Inspiring Computer Vision System Solutions

TL;DR

This paper reflects on the 'digital Michelangelo project', highlighting its historical significance, lessons for research, and its impact on computer vision, through a community discussion at a summer school.

Contribution

It offers a modern perspective on a seminal computer vision project, emphasizing lessons beyond technical achievements and fostering community learning.

Findings

Historical insights into the 'digital Michelangelo project'

Lessons on research practices and community building

Reflection on the project's influence on computer vision

Abstract

The "digital Michelangelo project" was a seminal computer vision project in the early 2000's that pushed the capabilities of acquisition systems and involved multiple people from diverse fields, many of whom are now leaders in industry and academia. Reviewing this project with modern eyes provides us with the opportunity to reflect on several issues, relevant now as then to the field of computer vision and research in general, that go beyond the technical aspects of the work. This article was written in the context of a reading group competition at the week-long International Computer Vision Summer School 2017 (ICVSS) on Sicily, Italy. To deepen the participants understanding of computer vision and to foster a sense of community, various reading groups were tasked to highlight important lessons which may be learned from provided literature, going beyond the contents of the paper. This report is the winning entry of this guided discourse (Fig. 1). The authors closely examined the origins, fruits and most importantly lessons about research in general which may be distilled from the "digital Michelangelo project". Discussions leading to this report were held within the group as well as with Hao Li, the group mentor.