First Paper: Presentation/write-up guidelines 

 

Two students are assigned to each of the papers in the first round.  

You are expected to work together to understand the paper, 

research its sources, and craft a joint write-up and oral presentation. 

 

Your write-up should be 3-4 pages of original prose, jointly written,

reviewing and explaining the paper's goals, methods, and contributions. 

You may wish to reproduce figures, math derivations, etc. from the paper

or other sources to aid your arguments; these are fine (with appropriate

citations), but they don't count for length. 

 

The document submitted should be in LaTex (postscript or PDF), HTML,

or some other cross-platform electronic format.

 

Some questions to answer:

 

  • What is the problem(s) the authors are trying to solve, both generally in terms of robotic systems and specifically in terms of computer vision?

  • What technical methods do they use?  Explain unfamiliar or novel techniques and cite sources.

  • As much as possible, place the work in context.  Briefly, what other competing approaches to the same problem are there?  The related work section is a good place to start.  Has the work been superseded by more recent advances?  Using Citeseer to see who has cited the paper recently is a useful way to approach this last question.

  • How well do the authors succeed?  What methods, quantitative and qualitative, do they use to verify success and measure performance?  Do they report any failures?

  • What limitations does their approach have?  For example, assumptions about the geometry/appearance of the object(s) being viewed, lighting conditions, motion or non-motion of the camera, reliance on information from non-visual sensors, etc.

  • To the extent that you can determine it, how fast does the visual system run?  Is it "real-time" (i.e., ~30 frames per second)?

  • Does the paper's approach have wide applicability to other robot vision problems, or is it very narrowly focused?  Are there interesting links between the problems and methods in this paper and other papers we are studying?

  • How could the work be extended or improved?  Be as specific as possible about areas in need of  improvement and suggestions for ways to remedy them.

 

The oral presentation should take about 30 minutes and go over the same 

ground as your write-up, although for clarity I would recommend reproducing 

key figures and equations visually (see below) that you might only refer to in 

your write-up.  Please plan to divide the speaking time evenly between both 

partners.  After your presentation, you should be ready to lead a class 

discussion of the paper and field questions from your classmates.

 

You must use visual aids: either transparencies or some presentation software

that can run on a laptop plugged into the projector.  If you need one, I will

provide a laptop on the day of class running either Windows (Powerpoint)

or Linux (StarOffice Impress, Kpresenter, SliTeX, etc.) .  All presentation

development, however, should be done on your own or university machines;

we can test it on my laptop during the appointment discussed below. 

 

Notes on the due date

 

An appointment with the instructor should be made for one week to the day

before your scheduled presentation date.  At that appointment you will turn

in a write-up that meets the criteria specified above, as well as deliver a

preliminary version of your oral presentation.  This will be an opportunity to

get feedback on areas of your paper review, both written and oral, that may

need adjustment.  The write-up turned in that day will be distributed to the rest

of the class to help them prepare, so make it good!  Nonetheless, the final

write-up that will be graded is due in class on the day of your actual presentation.