AI for Optics and Optics for AI – How Rendering can Shape Computational Optics Research
Wolfgang Heidrich
In the first part of this talk I will highlight recent work at the interconnection between AI techniques and (imaging) optics. In particular, I will describe AI methods for learning optical designs of camera optics, including some the boost the capabilities of conventional cameras with a form-factor suitable for mobile devices and small field-deployable sensors. I will also describe some on-going work on the reverse direction — optical designs that facilitate the computation for AI models while promising to reduce power consumption.
In the second part of the presentation I will discuss ways in which the Rendering community can help address open problems in computational optics.
Bio: Wolfgang Heidrich is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), where he also served as the Director of the Visual Computing Center from 2014 to 2021. Prof. Heidrich joined KAUST in 2014, after 13 years as a faculty member at the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD in from the University of Erlangen in 1999, and then worked as a Research Associate in the Computer Graphics Group of the Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrucken, Germany, before joining UBC in 2000. Prof. Heidrich’s research interests lie at the intersection of imaging, optics, computer vision, computer graphics, and inverse problems. His more recent interest is in computational imaging, focusing on hardware-software co-design of the next generation of imaging systems, with applications such as High-Dynamic Range imaging, compact computational cameras, hyperspectral cameras, to name just a few. Prof. Heidrich is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, IEEE, Optica, AAIA, and Eurographics, and the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award as well as the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award.
