Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP)

Creating machines that can see and hear to understand the world around them.

Our Centre is an internationally recognised leader in audio-visual machine perception research. With a diverse community of more than 150 researchers, we are one of the largest audio and vision research groups in the UK.

Research in the Centre has led to award-winning spin-out companies in the biometric, communication, medical and creative industries.

CVSSP is developing some of the most exciting and ground-breaking technologies: From facial recognition for security and medical imaging understanding for cancer detection, through to 3D audio and video for film production and robots that can work safely alongside people.

Professor Adrian Hilton, Director Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI Director of Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing

Join our new AI Institute

The newly-formed pan-University AI Institute at the University of Surrey offers a unique environment to help shape the future of AI as part of a community of co-creators, and as part of that we are building a unique team with 12 new academic appointments at lecturer, senior lecturer or reader level.

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Can machines think?

Over the past thirty years, we have become an international centre of excellence for training and research in audio and visual machine perception in collaboration with industry. Our research has pioneered new technologies for the benefit of society and the economy, with applications spanning healthcare, security, entertainment, robotics, autonomous vehicles, communication and audio-visual data analysis.

Today we again ask the question: Can machines think?

Can Machines Think? Past, present and future of AI

Research highlights

Learn more about our research from the CVSSP digital book and our YouTube channel.

Digital book

YouTube channel

Making major contributions

Our Director, Professor Adrian Hilton, was awarded the Institute of Engineering and Technology Achievement Medal for major and distinguished contribution to computer vision engineering.

What we have to offer

We advance research in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine perception structured in seven labs focused on cross-disciplinary application areas and are always looking for businesses to collaborate with us.

Take a look at our staff opportunities to see what roles are currently vacant.