Interview with Sony Engineer – A young engineer’s impressions from participating in challenging international conferences: “Need for world-class technology.”

Interview with Yoshimura, who published his papers at ICCV2023 and CVPR2023, the top conferences in the field of computer vision. We introduce his thoughts on his research and the reality of R&D activities at Sony.

His papers were accepted at ICCV2023 and CVPR2023

ICCV and CVPR are considered to be the most challenging international conferences in the field of computer vision, with paper acceptance rates ranging from 20% to 30%. We are pleased to announce that the following papers by Yoshimura have been accepted at these conferences:

– Tell us about the purpose of participating in the academic conferences and the benefits you experienced from such participation?

While one of the purposes is for the publicity of our organization, the main benefit of participation I feel is the improvement of technical skills. Writing papers for such academic conferences enhances the precision of our daily research and development. Furthermore, the communication with the top researchers at the conferences has motivated and stimulated me and finally raised the level of my own research capability. I particularly  felt a difference in level between overseas researchers and myself. For example, in Japan, even one accepted paper is often praised as “amazing,” whereas in the United States, China, or South Korea and other countries, only two or three accepted papers per year are admired. Overseas researchers are highly motivated to achieve results, and their mindsets toward the work are different from those in Japan since their employment is not stable.  These situations surprised me.

– Did participating in academic conferences have any impact on your work style?

Significantly changed. The expected level for myself and even for the organization have increased. I have never settled for my level of satisfaction I had before, and strive to push myself further. And I have been influenced by the overseas researchers who are not afraid to clearly say “no” to things that don’t agree with. Now I become more proactive in providing necessary suggestions, regardless of hierarchy, to the team members. While it may have put some burdensome on my superiors, they have been tolerant of opinions that get to the heart of the matter. I now strongly desiring to constantly look beyond the internal competition and strive to work at a level that creates “world-class technologies”.

Research Activities at Sony

– Corporate researchers are expected to develop products for commercialization, but how do you think about the balance between research and development?

As a corporate researcher, I believe both research and development should be valued.  Research, including publishing papers, is essential to improving technology and development is also important. It is really glad to see the result of our research activities being put to the commercialized products. In our organization, we have a slogan called “R2D2,” which stands for “Research 2 years, Development 2 years.” It means the importance of balancing both. It is my opinion that the speed of the innovation in the field of AI is increasing, so we need to further accelerate the research and development cycle.

– What do you think is the advantages of working on research at Sony?

As our company has a diverse range of businesses, one of the advantages is that there are multiple avenues to offer the technology. No matter what kind of research we conduct, there is always a potential destination for the technology within the company. It is very reassuring for the corporate researchers to know that even if one place rejects their proposal, there are other options. However, solely focusing on productization without considering the creation of “the world-class technology” will not lead to success.  We need to work hard on research so that development does not focus sole on commercialization of the products.  After the participation of the conference, more opportunities to express my request on how I’d like to be allowed to spend more time on research.

– Tell us about your future research activities.

I was greatly inspired by interacting with top researchers from around the world at academic conferences.  I hope to continue striving with my colleagues to create “the world-class technology”. Rather than being satisfied within the small world in our company, I also want to focus on the academic field to be able to compete on a global scale including publishing papers. I believe there are benefits to be gained by making technology available outside the company, so I will continue to engage in research activities without missing any opportunities to disclose technology.

Related Link

Movie: 【Discussion on the paper】 Making data augmentation more natural! Introducing the CVPR2023 accepted paper “Rawgment” | Sony’s Research Minds
Note: This content is in Japanese only. Please use the YouTube’s translation feature when viewing.