Designing computer systems that see

Abigail Sellen, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge

The last decade has witnessed rapid advancements in computer vision systems. Computer systems “that see” enable new forms of input, can track and identify people, can capture and model the physical world around us, and can be combined with other system capabilities such as conversational agents. But the challenge in developing these systems is much more than technical. In this talk Abigail Sellen explores the process of designing computer vision applications from a human perspective, and through our own attempts to build them for a variety of real world settings. In doing so, she proposes that such systems need to make their users aware of the differences between how computer systems and how people sense, perceive, analyse and respond to the world. This has implications beyond computer vision to more general notions of “smart” systems in an era where artificial intelligence has again taken hold of our collective imagination.

Steve Marchant
+44 (0)20 7679 3675 | [email protected]

Book tickets