HP Innovation Journal Issue 14: Spring 2020 | Page 25

“There are so many things I’d like to see happen, and I have the
privilege of leading people who share the same vision.”
sift through hundreds of images to make a collage of the
best photos. Moreover, they work in real time, opening up
new avenues for improvement in devices like smart home
assistants that constantly monitor their surroundings.
The common language of Pixel Intelligence and Lin’s
current research is an area known as computer vision, a
branch of AI that helps computers to understand visual
information. In recent years, computer vision tasks have
become more accurate with machine learning models.
“At HP, we’ve started using it to enhance our ability to
understand images,” she says.
This creates potential commercial applications and new
capabilities such as in social sharing. When you upload a
photo on a social media site, the application downsizes
the photo so it’s faster to transmit, which reduces the
quality of photos. Lin and her team have looked at using
deep learning to scale up these photos for large-format
printing. They’re also researching how to “recompose”
photos, to create images that are more professional or
creatively composed, even when shot on a smartphone.
The organization and retrieval of images, Lin says, also
has huge opportunities. How do you make sure the photos
and memories captured on smartphones are not lost when
people replace them throughout their lives? Or how do
you sort thousands of photos of your kids? Lin is curious
about what kind of software could enable you to tell a
photo story from babyhood to college. “We are thinking
about how to use AI to tell stories with your photos,” she
says. “It can mine through collections, events, and digital
archives, too.”
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
FOR COMPUTER VISION
Computer vision is a blue-sky area of research that many
at HP and beyond see as ripe for innovation. At a basic
level, it involves training computers with algorithms to
replicate what human brains can do when they identify
and interpret an image—but to do it with the speed of a
machine and on a massive scale.
Lin and her team are exploring several projects that
apply computer vision to new business opportunities.
One looks at how to build printers that can improve
image quality. If you think about the printing process
right now, it’s an open loop, explains Lin. Closing the
loop would mean the printer itself can optimize images.
“The printer can identify deviations, understand and ‘see’
what’s being printed, and make it perfect,” she says.
In the broader ecosystem of HP, computer vision can
potentially be applied to manufacturing printheads. Right
now, it takes a small army of people to inspect each one.
“This is tedious work being done by human operators
with microscopes. It’s extremely repetitive,” Lin says.
“So, how can we use deep-learning computer vision
algorithms to inspect those products as they are being
made, and make sure the quality passes our criteria?”
PERSISTENCE AND PREDICTIONS
Lin’s ability to develop new technologies over her career
and create new opportunities in AI and deep learning is
among the many reasons she’s been named an HP Fellow.
“A Fellow needs to work across organizations, champion
ideas, and push technology development,” she says.
Lin says in the next decade HP will bring new tools and
technologies to the marketplace, and she is excited to
be part of it. “I see a lot of opportunities to apply AI and
machine learning in our products,” she says. “There are
so many things I’d like to see happen, and I have the
privilege of leading people who share the same vision.”
Dr. Lin is responsible for 45 filed patents and
21 pending patents so far in her 28 years at HP.
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