界，那些“狼人”们需要健硕的肌肉和体格，这就是产业界的研究人员花费大量时间所致力于构建的生产链系统。“狼人”是群居的，他们的群居处所就是各大公司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身上表现出类似于吸血鬼贵族气质的品味，如，他们考虑如何在黎曼流行上进行严格的测算，而产业界的“狼人”们所关心的问题相对粗俗一些，他们所关心的是运行效率和鲁棒性的问题。

 

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!

 

狼人每在月圆之夜就会变成狂暴之兽，同样，产业界的研究人员们也有他们的“大姨妈”，只不过是季度性的。每当季度报表的时候，他们就得放下“算尺”和“圆规”，转而周转纠结于Power-point的制作。

 

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”之间是互有敌意的。Professors和产业界研究者们也是相互BS。Professors认为他们才能解决基本问题，而之后，拿到产业界就只是剩填充细节而已。而产业界的研究人员们则认为，教授们只是把问题拿来玩一下，得出的方案拿到实际中根本不work。当然，他们都是片面的。

 

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…

 

……扯了这么多，该回归正题了，正如我开始所言，我(PeterTu)参加了两场CV会议，给大家看点儿给力的东西吧，请看下面的演示视频……

 

(视频在youtube上，感兴趣的同学翻墙看)

 

主要涉及：

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

 看着很熟吧，相信国内很多实验室也都在做相关的东西。

几张截图：