#Billy

This is a framework for testing local visual descriptors, eg SIFT, SURF, and BRIEF. It is similar to VLBenchmarks except it is written in Scala, plays well with OpenCV, and can run seamlessly on a desktop or a cluster.

Check out Pilgrim for a frontend to this framework.

Named after Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five. There's a quote from one of the aliens, where it describes humans' perspective as akin to someone looking at the world through a straw. This isn't so different from the perspective of computer vision techniques which use local descriptors. I'm currently trying to find that quote.

I've temporarily removed the cluster functionality; the code was ugly, passing around Scala scripts which would be compiled on the remote machines. Hopefully spores will be viable in a few months, presenting a clean means of closure distribution. When they are, I'll re-enable the cluster computation.

This project is under development. Stay tuned for documentation.

##Installation

You can use Billy in your SBT project by simply adding the following dependency to your build file:

libraryDependencies += "st.sparse" %% "billy" % "0.1-SNAPSHOT"

You also need to add the Sonatype "snapshots" repository resolver to your build file:

resolvers += Resolver.sonatypeRepo("snapshots")