RCI Offsite in Pilsen

The researchers from the RCI project met in Pilsen to share their research updates and discuss the newest publications. The two-day conference took place in the Vienna House hotel on February 13-14, 2023 and was accompanied by networking and social program in the beautiful city known for its brewery and growing focus on innovations. Fourteen exciting presentations and follow-up Q&A sessions were done by the scientists including several doctoral students. One of the talks even included a live juggling demonstration and another one a VR headset for the audience to try out. What else did the fifth RCI offsite bring?

Day 1 (February 13, 2023)

The conference began with an opening speech by the project coordinator prof. Jiří Matas. He welcomed all participants and briefly commented on the project updates including future prospects such as the last offset that will take place at the end of the academic year. 

The morning slot was dedicated to talks related to medical applications of research in computer science as the Chair noted during the discussion. Petr Ryšavý presented computational functional annotation with the use of interaction and co-expression networks. This method and in general Petr’s presentation provoked a lively debate on the importance of data validation which carried like a red thread throughout all the Q&A sessions later that day.

The talk by Vojtěch Illner informed us about the use of smartphones in assessing speech impairments in Parkinson's disease. What interested the audience was how he went about detecting voice pitch in arbitrary conditions – Vojtěch and his colleagues mimicked the normal environment by including artificial urban noises into the sound track.

The next block of presentations which followed after the fruitful discussions during a coffee break had images as the common theme. From computer vision to graphics, the three speakers engaged the audience with their visually pleasing slides and vivid examples. Giorgios Tolias explained the image resolution asymmetry in deep metric learning and Vlastimil Havran, apart from other issues, commented on the limitations of current smartphones and how they are advertised which was very insightful to many.

Just before lunch, Šárka Sochorová gave a presentation that made everyone forget about their hunger. Bursting with energy and excitement about the research subject, Šárka talked about how to transfer the principles of real-life pigment mixing into digital painting. In her research, she builds on a theory that was proposed many years ago yet has never been used for improving the state of digital pigment mixing. Due to ignoring how pigments actually absorb and scatter light, current painting softwares do not offer what Šárka wanted as an artist herself. Together with her colleague, they developed the tool Mixbox which became very popular among artists and received over 6 million views on Twitter. “This is the real and meaningful impact of my research,” she commented on the question of how this project was accepted by the scientific community.

After a delicious lunch and informal discussions among researchers about the morning presentations, the program continued with another batch of insightful talks. Michal Kučera brought their VR headset to demonstrate StyleBin – an approach to the example-based stylization of videos that can produce a consistent depiction on stereoscopic displays. After a number of people tried it out with apparent awe, Ruslan Agishev shifted the topic to robotics exploration and introduced how he uses differentiable methods in his work.

With another kick of caffeine during the short break, we were ready for the last talks of the first day. Štěpán Plachý presented his research on synchronizing tree automata and their work–optimal parallel run. Ondřej Suchý explained how to use polynomial kernels for tracking shortest paths and highlighted this novel approach explored by his team. And last but not least, Filip Kodýtek shared his thoughts on the utilization of ring oscillators for identification, authentication and key generation on FPGAs.

After closing remarks, we moved to the dining area and resumed our lively discussions initiated by the excellent research talks. For some, the evening continued with a walk through the historical city center and the famous unfiltered lager.

Day 2 (February 14, 2023)

Four presentations were prepared for our participants on the second conference day. Václav Šmídl talked about probability density learning for heterogeneous tree-structured data. Rudolf Szadkowski put robotics into the spotlight again by discussing continual bootstrapping of gait motion.

The last coffee break preceded the final block of the conference program. Jakub Šístek explained how he tackled the acceleration of a parallel BDDC solver by using GPUs on subdomains. After days packed with rich and very complex presentations, the audience was in for a treat! In his talk, Vojtěch Leischner introduced a new movement-driven musical instrument he developed with his colleagues. The system is based on juggling patterns captured in real-time and can be used as the rhythm generator and explorer for musicians and composers, thanks to integration with the juggling patterns simulator. This joyful research talk was accompanied by an impressive juggling performance that demonstrated the findings in action. 

The optional program after the conference included a visit to the TechTower, a unique coworking space for startups and tech-savvy individuals offering innovative facilities and accompanying program.

Research presentations

Petr Ryšavý – Computational functional annotation using interaction and co-expression networks

Vojtěch Illner – Validation of pitch detection algorithms across various noise levels in assessing speech captured by smartphone in Parkinson’s diseas 

Giorgios Tolias – Large-to-small Image Resolution Asymmetry in Deep Metric Learning 

Vlastimil Havran – Different view on diffraction-limited imaging optics design 

Šárka Sochorová – Practical Pigment Mixing for Digital Painting 

Michal Kučera – Stylebin: Stylizing Video by Example in Stereo

Ruslan Agishev – Differentiable Methods for Robotics Exploration 

Štěpán Plachý – On Synchronizing Tree Automata and Their Work–Optimal Parallel Run, Usable for Parallel Tree Pattern Matching

Ondřej Suchý – Polynomial Kernels for Tracking Shortest Paths

Filip Kodýtek – Utilization of ring oscillators for identification, authentication and key generation on FPGAs 

Václav Šmídl – Probability density learning for heterogeneous tree structured data 

Rudolf Szadkowski – Continual  Bootstrapping of Gait Motion

Jakub Šístek – Acceleration of a parallel BDDC solver by using GPUs on subdomains 

Vojtěch Leischner – Sonification of a juggling performance 

Contact

RCI Project Coordinator: Lucie Stewart (stewaluc@fel.cvut.cz)
RCI website: http://rci.cvut.cz/

The project RCI with reg. no. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000765 is supported by EU and runs from 1/3/2018 to 30/6/2023.