IAPR TC11 Newsletter 2021 06

From TC11
Jump to: navigation, search
IAPR logo.gif Tc-11 Logo v2 72dpi.png

June, 2021



Click on the buttons below to view sections of the newsletter.

  • Message from the Editor
  • Message from the TC11 Chair: Holding ICDAR Annually
  • Dates and Deadlines
    • Deadlines
    • Upcoming Conferences and Events
  • ICDAR 2021
    • Message from the ICDAR 2021 General Chairs
    • ICDAR 2021: Keynote Speakers
    • ICDAR 2021: Financial Assistance for Students
    • ICDAR 2021: COVID Situation
  • Summer School
    • 4th IAPR TC 10/11 Summer School on Document Analysis
  • Conferences
    • Call for Papers: 6th Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR 2021)
  • Datasets
    • TC11 Datasets Repository *(repost)*



Dear TC11 members,

In this newsletter, you will find a message from the TC11 Chair on holding the ICDAR conference annually, and a message from the ICDAR 2021 General Chairs providing updates on the conference organization. With over 450 registered participants after the early-bird deadline, the 16th edition of the conference series is on track for opening its doors soon in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Furthermore, we include a call for participation for the 4th IAPR TC10/11 Summer School on Document Analysis (SSDA 2021), which will be held from August 23-27 at the Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, and a call for papers for the 6th Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR 2021), which will be held from November 9-12 in Jeju Island, South Korea. Both events are envisaged in hybrid mode with on-site and online participants.

Andreas Fischer, TC11 Communications Officer
( andreas.fischer@hefr.ch )

Join us! If you are not already a member of the TC11 community, please consider joining the TC11 mailing list. Follow us on Twitter (iapr_tc11): https://twitter.com/iapr_tc11



Dear members,

At the “2nd Future of Document Analysis and Recognition Workshop” (at ICDAR 2019), we discussed the future of our community. During 2020, we set a Task Force to continue the discussions towards the definition of a strategic plan for the document analysis and recognition community. We involved the TC10/TC11 chairs/vice-chairs and some of the previous/future organizers of our events (conferences, workshops, summer schools).

Detailed information of the activity (including kialo discussions, forms for feedback, etc.) is available at the website: https://sites.google.com/view/darstrategy

A key proposal of the Task Force was to decide whether we want an annual ICDAR conference. All members in the community were invited to vote and give their opinion on the opportunity to have an annual high quality ICDAR conference. We appreciate your participation in the survey and are glad to announce that the majority (~76%) of the DAR community opted for holding ICDAR annually.

A call for bids to host ICDAR 2024 will be opened soon. Looking forward to your active support in organizing ICDAR annually.

Faisal Shafait, TC11 Chair



Deadlines

2021

  • July 10 Abstract submission ACPR 2021
  • July 14 Early-bird registration summer school SSDA 2021
  • August 5 Video and document submission ICDAR 2021

Upcoming Conferences and Events

2021

  • ICDAR 2021. Lausanne, Switzerland (September 5-10)
  • ACPR 2021. Jeju Island, Korea (November 9-12)

2022 and Later

  • IGS 2021. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (June 20-22, 2022)
  • ICFHR 2022. Hyderabad, India (December, 2022)



Message from the ICDAR 2021 General Chairs

Dear Members of TC11,

With over 450 registrations after the early-bird deadline, including 180 on-site registrations, ICDAR 2021 is on track to becoming a successful forum for the document analysis and recognition community to meet and exchange the latest research. We are looking forward to welcoming participants both on-site in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as online all around the world!

A PDF flyer of the conference program is available. Thanks for spreading the word and distributing the flyer among your colleagues in academia and industry. Note that it is still possible to become a sponsor of the conference.

To stay up to date about the conference, please check regularly the conference website. Some recent updates include:

You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Do not hesitate to contact us via info@icdar2021.org if you have any questions or need assistance.

See you soon at the conference!
Andreas Fischer, Rolf Ingold, and Marcus Liwicki
ICDAR 2021 General Chairs

ICDAR 2021: Keynote Speakers

Speaker 1: Prem Natarajan

OCR: A Journey through Advances in the Science, Engineering, and Productization of AI/ML

From the very early years of AI, the problem of optical character recognition (OCR) has captured the imagination of researchers; Selfridge and Neisser presented an approach for OCR of hand printed characters in 1960. During last three decades, optical character recognition (OCR) technology for machine printed and handwritten text has evolved in significant ways – from script-specific techniques to script-independent methodologies, and from segmentation-based techniques to hidden Markov models to deep learning. In my talk, I will present my perspective on that evolution and it’s interplay with concomitant advances in speech recognition, natural language processing, and computer vision. The presentation will include a discussion of some practical, even if off the beaten path, applications of OCR technology, including work done in partnership with the census bureau in applying a deep learning based OCR framework to census forms. I will also share my views on some of the most interesting open problems in the field of OCR and document processing. The presentation will conclude with a few comments about one of my current areas of research interests – fairness in AI and machine learning.

