Computer Vision Research at the Computational Vision Laboratory of the Universidad de Chile

Abstract

The development of research in computer vision in a developing country is a challenging task. Factors such as low research funds, low trust from local companies and governments, and small number of qualified researchers complicates the development of strong, local research groups. In this article we present our research group in computer vision at the Universidad de Chile, as an example of how these difficulties can be overcome through international cooperation, focusing on global research projects with low requirements of expensive equipments, formation of qualified researchers, synergistic research with other research fields (e.g mobile robotics), and some necessary basic support from government research agencies. We show how we have been able to contribute in research areas such as face analysis for human-computer interfaces, robust object recognition, and robot vision, at an international level.