CS 4495 / 6476 Computer Vision

Fall 2015, MW 4:35 to 5:55, Van Leer W200
Instructor: James Hays

GTAs: Grady Williams, Brian Goldfain, Patsorn Sangkloy, Nam Vo, and Sen "Henry" Hu.
Undergraduate TAs: Carden Bagwell and Zhengyang Wu


Computer Vision, art by kirkh.deviantart.com

Course Description

This course provides an introduction to computer vision including fundamentals of image formation, camera imaging geometry, feature detection and matching, stereo, motion estimation and tracking, image classification and scene understanding. We'll develop basic methods for applications that include finding known models in images, depth recovery from stereo, camera calibration, image stabilization, automated alignment, tracking, boundary detection, and recognition. The focus of the course is to develop the intuitions and mathematics of the methods in lecture, and then to learn about the difference between theory and practice in the projects.

This offering of CS4495/6476 will emphasize the core vision tasks of scene understanding and recognition. We will train and evaluate classifiers to recognize various visual phenomena.

The difference between the undergraduate version of the class (CS4495) and the graduate version (CS6476) will be the requirements on the projects. In particular, more challenging extensions of the projects will be extra credit for CS4495 but required for CS6476.

The Advanced Computer Vision course (CS7476) will build on this course and deal with advanced and research related topics in Computer Vision, including Machine Learning, Graphics, and Robotics topics that impact Computer Vision.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, students will:

Prerequisites

No prior experience with computer vision is assumed, although previous knowledge of visual computing or signal processing will be helpful. The following skills are necessary for this class:

Grading

Your final grade will be made up from You will lose 10% each day for late projects. However, you have three "late days" for the whole course. That is to say, the first 24 hours after the due date and time counts as 1 day, up to 48 hours is two and 72 for the third late day. This will not be reflected in the initial grade reports for your assignment, but they will be factored in and distributed at the end of the semester so that you get the most points possible.

Graduate Credit

If you are enrolled in the graduate section CS 6476 then you will be expected to do additional work on each project. Each project will list several extra credit opportunities available and CS 6476 students will be required to do at least 10 points worth of extra credit (for which you will not get extra credit, unless you do more than 10 points worth).

Academic Integrity

Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. This includes cheating, lying about course matters, plagiarism, or helping others commit a violation of the Honor Code. Plagiarism includes reproducing the words of others without both the use of quotation marks and citation. Students are reminded of the obligations and expectations associated with the Georgia Tech Academic Honor Code and Student Code of Conduct, available online at www.honor.gatech.edu. For quizzes, no supporting materials are allowed (notes, calculators, phones, etc).

Learning Accommodations

If needed, we will make classroom accommodations for students with documented disabilities. These accommodations must be arranged in advance and in accordance with the ADAPTS office (www.adapts.gatech.edu).

Contact Info and Office Hours:

If possible, please use Piazza to ask questions and seek clarifications before emailing the instructor or staff. Office Hours

Tentative Assignments

Winning projects

All Results

Image Filtering and Hybrid images
Local Feature Matching
Scene Recognition with Bag of Words
Face Detection with a Sliding Window
Boundary Detection with Sketch Tokens
It is strongly recommended that all projects be completed in Matlab. All starter code will be provided for Matlab. Students may implement projects through other means but it will generally be more difficult.

Textbook

Readings will be assigned in "Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications" by Richard Szeliski. The book is available for free online or available for purchase.

Tentative Syllabus

Class Date Topic Slides Reading Projects
Mon, Aug 17 Introduction to computer vision .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 1
Image Formation and Filtering (Szeliski chapters 2 and 3)
Wed, Aug 19 Light and Color, Cameras and Optics .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 2.2 and 2.1, especially 2.1
Mon, Aug 24 Cameras and Optics continued, Image Filtering .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 3.2 Project 1 out
Wed, Aug 26 Image filtering .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 3.2
Thinking in frequency .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 3.4
Image pyramids and applications .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 3.5.2 and 8.1.1
Feature Detection and Matching
Edge detection .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 4.2
Interest points and corners .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 4.1.1 Project 1 due
Local image features .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 4.1.2 Project 2 out
Feature matching and hough transform .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 4.1.3 and 4.3.2
Model fitting and RANSAC .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 6.1
Multiple Views and Motion
Stereo .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 11
Epipolar Geometry and Structure from Motion .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 7
Feature Tracking and Optical Flow .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 8.1 and 8.4
Machine Learning Crash Course
Machine learning intro and clustering .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 5.3
Machine learning: clustering continued .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 5.3 Project 2 due
Machine learning: classification .ppt, .pdf Project 3 out
No classes
Quiz 1
Recognition
Recognition overview and bag of features .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 14
Large-scale instance recognition .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 14.3.2
Detection with sliding windows: Viola Jones .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 14.1
Detection continued and Quiz 1 discussion See above Szeliski 14.2
Scene recognition with SUN database .ppt, .pdf
Mixture of Gaussians and advanced feature encoding .ppt, .pdf Project 3 Due
Modern object detection .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 14.1
Internet scale vision, pt 1 .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 14.5 Project 4 out
Internet scale vision, pt 2 .ppt, .pdf
Guest lecture Project page
Human computation and crowdsourcing .ppt, .pdf
Attributes and more crowdsourcing .ppt, .pdf
Sketch Recognition and more crowdsourcing .ppt, .pdf
Modern boundary detection and Pb .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 4.2 Project 4 due
Modern boundary detection and sketch tokens .ppt, .pdf, gPb, Sketch Tokens Szeliski 4.2
Guest lecture
Project 5 introduction .ppt, .pdf Szeliski 5.5 Project 5 out
Context and Spatial Layout .ppt, .pdf
Context and Scene parsing .ppt, .pdf
Quiz 2
Exam Period - not used Project 5 due

Acknowledgements

The materials from this class rely significantly on slides prepared by other instructors, especially Derek Hoiem and Svetlana Lazebnik. Each slide set and assignment contains acknowledgements. Feel free to use these slides for academic or research purposes, but please maintain all acknowledgements.