$550,000 grant for machine vision grant shared by Canadian professor

University of Guelph engineering professor Graham Taylor will share $550,000 in federal funding for a three-year international research project intended to help improve upon machine vision technologies.

"Professor Taylor’s research on machine learning and computer technology will generate novel approaches to solve pressing problems in key sectors – food, agriculture, and environment – all areas where University of Guelph researchers also excel," said Malcolm Campbell, vice-president (research) at the university, which is located in Guelph, ON, Canada.

Taylor received a Strategic Project Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and hopes to help computers "see" better, in various applications, including hospital ward monitoring and improving upon the design of public spaces.

While computer vision systems are becoming more adept at figuring out whether someone is running, jumping, waving or eating, they still have trouble making sense of complex situations and images, never mind deciphering body language and facial expressions, suggests Taylor.

In the project, Taylor is bringing together deep learning and structured models to help machines build accurate representations of what they see and to make sense of images in a manner similar to how humans perceive their surroundings. Though he will focus on machine vision, Taylor says these concepts apply to different machine learning projects.

Working with Taylor will be French research partners at INSA-Lyon and Pierre and Marie Curie University, and Greg Mori, a researcher at Simon Fraser University. Industrial partners will include a company designing better ways to search through massive amounts of video camera footage, as well as a company that makes interactive kiosk displays that detect users’ gestures rather than input on a keyboard or touch screen. (Minority Report, anyone?)

The project, according to the university, might also feed into Taylor’s work with other University of Guelph researchers, including studies of video systems for detecting crop pests and monitoring farm field conditions.

View the press release.

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