Top of the big era

Zhou Buqi and his party set out from Los Angeles in three commercial vehicles and headed to Lucasfilm. For him, he is more optimistic about the Silicon Valley attributes and technological attributes behind the company; people from Ziweixing Global are more optimistic about the Hollywood attributes, and "Star Wars" is a super big IP.

"Star Wars" may not be as good as "Lord of the Rings" on a global scale, but it can crush everything in the United States and has unrivaled money-making power.

In a previous life, Disney purchased Lucasfilm for only $4 billion.

This is really a big bargain.

Even if there is a further premium, Zhou Buqi will still win over Lucasfilm. However, George Lucas was a weirdo and it was not easy to convince him.

Shen Xiangyang is in the car.

In the morning, as the new director of Ziweixing Global, he attended the high-level meeting of Ziweixing Global, which allowed him to see Boss Zhou's knowledge and prestige in other fields.

Seeing Zhou Buqi, a young man, becoming more and more mature and successful, Shen Xiangyang was like his elder, and his heart was filled with a sense of relief.

Then, there were more thoughts in my mind.

This kid even knows movies!

Moreover, his theories seem to be more advanced than those of Hollywood's most senior practitioners, and are truly focused on the big picture of the future.

Coincidentally, when Shen Xiangyang was studying 3D visual effects recently, he encountered many difficulties, all of which were very complicated choices of cutting-edge technology directions.

As Shen Xiangyang gets older, his brain is not as bright as that of young people, and his imagination and innovation ability are no longer as good as they were at their peak in the 1990s. Fortunately, he now has more experience. Top scientists like him usually do not do front-line research, but lead a team. He is responsible for pointing out the direction and allowing the young doctors in the team to further refine it along this direction.

If the direction pointed out is wrong, not only will a lot of R\u0026D funds be wasted, but the golden period of the creative life of these outstanding young people in the team will also be affected and become wasted.

Therefore, the choice of scientific research direction is the most important.

Shen Xiangyang has many inventions and creations in the field of artificial intelligence, but there are too many scientists in Silicon Valley. There are dozens or hundreds of people with more invention patents and greater contributions than him.

But why is Shen Xiangyang more authoritative than them?

Because he was a Silicon Valley executive many years ago, he can make the final decision on the direction. Most of the other scientists are just scientists and have to follow other people's project directions to conduct research.

At this time, Shen Xiangyang is encountering difficulty in choosing a technical direction.

Zhou Buqi saw his hesitation and asked with a smile: "Do you have anything to say?"

"Some confusion about three-dimensional face recognition." Shen Xiangyang glanced at him and said tentatively, "How about I tell you about it and you analyze it for me?"

Zhou Buqi had a black line on his forehead, "Are you sure?"

Shen Xiangyang said: "Let's discuss it, um... just think of me as giving you a knowledge lesson about 3D technology. It will also be helpful for your future company decisions."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "I think it makes sense."

Shen Xiangyang said: "Now with computers and artificial intelligence, identity authentication technology based on biometrics has received more and more widespread attention, and there are many types. However, the three most recognized by the industry are mainly fingerprint recognition and iris recognition. Recognition and face recognition. Fingerprint recognition is the easiest to implement, and there are already many mature solutions. As long as the compatibility between the fingerprint recognition chip and the smartphone software and hardware system is solved, it will be possible to implement it in the short term."

Zhou Buqi said: "Well, next year's Aster mobile phone must have a fingerprint unlocking function. We can't delay it any longer, otherwise this innovative achievement will be snatched away by other mobile phone manufacturers."

Shen Xiangyang continued: "Iris recognition is also a good direction. Although it is not as accurate as fingerprint recognition, it is more secure."

"Higher security? How do you understand?"

"Fingerprint recognition requires pressing your finger. If it is a public hardware recognition device, it will leave traces of the fingerprint. As long as a caring person copies the fingerprint on it, there will be a way to complete the authentication based on the fingerprint. The advantage of iris recognition is that it is contactless ,The disadvantage is that there are too many details to be ,recognized and the accuracy is not high.”

"Iris recognition is undesirable, at least not suitable for consumer electronics. I don't want to point my eyeballs at the camera at close range. I'm afraid of being burned by infrared and ultraviolet rays. We don't go in this direction." Zhou Buqi quickly did it. The decision was made, “Our focus is still on facial recognition.”

Shen Xiangyang said: "The accuracy of face recognition is worse than that of iris recognition."

Zhou Buqi said: "Facial recognition technology has many advantages, such as being direct, friendly, convenient, and consistent with people's understanding of laws. This is the authentication method that best meets market demand."

Shen Xiangyang very much recognized his understanding at the application level and market level, but he still needs to say more about the technical level. "Traditional two-dimensional face recognition has been used for many years, and there are too many disadvantages, such as changes in lighting, posture, expression, etc." All may affect the recognition results. Therefore, three-dimensional recognition technology has emerged in the past two years.”

"Is it done?"

