What and Why OpenCV

OpenCV [OpenCV] is an open source computer vision library mainly focusing on real-time computer vision, developed by Intel Russia research center in Nizhny Novgorod, and now supported by Willow Garage and Itseez. 

It provides C++, C, Python and Java interfaces and supports a wide range of operating system such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, iOS and Android

OpenCV was designed for computational efficiency and with a strong focus on real-time applications. 

Written in optimized C/C++, the library can take advantage of multi-core processing by using Intel © Threading Building Blocks (TBB). 

Enabled with OpenCL, it can take advantage of the hardware acceleration of the underlying heterogeneous compute platform.

We are already aware of a popular OpenCV application such as Google Street View heavily using camera calibration and image stitching techniques. It also uses in other area as follows:

OpenCV's application areas :

• 2D and 3D feature toolkits
• Egomotion estimation
• Facial recognition system
• Gesture recognition
• Human–computer interaction (HCI)
• Mobile robotics
• Motion understanding
• Object identification
• Segmentation and recognition
• Stereopsis stereo vision: depth perception from 2 cameras
• Structure from motion (SFM)
• Motion tracking
• Augmented reality
• Safety monitoring
• Biomedical analysis
• Unmanned flying vehicles

To support some of the above areas, OpenCV includes a statistical machine learning library that contains: 

• Boosting (meta-algorithm) 
• Decision tree learning 
• Gradient boosting trees 
• Expectation-maximization algorithm 
• k-nearest neighbor algorithm 
• Naive Bayes classifier 
• Artificial neural networks 
• Random forest 
• Support vector machine (SVM)

See also:

• Best Video Tutorial on Image Processing and Analysis
• LIDAR - How does LIDAR technology work
• Best Video Lecture on Image Processing and Analysis UCDavis