Objects as Points by Xingyi Zhou, et al

Get ready for our November Papers We Love at the University of Maryland!

Papers We Love is an international organization centered around the appreciation of computer science research papers. There's so much we can learn from the landmark research that shaped the field and the current studies that are shaping our future. Our goal is to create a community of tech professionals passionate about learning and sharing knowledge. Come join us!

The University of Maryland will be hosting us for a discussion of an important computer vision paper from 2019: Objects as Points by Xingyi Zhou, Dequan Wang, and Philipp Krähenbühl. The paper introduces CenterNet, a single stage, anchor-free based object detection algorithm. CenterNet offers simplicity on how it represents objects, and how its simplicity can adapt to other computer vision tasks. The purpose of this presentation is to review the main ideas, as well as a code demo on how to implement key ideas of the algorithm. We will also discuss some of the challenges and lessons learned implementing this model from scratch.

The paper will be presented by Andrew Mendez. Andrew is a Deep Learning Solutions Engineer at DeterminedAI. He has been a machine learning engineer in the industry for over 4 years, where he's focused on training and deploying computer vision systems for defense and enterprise domains.

The schedule will be something like this:
6:00-6:45 - Arrive and socialize.
6:45-7:00 - Introduction and announcements
7:00-7:45 - The paper: Objects as Points
7:45-8:00 - Q&A
8:00-8:30 - Informal paper discussion and more socializing.

Venue: The event will be located in the IRB 4137 (fourth floor conference room) at the Brendan Iribe Center for computer graphics in the University of Maryland.

Parking: Lot H and the Regents Drive parking garage are the best spot for visitor parking. https://transportation.umd.edu/parking/maps/umd-campus-parking-map

Bike: tons of bike parking outside, easy to access the building coming from the Trolley Trail (either bike up Campus Drive or go through Paint Branch Park, then take the underpass under Baltimore Ave, which dumps you right at Iribe.)

Public transit: the College Park metro station is about 1mi away. It’s an easy, protected walk, or the 83/86 bus goes right from the metro station to Iribe.

If anyone fancies refreshments after the event I'll be walking over to Looney's Pub a nearby pub, for drinks and a snack, if you want to join.