[Chinese version]

Hi, this is Fu Yanyuan, a M2 student from Matsui Lab.

The 25th Meeting on Image Recognition and Understanding (MIRU) was held in Himeji, Japan, from July 25-28, 2022. MIRU is one of the biggest CV conferences in Japan. Our group (Aizawa-Yamakata-Matsui-lab and Yamasaki-lab) actively got involved in MIRU22. In our group, Matsui Lab contributed 6 works for poster presentation and one of which was a short-oral. 👏

Due to Covid-19, it has been a long time since last in-person attendance at a meeting. So this is a very precious opportunity. Matsui lab encourages all the members to participate in academic activities and would cover the spendings.

In this post, I share my experience in MIRU and highlight my favorate works. Let’s go! 🏯🚅🗼

Mountain Fuji outside the window🗻

The first day of MIRU22 began in the afternoon. So everyone departed from Tokyo Station earyly. Located in the east of Japan, about a three-hour Shinkansen from Tokyo, Himeji is famous for the Himeji Castle. On the way, you can enjoy Mt. Fuji.

There were three tutorial sessions in the first day afternoon. All the materials were well prepared so that you can follow it even if you are not familiar with the field. Among them, the third one, Application of Computer Vision Technology in Culture and Art given by Prof. Kawakami was very impressive. My research direction, NeRF was also mentioned, which also gave me a new motivation - research should not just stay on paper, but should provide more valuable things for the society. For example, the restoration project of Shorijo, applied 3D reconstruction technology to digitally restore the burned Shorijo using photos taken before, so that people can enjoy it again. (please refer to Material and OUR Shurijo project)

The second to fourth days were for oral presentation and poster presentation. Oral presentations were divided by field, and you could choose the session of your interests. Two works, SqueezeNeRF and LB-NeRF: Light Bending Neural Radiance Fields for Transparent Medium catched my eyes.

After the oral presentation on the second day, it was time for posters. On this day, Yamashita-kun and Ono-kun from our lab given their poster presentation. The posters of all the papers were posted in the exhibition hall on the first floor, and the poster authors explained their works to the audience, standing next to their posters. You could have a direct conversation with your interested works there. Even though it was a Japanese conference, participants were perfectly able to communicate with each other in English. For students like me who don’t speak Japanese could also enjoy it. I wasn’t able to ask questions during the oral session, so I spent the time asking questions and discussing with the authors of the two works that I was interested in. Through the deep communication with the author, I could better understand some details of the work and solve my questions.

My poster was presented on the third day. This was my first conference presentation. At the beginning, Prof. Yamakata asked me to explain it to help me practice. It was embarrassing for me to wait in front of my poster and I couldn’t help drinking water. The other presenter in front of me and I stared at each other, passing the awkward waiting time. As the number of people gradually increased, people gradually came to communicate. Some professors or students would ask me to explain my work and answer some of their questions. There were also teachers who do related research giving my advice, like two professors from other universities offered their suggestions for my work and encouraged me to have a try. There were also researchers from the industry to discuss the practical issues. For example, a researcher from an vehical company discussed with me about their similar work and the problems they encountered in reality. All these helped me a lot and I really apreciate all of them. The time for discussion passed quickly, and soon the two hours of presentation were over.

In addition to the participants from academic, there were also many demonstrations from the industry. In the middle of the exhibition hall, there were many exhibition areas of various enterprises, showing their latest research results. Students could also directly discuss with people from the industry, and even have direct conversations with HRs, so as to obtain internship and employment opportunities.

After the meeting, I went to Hemeji Castle for sightseeing.

This is my MIRU 2022. We had a very nice time! 😄

In this meeting, I learned a lot from other works and also received some really helpful advice. I appreciate all of them. There is no doubt that students should attend academic meetings and communicate with other researchers. Inspired by the hardwork of other students and their awesome works, I aim at improving my research to the next level.