Abstract: The traditional camera, which is based on the concept of a pinhole (camera obscura), produces an image by selecting rays of light from the scene in a specific manner; only those rays that pass through the iris of the camera's lens are captured. This selection appears natural as it resembles the one used by the human eye. However, it can be shown to be highly restrictive. If one could create an apparatus that selects light rays from a scene in radically different ways, one could produce new forms of visual information that change the way we view the world. In this talk, we will introduce the concept of a computational camera. It is a device that embodies the convergence of the camera and the computer. It uses new optics to select rays from the scene in unusual ways and an appropriate algorithm to process the selected rays. This ability to manipulate light before it is measured and process the measurements before they are presented is a powerful one. It enables us to experience our visual world in rich and compelling ways. We will present examples that demonstrate how the computational camera redefines the notion of an image, and hence has the potential to impact the very nature of visual communication.

Short Bio: Shree K. Nayar received his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. He is currently the T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. He heads the Columbia Automated Vision Environment (CAVE), which is dedicated to the development of advanced computer vision systems. His research is focused on three areas; the creation of novel vision sensors, the design of physics based models for vision, and the development of algorithms for scene understanding. His work is motivated by applications in the fields of digital imaging, computer graphics, and robotics. Professor Nayar has received best paper awards at ICCV 1990, ICPR 1994, CVPR 1994, ICCV 1995, CVPR 2000 and CVPR 2004. He is the recipient of the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (1992), the National Young Investigator Award (1993), the NTT Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award (1994), and the Keck Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching (1995). He has published over 100 scientific papers and has several patents on inventions related to vision and robotics.