CALL FOR PAPERS

The vast majority of the Earth is covered by water, with the surface, water column, and bottom of these water masses all providing habitat for organisms in addition to hosting dynamic physical, chemical, and geological processes. However, most of the water environment is understudied, despite the critical importance of the ocean for Earth’s biodiversity and climate. Automated analysis of underwater imagery has become a vital tool in the study of marine and freshwater environments, particularly in the deep sea, where other study methods are impractical. Computer vision approaches enable the analysis and understanding of huge amounts of data, through which new insights can be gained which are unreachable with traditional imaging and manual annotation methods. Hence, automated analysis of underwater imagery, for both fixed and mobile camera systems, is an emerging and rapidly growing field.

Underwater imagery can be collected through a variety of means. Imagery is often acquired by mobile camera systems which are deployed by ships via towed systems, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) or their autonomous counterparts (AUVs). These methods offer only a limited temporal sampling of complex underwater phenomena, but can provide broad spatial coverage reaching a diversity of environments. Oceanographic long-term, high-resolution data acquisition has been greatly facilitated by the establishment of seafloor cabled observatories whose co-located sensors allow for interdisciplinary studies and real-time observations augmenting traditional oceanographic research approaches. These seafloor cabled observatories, such as those operated by Ocean Networks Canada (http://www.oceannetworks.ca), offer a 24/7 presence, resulting in unprecedented volumes of visual data.

All underwater imagery imposes a series of unique challenges for computer vision algorithms including but not limited to, sparse access to the study environment, harsh conditions (high pressure/low temperature/currents), imaging within a scattering medium, limited and/or artificial lighting, and only indirect or no access to global positioning data. These challenges must be tackled by the computer vision community in collaboration with physicists, biologists and ocean scientists. To this end, we invite submissions from all areas of computer vision and image analysis relevant for, or applied to, underwater imagery. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• robust vision in challenging conditions

• underwater image formation models

• underwater image restoration or enhancement

• physical models of reflectance and light transport, including multi-spectral or hyperspectral

• underwater scene understanding

• classification, detection, segmentation, tracking

• (autonomous) visual underwater navigation and mapping by robots

• monitoring and characterization of marine life (including fisheries research)

• automatic video annotation and summarization

• context-aware machine learning and image understanding

• training data, benchmarks and synthetic data

• (inverse) rendering and underwater scene representations

• underwater calibration and parameter estimation ( e.g., of cameras, lights, or media)

Best Paper Award

The best paper will be announced at the end of the workshop and awarded with a prize of 500$.

Keynote Speakers

1. Derya Akkaynak - COLOR Lab, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies at the University of Haifa

BIO

Derya Akkaynak is from Urla (İzmir), Turkey and received her BSc in Aerospace Engineering at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, her MSc in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. After a short consulting career in finance that ended with the financial crisis of 2008, she received her PhD in Mechanical and Oceanographic Engineering at MIT & Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is now a tenure-track faculty member at the Hatter Department of Marine Technologies at the University of Haifa, jointly with the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat. She heads the Laboratory for Computational Optics and Light in the Ocean Realm (COLOR Lab) in Eilat, focused on light and vision in the ocean, at the intersection of which lies color.

ABSTRACT

We are now at a point where for every consumer camera, several third-party underwater housings are available off-the shelf. Marine scientists can collect underwater images and video faster than was ever possible before. Yet, this large-scale imagery still cannot be analyzed efficiently and timely to provide scientists with the insights needed to follow the fate of our declining ocean ecosystems. In this talk, I will describe the challenges that remain regarding accurate and consistent reconstruction of colors in underwater scenes, and discuss the bottlenecks preventing underwater computer vision from achieving the progress and performance in-air computer vision has enjoyed in the last decade.

2. TBD

3. TBD

Important Dates

Submission open: July 1, 2024

Workshop paper submission deadline: July 31, 2024 -- 23:59 AOE

Notification to authors : August 30, 2024

Camera-ready deadline: September 27, 2024

VIRTUAL Workshop: December 01, 2024

Paper Submission

Papers will be submitted via Microsofts CMT, the link will be announced, when submission is opened.

Author Instructions

The papers accepted at CVAUI 24 will be published as part of the ICPR 24 proceedings in Springers LNCS series. Hence, the author instructions of the main conference also hold for this workshop.

Paper Format and Length

Springer LNCS format with maximum 15 pages (including references) during paper submission. There is no minimum page limit. To take care of reviewers' comments, one more page is allowed (without any charge) during revised/camera ready submission. Moreover, authors may purchase up to 2 extra pages. Extra page charges must be paid at the time of registration 

The appropriate template can be obtained in DOC as well as in the LATEX format.

IAPR Ethical Requirements for Authors

The IAPR requires that all authors wishing to present a paper declare that the paper is substantially original; that is, the manuscript as a whole, or for the most part, is novel, has not been published in (or even submitted to) any journals and has not been presented at any other conferences. If previous versions of the manuscript were published or presented, appropriate references must be given and substantial justification for presentation of the current version must be presented.
The IAPR strictly prohibits any plagiarism; that is, the work of others must not be “borrowed” and presented as the authors’ own work, regardless of the size of the borrowed portion.
The IAPR frowns upon “no-show behavior” at IAPR-related conferences and workshops, meaning that an author registers to make a presentation but does not show up for it. If such behavior is unavoidable due to urgent and unexpected personal matters, the author is strongly urged to notify the event organizer of the situation as soon as possible. If prior notification is impossible, the organizer should be advised after the fact of the reason for the author’s absence.
The IAPR retains the rights to eliminate any papers in violation of these Requirements and to take appropriate action against individuals repeatedly violating these Requirements and assumes no responsibility for any resulting loss of reputation or opportunity of such individuals or for any inconvenience related to the future work of such individuals.

 Scientific Committee

Workshop Organizers

1. David Nakath (PhD) Post-Doc, Marine Data Science, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

2. Maia Hoeberechts (PhD) Associate Director, Learning & Community Engagement, Ocean Networks Canada and Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, BC, Canada

3. Kevin Köser (PhD), Professor, Marine Data Science, Dept. of Computer Science  University of Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

4. Alexandra Branzan Albu (PhD) Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, BC, Canada

Technical Program Committee

• Loïca Avanthey – EPITA, Paris, France

• Andreas Birk – Constructor-University Bremen, Germany

• Claire Dune – Université de Toulon, France

• Duane Edgington – Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, California, USA

• Maxime Ferrera – IFREMER, Underwater Robotics Lab, France

• Bob Fisher – School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, UK

• Rafael Garcia – University of Girona, Spain

• Hervé Glotin – Institut Universitaire de France and Université de Toulon, France

• Nina S. T. Hirata – University of São Paulo, Brazil

• Anthony Hoogs –  Kitware Inc., New York, USA

• Jules Jaffe – UCSD/Scripps, USA

• Reinhard Koch – University of Kiel, Germany

• Jianping Li – Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology / CAS, China

• Fabio Menna – Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy

• Rudolf Mester – NTNU, Norway

• Tim Nattkemper – Bielefeld University, Germany

• Erica Nocerino – Università degli Studi di Sassari Italy

• Annette Stahl – NTNU, Norway

• Katie Skinner – University of Michigan, USA

• Gaowang Wang – Zhejiang University, China