CVPR Daily - Thursday

25 DAILY CVPR Thursday Imagine right now, just 1% of the developers in the world are working with AI. The idea is to increase the percentage so that maybe 10% of the developers work with AI. How did you become an evangelist? Well, that’s a really good story! My background is in electronic and electrical engineering. I have a PhD in computer vision. But I was working in agriculture for 17 years, and I was working in Colombia, South America, for the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia. I was trying to develop and deploy technologies to them. I was working with different machines to process coffee after the harvesting process. Also, I was working with robotic tools to harvest. So you worked a lot in hardware, even more than software? Yes, and at the very beginning. In the early 2000s, I was working with classic machine-learning embedded devices. I was programming assembly code in a machine, and at that time, I was working with edge computing for coffee growers. But we had a lot of restrictions and barriers. I was thinking it's low cost, easy to use, and easy to maintain equipment. It also allows me to be creative and to close the gap between technology and users. And just for personal reasons, I needed to move to the United States. I started working at North Carolina State University, which is on the east coast. It’s a beautiful place. You need to visit there! I was working there in agriculture, but also with corn, soybean, and different kinds of crops that had more money to invest. But I always use my philosophy - low cost, easy to use, easy to maintain - and I deployed three products in total. I was working with technicians and non-technical people. Technicians, biologists, agronomists … not engineers. I needed to bridge the gap. I participated in two OpenCV AI competitions in 2020 and 2021. That's how you spent your COVID years? Yes, but I was working at the university. Paula Ramos