SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
simplecv.org
SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#2I'll put in a plug for the accompanying book: http://simplecv.org/book
Very clear, well written, for a complete CV novice.
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#3Unfortunately computer vision libraries and toolsets are the worst offenders of making each algorithm a 'hammer' when traditional problems are not a 'nail'. A good example is "Detecting a Car" (http://tutorial.simplecv.org/en/latest/examples/parking.html), where the mean color is used to determine if a car is in the image. A nice little exercise, but it oversimplifies the process. Each allows the user to step in a few puddles and then advertises that you'll be able to swim in the ocean.
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#4The site seems to have been thoroughly slashdotted ... er, fireballed ... er, hackernewsificated ... honestly, hasn't someone come up with a word yet for when HN does this?
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#5Unfortunately computer vision libraries and toolsets are the worst offenders of making each algorithm a 'hammer' when traditional problems are not a 'nail'. A good example is "Detecting a Car" ( http://tutorial.simplecv.org/en/latest/examples/parking.html ), where the mean color is used to determine if a car is in the image. A nice little exercise, but it oversimplifies the process. Each allows the user to step in a…
This statement is an oversimplification. Computer Vision libraries are essentially Swiss army knives. If the person without reasonable understanding of Computer Vision research thinks that he can solve the problem, that is the person's problem. Again I wouldn't blame the naive software engineer who thinks he can solve these problems, because our (extremely complex) visual process makes it all seem very simple. Even Marvin Minsky thought he could get his undergrad Gerry Sussman to “spend the summer linking a camera to a computer and getting the computer to describe
what it saw”. After almost 60 years we aren't very to close that. Sure, we can solve certain problems in most scenarios (like face detection) or many relatively more complex problem in limited variance situations (like machine vision problems). This is the equivalent of a person who have learned C++ recently, using iteration/recursion/design patterns for everything he sees.
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#6that site is HNed.
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#7Unfortunately computer vision libraries and toolsets are the worst offenders of making each algorithm a 'hammer' when traditional problems are not a 'nail'. A good example is "Detecting a Car" ( http://tutorial.simplecv.org/en/latest/examples/parking.html ), where the mean color is used to determine if a car is in the image. A nice little exercise, but it oversimplifies the process. Each allows the user to step in a…
OpenCV seems like a good platform for academics to publish their algorithm as code. It's good that to try a new approach I don't need to figure out how to get/compile/install a new tool. But we need something better for doing real work... something that simply offers the most basic building blocks. Easy GPU offloading, easy inputing/outputting of movies or images, cross platform shader tools, colorspace conversion, image filters, etc.
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#8I love OpenCV. Even with the slightly outdated and incomplete wrapper in Ruby, you can still have a lot of fun with it.
This was posted on HN some time ago and remains one of my favorite creative uses of OpenCV: "So I Suck At 24: Automating Card Games Using OpenCV and Python"
http://arnab.org/blog/so-i-suck-24-automating-card-games-usi...
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#9It's difficult to effectively use cv libraries (such as opencv) because in order to approach new problems, understanding of the underlying theory and methodology is often necessary. Example code can only go so far to teach the user how to evaluate and adapt to new constraints. simplecv.org is down for me right now, but I hope that it addresses this concern!
The principles of computer vision are not too difficult to grok, requiring only knowledge of geometry and basic linear algebra. Two popular (dated, but still relevant) introductory texts are referenced to below [1] [2]. However, papers describing techniques that work in practice are often dense reads involving concepts from signal processing, control theory, and probability (e.g., [3]).
I personally enjoy learning about simple techniques that are also very effective in practice (e.g. Viola-Jones detection [4], SIFT points [5], RANSAC [6]), and I hope that simplecv.org might go over these in detail too.
[1]: http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk:5000/~vgg/hzbook/
[2]: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=551277
[3]: http://robots.stanford.edu/papers/montemerlo.fastslam-tr.pdf
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola%E2%80%93Jones_object_dete...
[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-invariant_feature_transfo...
Re: SimpleCV – Computer Vision platform using Python
#10The site seems to have been thoroughly slashdotted ... er, fireballed ... er, hackernewsificated ... honestly, hasn't someone come up with a word yet for when HN does this?
Well, slashdotted is generic. It's got the "have you googled it on Bing" issue but, good enough.