The Role of Visual Computing in the Digitization Process

Information

• Publication Type: Invited Talk
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s): not specified
• Date: 23. June 2020
• Event: Nanjing Tech Week
• Location: Nanjing, China
• Keywords: visual computing, digitization

Abstract

We are living in interesting times, with the fastest technological development that humankind has ever experienced. The last 200 years have brought us the industrial revolution. People have learned to build machines to release themselves from hard muscle work and from dangerous work. People have developed new technologies that enabled the realization of dreams from the past like the telephone, the car, the airplane, electrical light, or radio and television. And industrialization has enabled the production of enough goods for everyone, so that poverty has a much higher threshold today. Now we are in the middle of the information revolution, which tries to improve our lives through computers. We are using electronic banking, social media, Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing, tomography diagnosis in medicine, smartphones, GPS, notebooks, computer games, and there are many more appearances of computers in everyday life. Currently we are developing smart cities, digital twins, intelligent factories, autonomous cars and more. Our tools include Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, fast communication such as 5G, Cloud Computing, Augmented and Virtual Reality, and many others. Digital twins, that are digital representations of real world objects, they are the basis for the simulation and augmentation of scenarios, necessary to provide insight for better human decisions. In this context, Visual Computing plays a central role, as it provides the key technologies to include the human into the decision making processes: - as the interface between computers and people, - as the most efficient channel to transfer data into users via images. Visual computing was also a main driver in developing parallel computing and the GPU. The full potential of visual computing has not yet been exploited in industrial applications, often because real world data are more difficult to handle that clean test data in science labs. Six V’s are the six challenges that we have to cope with in visual data processing: The Volume of data is ever increasing. More and more sensors produce more and more data for more and more computers. The Velocity with which such data is produced is steadily increasing. The Variety of data that shall be utilized is becoming more complex. Not only numerical data, but also categorical data, functions, pictures and videos, complex relations shall be processed. The Validity of available data has to be better checked the more data there are. Are some data wrong? Are data missing? The Veracity of data is the next issue. Where do the data come from? Can we trust the data sources? Are some data manipulated or simply made up? And finally, the Value of our conclusions and results has to be analyzed. Not everything that can be calculated makes the world better. The coping with these 6 V-challenges is essential for the practical utilization of big data. But there is a seventh issue, the Confidentiality of the data. Companies are reluctant to give away their internal data without control who sees or uses them. And people want to maintain some privacy, they want their private data protected, according to data protection laws. Companies like Google or Amazon, but also governments in many countries, store a lot of data about individuals that contradict with such concerns. It must stay one of our most important goals to preserve enough data protection to avoid any misuse of private data. Big data is only a blessing if it is not misused. Our research institute VRVis, together with its Chinese partner VR-KB, works in the field of transferring scientific results from visual computing into valuable and innovative products in industry. International cooperation is a success factor in bringing these fields together. And international conferences such as this one provide the contacts for international cooperation and better understanding between the diverse disciplines profiting from the digitization process.

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BibTeX

@talk{purgathofer-2020-nan,
  title =      "The Role of Visual Computing in the Digitization Process",
  author =     "Werner Purgathofer",
  year =       "2020",
  abstract =   "We are living in interesting times, with the fastest
               technological development that humankind has ever
               experienced. The last 200 years have brought us the
               industrial revolution. People have learned to build machines
               to release themselves from hard muscle work and from
               dangerous work. People have developed new technologies that
               enabled the realization of dreams from the past like the
               telephone, the car, the airplane, electrical light, or radio
               and television. And industrialization has enabled the
               production of enough goods for everyone, so that poverty has
               a much higher threshold today. Now we are in the middle of
               the information revolution, which tries to improve our lives
               through computers. We are using electronic banking, social
               media, Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing, tomography
               diagnosis in medicine, smartphones, GPS, notebooks, computer
               games, and there are many more appearances of computers in
               everyday life. Currently we are developing smart cities,
               digital twins, intelligent factories, autonomous cars and
               more. Our tools include Artificial Intelligence, Deep
               Learning, fast communication such as 5G, Cloud Computing,
               Augmented and Virtual Reality, and many others. Digital
               twins, that are digital representations of real world
               objects, they are the basis for the simulation and
               augmentation of scenarios, necessary to provide insight for
               better human decisions. In this context, Visual Computing
               plays a central role, as it provides the key technologies to
               include the human into the decision making processes: - as
               the interface between computers and people, - as the most
               efficient channel to transfer data into users via images.
               Visual computing was also a main driver in developing
               parallel computing and the GPU. The full potential of visual
               computing has not yet been exploited in industrial
               applications, often because real world data are more
               difficult to handle that clean test data in science labs.
               Six V’s are the six challenges that we have to cope with
               in visual data processing: The Volume of data is ever
               increasing. More and more sensors produce more and more data
               for more and more computers. The Velocity with which such
               data is produced is steadily increasing. The Variety of data
               that shall be utilized is becoming more complex. Not only
               numerical data, but also categorical data, functions,
               pictures and videos, complex relations shall be processed.
               The Validity of available data has to be better checked the
               more data there are. Are some data wrong? Are data missing?
               The Veracity of data is the next issue. Where do the data
               come from? Can we trust the data sources? Are some data
               manipulated or simply made up? And finally, the Value of our
               conclusions and results has to be analyzed. Not everything
               that can be calculated makes the world better. The coping
               with these 6 V-challenges is essential for the practical
               utilization of big data. But there is a seventh issue, the
               Confidentiality of the data. Companies are reluctant to give
               away their internal data without control who sees or uses
               them. And people want to maintain some privacy, they want
               their private data protected, according to data protection
               laws. Companies like Google or Amazon, but also governments
               in many countries, store a lot of data about individuals
               that contradict with such concerns. It must stay one of our
               most important goals to preserve enough data protection to
               avoid any misuse of private data. Big data is only a
               blessing if it is not misused. Our research institute VRVis,
               together with its Chinese partner VR-KB, works in the field
               of transferring scientific results from visual computing
               into valuable and innovative products in industry.
               International cooperation is a success factor in bringing
               these fields together. And international conferences such as
               this one provide the contacts for international cooperation
               and better understanding between the diverse disciplines
               profiting from the digitization process.",
  month =      jun,
  event =      "Nanjing Tech Week",
  location =   "Nanjing, China",
  keywords =   "visual computing, digitization",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2020/purgathofer-2020-nan/",
}