Events

Past Event

New Approaches to 3D Vision

February 15, 2023
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
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Online and in-person; Jerome L. Greene Science Center (9th Floor Lecture Hall), 3227 Broadway, New York

Event Description

This launch event for the Royal Society volume New Approaches to 3D Vision explores how AI, animals, and humans see and navigate the 3D world.

3D vision is central to a number of contemporary innovations. In Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3D vision is enabling autonomous cars and robots to freely navigate the world and helping AI to solve fundamental scientific questions like protein folding. In animals, brain recordings from freely moving animals are enabling us to understand how animals process and navigate through space. In humans, virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D cinema are all having a transformative effect on our 3D visual experience. In turn, these innovations are revolutionizing our understanding of 3D vision and navigation. In traditional approaches to computer vision (SLAM: simultaneous localization and mapping), animal navigation (cognitive maps), and human vision (optimal cue integration), the assumption has been that it is important to produce an accurate 3D model of the world. By contrast, these new approaches rely on partial or distorted models of the world, or no model at all.

Humans

Fulvio Domini argues that 3D vision isn’t trying to reconstruct the true 3D layout of the world, but instead the 3D percept that is most stable across viewing conditions.

Animals

Kate Jeffery explores how animals’ “cognitive maps” of their environment reflect the possibilities for movement rather than the environment’s physical geometry.

AI

Ida Momennejad explores the ways in which neuroscience, behavioral research, and AI inform one another, using AI navigation in 3D computer games as a key example.

Event Speakers

  • Fulvio Domini, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University
  • Kate Jeffery, Head of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow
  • Ida Momennejad, Senior Researcher in Reinforcement Learning at Microsoft Research
  • Moderated by Paul Linton, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience and Fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University

Event Information

Free and open to the public. Registration is required via Eventbrite. All in-person attendees must follow Columbia's COVID-19 policies. Visitors will be asked to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Online attendees will receive a Zoom link from Eventbrite. Zoom link: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/97366778391?pwd=Rlc2N0FvNTAwa1BXRXZ5bmVzTG5hUT09

This event is hosted by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience as part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series. Co-sponsored by the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University. 

The Center for Science and Society makes every reasonable effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend a Center for Science and Society event, please contact us at [email protected] or (212) 854-0666 at least 10 days in advance of the event. For more information, please visit the campus accessibility webpage