Short Bio

Prem Natarajan is a Vice President at Amazon where he leads research and engineering efforts in dialog systems, natural language understanding, and multimodal/multimedia technologies in the Alexa AI organization. Prior to joining Amazon in June 2018, he was with the University of Southern California (USC) where he was Senior Vice Dean of Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering, Executive Director of the Information Sciences Institute (a 300-person R&D organization), and Research Professor of computer science with distinction. Prior to that, as Executive VP and Principal Scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies, he led the speech, language, and multimedia business unit, which included research and development operations, and commercial products for real-time multimedia monitoring, document analysis, and information extraction. During his tenure at USC and at BBN, Natarajan directed R&D efforts in speech recognition, natural language processing, computer vision, and other applications of machine learning. While at USC, he led nationally influential DARPA and IARPA sponsored research efforts in biometrics/face recognition, OCR, NLP, media forensics, and forecasting. Most recently at Amazon, he helped to launch the Fairness in AI (FAI) program – a collaborative effort between NSF and Amazon for funding fairness focused research efforts in US Universities.

Speaker 2: Beáta Megyesi

Cracking Ciphers with “AI-in-the-loop”: Transcription and Decryption in a Cross-Disciplinary Field

Accurate transcription of hand-written texts in images is indispensable in many research areas in digital humanities. Manual transcription is error-prone, time-consuming, and expensive to produce. Historical texts with their specific textual qualities require expert knowledge and trained eyes. During the past years, image processing applied to hand-written historical text documents to provide transcription output has been shown great opportunities, but also challenges for users. How can users without knowledge in AI in general and HTR in particular transcribe hand-written documents efficiently with ”AI-in-the- loop”? In my talk, I will focus on encrypted manuscripts from Early Modern times with various symbols systems, hand-writing styles, and languages. The point of departure is the DECRYPT project, aiming at the creation of resources and tools for historical cryptology by bringing the expertise of various disciplines together for collecting images of ciphers and keys, to transcribe them, and to decrypt and contextualize those. I will give an overview of the project, the methods we use to solve various problems from transcription to decryption including historical corpora and natural language processing methods.

Short Bio

Beáta Megyesi is a professor of computational linguistics at Uppsala University, the former head of department at the Dept. Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Sweden, and the current president of the North European Association for Language Technology (NEALT). She is specialized in digital philology and natural language processing with a special interest in the automatic analysis of non-standard, noisy language data, from text produced by language learners to historical texts and encrypted documents. She has been participating in ten externally funded, cross-disciplinary research projects and currently serves as the PI of the DECRYPT project, financed by the Swedish Research Council (grant 2018-06074). Bea received her Ph.D. in speech communication from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden.

ICDAR 2021: Financial Assistance for Students

Student authors of accepted papers at ICDAR 2021 can apply for financial assistance to present their paper. The assistance includes a free online registration for the purpose of oral or poster presentations.

The application should include:

  • Paper ID, title, and authors
  • Motivation letter highlighting the need for financial assistance
  • Supporting letter from the university, department, or research group
  • Confirmation of student status

Applications have to be sent to the General Chairs via email to info@icdar2021.org. The submission deadline is July 26.

ICDAR 2021: COVID Situation

Swiss COVID Regulations

The following websites are regularly updated by the government:

What does it mean for ICDAR?

The current COVID situation in Switzerland allows to hold ICDAR 2021 in person. A hybrid mode is setup with both on-site and online participants. It is recommended to register for on-site participation if you plan to attend the conference in person. Should it become necessary to limit on-site participation to scientific and/or social events, the date of payment of the registration fee will be taken into account, following the “first come, first serve” principle. If travel is not possible due to COVID-related restrictions, a downgrade to online participation will be applied, refunding the difference in the registration fees.

Current COVID measures envisaged for ICDAR 2021

Wearing masks when indoors. We are observing the evolution of the COVID certificate (fully vaccinated, recovered from COVID, or tested negativ) but do not impose it for the conference at the moment.



4th IAPR TC 10/11 Summer School on Document Analysis

Theme: Digital Transformation in a changing world
Dates: 23rd to 27th of August 2021
Location: Lulea University of Technology, Sweden

Endorsed by the IAPR TC-10 (Technical Committee on Graphics Recognition) and TC-11 (Reading Systems).

