Industrial seminar: Contact with the professional world in Computer Vision

Mr Thomas Vidal, C++ developer in Computer Vision at LANACESS, gave a talk from Barcelona (Spain) to our 3rd year students in computer science, Monday 8th March via Blackboard. LANACCESS has a team of professionals with extensive experience and expertise in communications, electronics, embedded systems, software development, smart analysis, and video. It has been in this market for over 20 years. It manufactures hardware and software for the security market. It specialises in distributed video systems to view, transfer, store and manage security images. It is successful in the security and video surveillance industry, especially for banking, transportation infrastructures, utilities, casinos, correctional facilities and government. LANACCESS is a private company, with 100% private capital, and half of its staff work in hardware and software research and development. It collaborates with Spanish and European technology research programmes.

At LANACCESS, Thomas' role is to develop video analytics solutions that can run on both PC (with NVIDIA graphic cards) andNVIDIA Jetsons module. He talked about his professional career and how he got involved in Computer Vision. One of the key topics he discussed is what makes you a good (C++) developer, clearly emphasising rigour and open-mindness: Always be ready to learn new things and new technologies. Thomas also introduced all the development tools that he uses on a daily basis, many of them also used in the computer vision module at Bangor University. He finished his talk with demos of solutions he contributed to at LANCACCESS, such has counting the number of people on the platform at tube stations to adjust the frequency of trains, and loitering detection near cash machines.

Armandas, 3rd year student in Computer Science said:

Guest speaker Thomas Vidal’s insight into working as a C++ programmer in developing video analytics solutions for Lanaccess company has been engaging and inspirational. Thomas Vidal’s demonstration of Lanaccess past projects has allowed me to create connections to real-world applications of what was taught by Dr Franck P. Vidal. The overall experience gave me an incentive to learn more around the topic and has provided a realistic insight into how it is like working in the computer vision field.

Sam added:

I found it very useful to hear from somebody working in the field of Computer Vision. Some of the technology that was discussed I have already had some experience with, but having a professional demonstrate their applications in companies like LANACCESS for video surveillance really consolidated their usefulness, as well as the importance of flexibility with learning new things.

Dr Franck Vidal, Computer Vision module leader added:

This industrial seminar was a great experience for students. They saw some real-life applications based on some of the techniques discussed in the lectures. It helped bridging the gap between theory and practice. I was glad that the speaker talked about the tools he often uses as many of them were used in the labs and assignments. The seminar also reinforced the message that coding is not everything developers do. One of the key aspects of our work as software developers is to learn new things as the technology evolves.

Publication date: 23 April 2021