Computer and Robot Vision (CRV) 2009

I just returned from the Computer and Robot Vision conference in Kelowna, BC. This meeting was, as usual, held in conjunction with two other conferences: Artificial Intelligence, and Graphics Interface. As always, the refereed submissions are complemented by about nine invited talks (three from each conference). This year Jim Little from UBC gave an interesting talk on the Semantic Robot Vision competition over the last few years, and some of the issues involved in building a mobile vision system that can drive around and identify objects.

Junaed Sattar from our lab won an award for the best robotics paper that I co-authored with him. This award was based on the scores from the reviewers. The paper discusses the computer system design and software architecture for our Aqua vehicle family which allows the robot to track and interact with a human operator.

The conference took place at the Okanagen campus of the University of British Columbia (where the general chair, Yves Lucet, is a professor). The campus is quite impressive with a slew of recently-constructed buildings, and a hist of buildings currently under construction. Getting to an off-campus restaurant, however, is a major undertaking.