CSCI 1430: Introduction to Computer Vision

Spring 2017, MWF 13:00 to 13:50, CIT 368

Instructor: James Tompkin
TAs: Eric Xiao (HTA), Jackson Gibbons, Daniel Nurieli, Eleanor Tursman, Martin Zhu.

General Course Policy

Computer Vision, art by HarperCollins / Clare Skeats / James Tompkin

Contact

Quiet Hours

This class runs quiet hours from 9pm to 9am every day. Please do not expect a response from us via any channel. Likewise, we won't ask you to do anything between these times, either, like hand in projects.

Office Hours

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, scene understanding, and deep learning with neural networks. We will 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. We will develop the intuitions and mathematics of the methods in class, and then learn about the difference between theory and practice in projects.

This course is strongly based upon James Hays' computer vision course, previously taught at Brown as CS143, and currently taught at Georgia Tech as CS 4476. Significant thanks to him and his staff, across the years, for all their hard work.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, students will:
  1. Be familiar with both the theoretical and practical aspects of computing with images;
  2. Have described the foundation of image formation, measurement, and analysis;
  3. Have implemented common methods for robust image matching and alignment;
  4. Understand the geometric relationships between 2D images and the 3D world.
  5. Have gained exposure to object and scene recognition and categorization from images;
  6. Grasp the principles of state-of-the-art deep neural networks; and
  7. Developed the practical skills necessary to build computer vision applications.

Prerequisites

No prior experience with computer vision is assumed, although previous knowledge of visual computing or signal processing will be helpful (e.g., CSCI 1230). The following skills are necessary for this class:

Software

For those of you unfamiliar with MATLAB, please install it, run it, then go to 'Help' and then 'Getting Started with MATLAB' (or find it here online). Run through the tutorial to familiarize yourself (1 hour). Then, use this MATLAB Tutorial, from Roth et al., as a guide and reference. If you need any help, please come to office hours and we'll assist you.

Grading

Your final grade will be 100% from 6 programming projects. You will lose 10% from each project for each day that it is late. However, you have three late days for the whole course: the first 24 hours after the due date and time counts as one late day, up to 48 hours counts as two, and 72 hours counts as three. 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.

Late days cover unexpected clustering of due dates, travel commitments, interviews, hackathons, etc. Do not ask for extensions to due dates—we give you a pool of late days to manage yourself.

Capstone

This class can be taken as a capstone. You will need to complete 10 points of extra credit in each of the projects.

Time Commitment

Task Hours
In class 40
Projects: 20 ×6
Office Hours/Piazza:    20
Total: 180

Textbook

There is no requirement to buy a textbook. The goal of the course is to be self contained, but sections from two textbooks will be suggested for more formalization and information. These two books are available free online. If you find a word or concept that you do not understand, then please also consider the computer vision dictionary listed third.

  1. Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications by Richard Szeliski.
  2. Deep Learning, by Goodfellow, Bengio, and Courville.
  3. Dictionary of Computer Vision and Image Processing, by Fisher et al. Note: Full text is available in 'Online Resources' section.

Projects

Projects are due every two weeks on Friday at 9pm. Hand-in is electronic via the cs1430_handin script.

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 be significantly more difficult.

Projects
1. Image Filtering and Hybrid Images
2. Local Feature Matching
3. Camera Calibration and Fundamental Matrix Estimation with RANSAC
4. Scene Recognition with Bag of Words
5. Face Detection with a Sliding Window
6. Convolutional Neural Nets

