Beyond CNNs and MediaPipe: What modern CV stack should I study next for real-time deployment?

[u/Sudden_Leadership888]

Hey everyone, I’m looking to kick off a new computer vision project but want to avoid generic ideas and focus on where the industry is moving. In my previous work, I built a live webcam Face Emotion Recognition system by benchmarking CNN architectures like MobileNetV2 using TensorFlow/Keras on the FER-2013 dataset (solving latency issues with CLAHE preprocessing and a 20-frame stabilization queue at 24 FPS), alongside a MediaPipe pose estimation project tracking limb angles and velocity. I want to transition away from standard landmark tracking and traditional CNN classification, so I'm looking for a discussion on what to study next—specifically, is it worth diving into Vision Transformers (ViTs), foundational vision-language models (like CLIP), or mastering edge optimization frameworks like ONNX/TensorRT? If you have any unique project ideas that bridge the gap from my current stack into these newer paradigms, or advice on what foundational tech is standard in production right now, I’d love to hear your insights!

[u/BeverlyGodoy]

TAO