Meet the team: interview with Computer Vision Intern Anand Samra

I currently work as a Computer Vision Intern, making me a part of the Perception team. My main task right now is research and development of a shadow filter. At the moment our software is almost too good, and is detecting shadows and reflections in some cases. I’m working on a filter that will ignore those shadows and improve various functionalities down the line. This kind of improvement ensures that everything runs smoother, as we are always able to identify our subject in the right way. Sometimes I bring my skills to different projects but right now the shadow filter has priority.

I tend to work from the office, so I’ll usually start with a coffee and my first objective is always getting in a couple of hours of research and coding around bugs or applications I’m working on. Across the company we all tend to get our heads down and focus on our own projects in the mornings, so we can all get a big block of productive focused work done. After that, if there’s a few people in the office we tend to have lunch together. It’s always great to hang out and chat with different teams. Early afternoon is generally taken up by meetings, so I’ll discuss my results with the team and the other interns. After meetings it’s back to coding, with a bit more chatting to colleagues than the morning.

Long term reidentification is really interesting and will really impact the software in a positive way. It essentially allows us to identify specific subjects in a frame and save them for later. The system will remember a subject when they leave and return to the frame, even if they’ve been away for a while. Everything I worked on in academia that used computer vision would essentially ‘forget’ a subject once they left the frame. When I joined Seervision, long term reidentification was being discussed as an intern project and I could instantly see its potential across our use cases. Whether it’s a stage performance or a series of speeches with a lot of people entering and leaving the frame across the day, the applications are very wide.

The whole vibe of the office makes me want to be there and be productive. Previous places I’ve worked have a really rigid structure where you’re stuck at your desk all day in silence. I just find environments with a communal atmosphere so much more effective. If I’m struggling with something I’m working on, I know I can easily go and communicate with a colleague to get some help and new ideas. So I guess the thing that excites me most is how the team works. It’s collaborative, it’s understanding, and it feels like a team, rather than me working on a task then submitting it. The rest of the team offers input and really cares about the outcome.

In both work and social environments, there was an obvious and deliberate effort to integrate me into the team. Instead of me worrying about slowly fitting in, there were people inviting me out after work for activities and things. As an intern more directly it’s been really nice to have real responsibility for a project. In previous internships I was working on projects that were really on the periphery of the company’s focus. At Seervision the projects I’m working on are legitimately something that we need and will use in the future. It’s great as someone trying to break into the field to get to work on something that is genuinely useful.

I’m big into bouldering, and go as often as I can. Most Sundays I’m bouldering for 3 or 4 hours. Sometimes after work we’ll go with other members of the team for an hour or two as well, which is fun and a great way to hang out outside of work. I play plenty of video games, but I do try to get out of the house as much as I can to go to the movies or one of Zurich’s many bars and restaurants.