Schedule

Date Topic Slides More info Projects
Wed 25 Jan Introduction to Computer Vision PPTX,PDF Szeliski 1
Image Formation and Filtering
Fri 27 Jan Light and Color PPTX,PDF Szeliski 2.2 and 2.3 1 out
Mon 30 Jan Image Filtering PPTX,PDF Szeliski 3.2
Wed 01 Feb Thinking in Frequency PPTX,PDF Szeliski 3.4
Fri 03 Feb Thinking in Frequency, part 2 PPTX,PDF
MATLAB Live FFT2
Brian Pauw Live FFT2 Code
Szeliski 3.5.2 and 8.1.1
Feature Detection and Matching
Mon 06 Feb Edge Detection PPTX,PDF Szeliski 4.2
Wed 08 Feb Cancelled due to instructor sickness
Fri 10 Feb Interest Points and Corners PPTX,PDF Szeliski 4.1.1 1 due, 2 out
Mon 13 Feb Local Image Features PPTX,PDF Szeliski 4.1.2
Wed 15 Feb Feature Matching PPTX,PDF Szeliski 4.1.3 and 4.3.2
Fri 17 Feb Model Fitting and RANSAC PPTX,PDF Szeliski 6.1 and 2.1
Mon 20 Feb President's Day—no class
Cameras, Multiple Views and Motion
Wed 22 Feb Cameras and Optics PPTX,PDF Szeliski 2.1, esp. 2.1.5
Fri 24 Feb Stereo Introduction PPTX,PDF Szeliski 11 2 due; 3 out
Mon 27 Feb Camera Calibration PPTX,PDF Szeliski 6.2.1
Wed 01 Mar Epipolar Geometry and Structure from Motion PPTX,PDF Szeliski 7
Fri 03 Mar Epipolar Geometry and Structure from Motion Continued PPTX,PDF Szeliski 8.1 and 8.4
Mon 06 Mar Stereo Disparity and Optical Flow PPTX,PDF
PPTX,PDF
Machine Learning Crash Course
Wed 08 Mar Machine Learning: Unsupervised Learning PPTX,PDF Szeliski 5.3
Fri 10 Mar Machine Learning: Supervised Learning PPTX,PDF Szeliski 5.3 3 due; 4 out
Recognition
Mon 13 Mar Recognition Overview and Bag of Features PPTX,PDF Szeliski 14
Wed 15 Mar Large-scale Instance Recognition PPTX,PDF Szeliski 14.3.2
Fri 17 Mar Time Warp Design Challenge
Mon 20 Mar Large-scale Category Recognition and Advanced Feature Encoding PPTX,PDF
Wed 22 Mar Detection with Sliding Windows: Viola Jones PPTX,PDF Szeliski 14.1 and 14.2
Fri 24 Mar Detection with Sliding Windows: Dalal Triggs PPTX,PDF Szeliski 14.1 4 due; 5 out
Mon 03 Apr Pascal VOC and Big Data PPTX,PDF Szeliski 14.5
Wed 05 Apr Big Data 2 PPTX,PDF
Fri 07 Apr Social Good and Dataset Bias PPTX,PDF
Mon 10 Apr Feature Limitations and Attributes PPTX,PDF Szeliski 4.2
Wed 12 Apr Project work and AQA
Deep Learning
Fri 14 Apr Neural Networks PPTX,PDF Goodfellow 6 5 due; 6 out
Mon 17 Apr Neural Networks Part 2 PPTX,PDF Goodfellow 6
Wed 19 Apr Convolutional Networks for Recognition PPTX,PDF Goodfellow 9
Fri 21 Apr Neural Network Regularization PPTX,PDF Goodfellow 7.1-7.5, 7.12
Mon 24 Apr R-CNNs and FCNs PPTX,PDF
Wed 26 Apr We Have To Go Deeper PPTX,PDF
Fri 28 Apr Exploring Architectures PPTX,PDF
Mon 01 May Research paper class—Deep Visual-Semantic Alignments (CVPR2015) PPTX,PDF
Wed 03 May Research paper class—Pix2Pix (CVPR2017) No slides; we went outside.
Fri 05 May Research paper class—ScanNet (CVPR2017) PPTX,PDF

Acknowledgements

The materials from this class rely significantly on slides prepared by other instructors, especially James Hays, 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.

Comments and questions to James Tompkin.


General Policy

Welcome!

Our intent is that this course provide a welcoming environment for all students who satisfy the prerequisites. Our TAs have undergone training in diversity and inclusion; all members of the CS community, including faculty and staff, are expected to treat one another in a professional manner. If you feel you have not been treated in a professional manner by any of the course staff, please contact either the instructor, James, or the department chair, Prof. Cetintemel. If you have a diversity issue, please contact Laura Dobler, or speak to a student advocate for diversity and inclusion. We will take all complaints about unprofessional behavior seriously. Further, your suggestions are encouraged and appreciated. Please let us know how we might improve the effectiveness of the course for you personally, or for other students or student groups.

Prof. Krishnamurthi has good notes on this area.

Academic Integrity, Collaboration, and Citation

Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. This includes cheating, lying about course matters, plagiarism, or helping others commit a violation. 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 Brown Academic and Student Conduct Codes.

Feel free to talk to your friends about the concepts in the projects, and work through the ideas behind problems together, but be sure to always write your own code and perform your own write up. You are expected to implement the core components of each project on your own, but the extra credit opportunties often build on third party data sets or code. Feel free to include results built on other software, as long as you credit correctly in your handin and clearly demark your own work. In general, if you use an idea, text, or code from elsewhere, then cite it.

Accommodations

Brown University is committed to full inclusion of all students. Please inform me if you have a disability or other condition that might require accommodations or modification of any of these course procedures. You may email me, come to office hours, or speak with me after class, and your confidentiality is respected. We will do whatever we can to support accommodations recommended by SEAS. For more information contact Student and Employee Accessibility Services (SEAS) at 401-863-9588 or . Students in need of short-term academic advice or support can contact one of the deans in the Dean of the College office.

Mental Health

Being a student can be very stressful. If you feel you are under too much pressure or there are psychological issues that are keeping you from performing well at Brown, we encourage you to contact Brown's Counseling and Psychological Services. They provide confidential counseling and can provide notes supporting extensions on assignments for health reasons.

Incomplete Policy

We expect everyone to complete the course on time. However, we certainly understand that there may be factors beyond your control, such as health problems and family crises, that prevent you from finishing the course on time. If you feel you cannot complete the course on time, please discuss with James Tompkin the possibility of being given a grade of Incomplete for the course and setting a schedule for completing the course in the upcoming year.

Thanks to Prof. Doeppner for the text on accommodation, mental health, and incomplete policy.

Electronic Etiquette

Laptops are discouraged, please, except for class-relevant activities, e.g., to help answer questions and show items relevant to discussion. No social media, email, etc., because it distracts not just you but other students as well. Read Shirky on this issue ("Why I Just Asked My Students to Put Their Laptops Away"), or Rockmore ("The Case for Banning Laptops in the Classroom").

We will release course lecture material online. In considering laptop use for note taking, please be aware that research has shown note taking on paper to be more efficient than on a laptop keyboard (Mueller and Oppenheimer), as it pushes you to summarize the content instead of transcribe it.