The 4th IAPR Summer School on Document Analysis is a premier annual summer school focused on recent developments in document analysis. It is gathering leading researchers and scientists in emerging areas of document analysis to give in-depth and objective exposure to the participants.

We are announcing that SSDA 2021 will take place in HYBRID FORM. A very unique aspect of this summer school will be the novel hybridization concept, allowing participants from all areas (depending on the current Corona restrictions) to participate either virtually, or physically in Luleå. We build on our long-standing experience in distance education and conferences in Luleå and the northern region following pedagogical principals of effective teaching and learning.

The objective of the school is to provide the participants with different aspects related to digital transformation of documents and beyond. All the latest research being carried out in the field of document understanding, document (image) analysis, natural scene text detection and recognition, historical document analysis, Corona and Virtualization, and new topics will be covered in the school.

The summer school will provide a great opportunity to participants to expand their knowledge and skills by linking the theory with the real implementation. Speakers from different areas of expertise will be invited to enrich the overall impact of the school. By the end of the school participants will have advanced knowledge and application experience in:

  • Applied AI in document analysis
  • Document analysis for business applications
  • Natural scene text detection
  • Complex document understanding
  • Historical document processing
  • Current challenges in the field of document analysis
  • Contribution of major stakeholders in this field
  • Corona and Virtualization.

Highlights

  • Expert’s talks on document understanding, document (image) analysis, natural scene text detection and recognition, historical document analysis, Corona and Virtualization, and other new topics.
  • Field experts will provide tutorial-based lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions
  • Partial scholarships for selected International students
  • Hackathon Competition

Registration info here.

Contact: ssda2021@ltu.se



Call for Papers: 6th Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR 2021)

The 6th Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR2021)
ICC Jeju, South Korea; Nov. 9-12,2021
www.acpr2021.org

Important Dates

  • Abstract Submission: 10 July 2021 (new and extended)**
  • Full Paper Submission: 15 July 2021 (extended)**
  • Notification to Authors: 25 August 2021
  • Camera-ready Submission: 20 September 2021
  • Conference Dates: 09-12 November 2021
    • Please note that authors are now required to register all submissions first rhtough an abstract submission until 10 July. Registration of new submissions after 10 July will not be possible. Full papers will need to be submitted until 15 July.

We are pleased to host the 6th Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition taking place in Jeju Island, South Korea from November 9th to November 12th, 2021. The conference will be held in a hybrid format allowing for both on-site or virtual participation (pending the COVID19 travel situation, it may switch to a virtual-only format). ACPR2021 solicits high-quality original research for publication in its main conference and co-located workshops. All accepted papers will be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and indexed by ISI, Scopus, EI, Google Scholar, DBLP, etc.

Topics of interest include all aspects of pattern recognition. Topics areas include, but not limited to,

  • Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning- Artificial neural networks, Dimensionality reduction, Classification and clustering, Support vector machines, Structural pattern recognition, Deep learning and reinforcement learning, Transfer learning, etc.
  • Computer Vision and Robot Vision- Biologically motivated vision, Physics-based vision, Computational photography, 3D vision, Motion analysis and tracking, Object detection and recognition, Scene understanding, etc.
  • Signal Processing- Signal and image processing, Audio and acoustic processing and analysis, Spoken language processing, Texture and color analysis, Enhancement and restoration, Biomedical signal analysis, Brain-computer interface, etc.
  • Media Processing and Interaction- Surveillance and security, Mixed and augmented reality, Human-computer interaction, Handwriting recognition, Document understanding, Biometric systems, Multimedia analysis, and retrieval, etc.

Paper Submissions: Full papers must be accompanied by an abstract summarizing the contribution the paper makes to the field. Full papers are limited to 14 pages in LNCS format. All papers will be peer-reviewed single-blind. The submission site opens at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acpr2021.

If interested, please check out more information at http://www.acpr2021.org.

ACPR2021 Secretariat



TC11 Datasets Repository (repost)

TC11 maintains a collection of datasets that can be found online in the TC11 Datasets Repository.

If you have new datasets (e.g., from competitions) that you wish to share with the research community, please use the online upload form. For questions and support, please contact the TC11 Dataset Curator (contact information is below).

Joseph Chazalon (TC11 Dataset Curator)
( joseph.chazalon@lrde.epita.fr )


Call for Contributions: To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, Andreas Fischer ([1]). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements/updates/reports, career opportunities, book reviews, or anything else of interest to the TC-11 community.

Subscription: This newsletter is sent to subscribers of the IAPR TC11 mailing list. To join the TC-11 mailing list, please click on this link: Join the TC-11 Mailing List. To manage your subscription, please visit the mailing list homepage: TC-11 Mailing List Homepage.