By Brian Dipert
Editor-In-Chief
Embedded Vision Alliance
Senior Analyst
BDTI
On September 20, representatives from 18 (of 20 to-date total) Embedded Vision Alliance member companies met in San Jose, CA at the facilities of Alliance member Xilinx. The daylong series of briefings, planning sessions and relationship-building opportunities were judged highly rewarding by all in attendance, and set in place a solid foundation for 2012-and-beyond activities.
Vin Ratford (Senior Vice President of Marketing at Xilinx) and Jeff Bier (President of BDTI and Founder of the Embedded Vision Alliance) greeted attendees and provided an overview of the day to come. Bier then reviewed second- and third-quarter 2011 Alliance activities, focusing in particular on successful worldwide press briefings and the launch of the Alliance website. After a mid-morning break, Bier continued with a discussion of both the current status and fourth-quarter strategy, the latter including planned online advertising and site content enhancements.
Shane Walker, IMS Research's Consumer Electronics Group Director, then took the stage and delivered an informative market research briefing entitled "Embedded Vision in Digital Signage", which prompted lots of audience questions, feedback and other discussions that continued over lunch. During the lunch break, BDTI, Omek Interactive, Texas Instruments and Xilinx all staffed a suite of embedded vision demonstrations.
After lunch, it was BDTI Senior Engineer Eric Gregori's turn to educate the crowd, with a technology briefing on "OpenCV, OpenCL, and OpenNI—How Will They Impact Embedded Vision?" Gregori's presentation helped the audience understand what factors have made OpenCV in particular an extremely popular platform for vision application development, and highlighted opportunities and challenges associated with using it and other APIs in embedded applications.
Bier then returned to the podium to lead a brainstorming session on 2012 Alliance plans and other audience-sourced discussion topics. In the late afternoon, attendees had the option of either returning to the demos, engaging in member networking, or auditioning another of Gregori's technical sessions, this one an "Introduction to Computer Vision Using OpenCV" seminar. And to close out the day, the group then adjourned to a nearby restaurant for further interaction over food and drink.
The next quarterly Embedded Vision Alliance Summit is scheduled for Tuesday, December 6 in Dallas, TX, hosted by Alliance member Texas Instruments. It immediately precedes Alliance member IMS Research's Touch-Gesture-Motion Conference in nearby Austin. If you're already a member of the Embedded Vision Alliance, mark that date in your calendar and plan to attend. And if your company is interested in joining the Alliance, contact Jeremy Giddings at 510-451-1800 or [email protected] for membership information.
