Computer Vision News - May 2021

325 Ester Gonzalez-Sosa had already shaped what they wanted to do in Bell Labs Spain, which was to move forward from regular 2D video to 360 degree video. They wanted to enter into the virtual reality world by a particular focus, which was 360 degree video. This is important because, with Nokia, we still want to connect people somehow. Our goal would be sort of mixed reality applications to be able to connect people. For instance, it would be important that those people who would be connecting together would be in the same space as the other. That could be one thing. The other thing is when you are wearing VR goggles. It could be the case that there is a RGB camera in front of the device, and with that camera, you can process it and bring more value to the experience. If you are processing that image or that video, you could kind of cut your body and integrate it into the video. That’s where I play an important role because I have some expertise in computer vision. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m always learning, but I was the one that knew a bit more about that. My role there started by developing semantic segmentation. That could be based on deep learning. It could be based on traditional image processing for integrating certain parts of what we call local reality, to match the world with a 360 degree reality, which could be somewhere else. It could be a 360 degree video of a beach in Spain when you are in the office! So I could be in Marbella now, even if I am at home in my living room. That’s true! This is like a first step. We could add value to the experience. Let’s imagine that you are interested in bringing in certain objects. You may want to bring your computer. This is a type of mixed reality that we are working on called distributed reality, in the sense that we want to merge different realities to create a new one. Until there is no technology to really bring us to Marbella, the computer will bring us there! So true, especially if you are interested in the feeling of being somewhere else. If you just want to share visual optics with other people, maybe AR solutions are more suitable. But, if you’re focused on sharing experiences with others, this could also work. We are working on different products. Our first prototype for distributed reality is called Owl, like the animal. The owl can see everywhere! “For instance, when I was thinking what to do with this interview, I was feeling very nervous. I had a lot of doubts. ‘Would I be able to do the job?’ I was almost tempted to say no!”