"This direction is very cutting-edge and is still in the theoretical stage. Some people are very anxious to do applied research. In September last year, a doctoral supervisor from Tsinghua University talked to me and said that he wanted to lead several of his Ph.D. I think the 3D face recognition method based on the combination of Gabor wavelet transform of 3D face contours and support vector machine classifier is too risky."

Shen Xiangyang secretly shook his head.

In his opinion, in this emerging field, what PhDs should do is to do some underlying theoretical research, quote from other sources, do more experiments and discuss more, and integrate various theoretical routes, so that they can judge the pros and cons and bring benefits to the industry. for academic feedback. Instead of just finding a theory that has not been verified by the market, hurriedly doing research on the application layer, and then taking out the research results to apply for patents and funds.

If the theoretical direction is wrong, even if research results are produced, they will be worthless junk patents.

Not only wasting the country's research funds, it also delayed the prime years of doctors.

Of course, application layer research also needs to be done, and it should be done by undergraduates and master's students, but more should be done by enterprises.

The company's experienced CTO can select a direction from the many theoretical routes in the market, or the entrepreneur can simply make a decision and make a big bet on whether a certain direction will be a big success in the future!

If the bet succeeds, the enterprise will succeed.

If the bet fails, the theoretical direction is wrong, the research direction is wrong, the company with less strength will basically be doomed.

Just like in the field of smartphones, Apple chose face recognition, which soon became popular all over the world; Samsung bet on iris recognition, which was not recognized by the market and wasted several flagship models. If it weren’t for the great industry and strength of Samsung, Maybe it will completely lose the high-end mobile phone market.

Zhou Buqi has seen many things so much that he has become accustomed to them. He is unable to change, so he can only pretend to turn a blind eye. "What about you? What theoretical research have you done?"

"Me?" Shen Xiangyang didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "I am no longer involved in front-line scientific research. How can I come up with any new theories? It is nothing more than making some judgments and choosing the best based on some basic theoretical directions in academia and industry."

"Have you chosen?"

"No, it's too difficult. It's just the early days of the industry. Many theories have yet to be verified. Many routes are unclear. It's difficult to ensure that the right choice is made."

"Yes, all walks of life have difficulties."

Zhou Buqi deeply agrees with this.

This is true for technology, but why not for business? Even movies are the same. Universal Pictures studies 800 movie projects a year, and then selects about 35 of them to make movies. Which one to choose or not to choose is a very difficult decision.

Shen Xiangyang turned to look at him, smiled and said, "How about I tell you?"

"say what?"

"Several basic theories of three-dimensional face recognition."

Zhou Buqi almost fainted, "Why are you telling me this? Do I understand?"

Shen Xiangyang said half-jokingly: "Every entrepreneur is a lucky person who is cared for by God. You are very lucky. When there are differences in technical routes, the technical committee cannot make a decision. In the end, the entrepreneur still has to make the decision. Even this An entrepreneur is a layman who doesn’t understand technology.”

Zhou Buqi couldn't help laughing and said: "Yes, I know that there are several entrepreneurs in China who make decisions by tossing coins, completely resigned to fate."

Many times, major corporate decisions are really not professional or unprofessional.

Enterprise is the business of entrepreneurs and the profession of professional managers. It is better to bet on the expertise of professionals than to bet on the luck of entrepreneurs, who decide life and death.

However, Shen Xiangyang is not a professional manager. He has watched Ziweixing grow step by step into the towering tree it is today. This is also his career.

"Let me tell you briefly and see if you have any ideas. It's best if you have ideas. If you don't have any ideas... I will visit more industry experts and take a look at the situation."

"Fine."

"Well... the current 3D face recognition technology in the world mainly focuses on three theoretical directions." Shen Xiangyang really regarded Zhou Buqi as a god, and really talked about very profound academic theories, "A kind of The theory is TOF technology, which emits modulated light pulses through an infrared transmitter. After being reflected by an object, a receiver is used to receive the reflected light pulses and calculate the distance to the object based on the round-trip time of the light pulses."

"oh."

Zhou Buqi's reaction was dull and he couldn't understand anything.

Shen Xiangyang continued: "One theory is binocular technology, which is similar to human eyes and relies on the parallax between the two pictures taken to calculate depth. It is also called passive binocular depth camera technology. This technology Lucasfilm The industry is among the best in the world, and "Avatar" was made based on this technical theory."

"Avatar!"

Zhou Buqi's eyes lit up and he almost agreed.

The effects of "Avatar" are amazing!

This is enough to show that binocular technology is a super 3D technology.

However, Shen Xiangyang's next words made him change his mind.

"The third theory is structured light technology, which uses an infrared laser to project light with certain structural characteristics onto the object being photographed, and then uses a specialized infrared camera to collect the reflected structured light pattern, and measure the depth based on the triangulation principle. The calculation of information…”

"Structured light?"

Hearing this familiar word, Zhou Buqi suddenly came back to his senses from the fantasy of "Avatar".

Depend on!

Knew it!

This crucial route decision really has to be made by the big boss himself!

Even if Shen Xiangyang is a world-class scientist!