DARPA Testing Numenta's Brain Tech 52
lousyd writes "CNN Money reports that DARPA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have given $4.9 million to Lockheed Martin to develop an image recognition system that will be used to scan satellite images and photographs for familiar objects. Called Object Recognition via Brain-Inspired Technology (ORBIT), the system will fuse commercial airborne EO and LIDAR sensor data into a three-dimensional, photo-realistic model of the landscape. The brains of the system, so to speak, will be Numenta's Hierarchical Temporal Memory technology, modeled on the technology growing inside human heads. The system is expected to increase image analysts' productivity by 100 times."
Good a place as any.. (Score:2)
So couldn't we save the $4.9 Million (Score:1)
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Re:So couldn't we save the $4.9 Million (Score:5, Insightful)
Might want to check the price of a new long-range jet, the fuel to run it, and the pilot's salary.
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Either you haven't checked in a while, or you live in Akademgorodok... [wikipedia.org]
Repeat after me.... "Research and Development is a good thing!"
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they get shot down more than satelittes
and because this is the american military we're talking about
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Problems:
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porn detector (Score:2)
Yes its is! (Score:2)
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Not really new.. (Score:4, Informative)
And applications like this aren't exactly new (this link downloads a
Although it is certainly a major engineering challenge to get this type of classification to work over multiple modalities of data in any coherent way, as far as I can tell this project doesn't represent any breakthrough in approach or capability.
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No need to believe... (Score:4, Informative)
He then failed to answer any substantive questions (including Steve asking him how his model differed from ART), referring us all to online videos of his lectures. I personally asked about how he could reconcile this article [oxfordjournals.org] with his predictions.. which assume a cortical hierarchy based on 'distance' (in synapses) from primary sensory cortices, rather than examining the relative lamination of various cortices. I notice since then the wikipedia article "On Intelligence" has had its 'experimental prediction' claims toned down quite a bit.
As it happens in terms of books though, Grossberg has written several and has a ton of peer reviewed articles on this very subject. Hawkins to my knowledge doesn't have a single peer-reviewed article on HTM or anything related.
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research vs. Jeff Hawkins (Score:2, Informative)
Please consider this post [slashdot.org] about Jeff Hawkins' history of navel-gazing idiocy in the field of neural networks.
You worship engineers? Why this one in any case? Even if he is a good engineer, that doesn't make him a good scientist (incidentally, he's not). Maybe you're not an expert in neural networks and are deferring to someone who is, at least plausibly, an expert. But you just illustrated that y
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Um... I notice that neither of you have actually posted any analysis or criticism of his work.
Would either of you, by any chance, like to say something about his theories?
Oh, and BTW: that wikipedia article you linked to appears at first reading to be nothing like Jeff's proposal.
In the face of all this Ad Hominem, skepticism is in fact reasonable.
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Heh, that one left me chuckling on the way to work. Thanks, N.
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Yeah, I haven't looked at it too intensively myself yet, but the impression I get is that most/all what Hawkins proposed has been proposed in the past. He basically took what was done in the past and made it much more accessible, which is great and all, but he really should've cited more of the prior work by others (or been more aware of it). Besides Grossberg, I think there's also quite a bit of similarity with the work of Rao [nature.com]
Definitely on the lit... (Score:2)
You shouldn't count him out quite so handily (Score:1)
Jeff has proposed a theory of how the cerebral cortex works, which is not in itself unusual. There's lots of people who have proposed outlandish solutions to the various problems posed by AI. T
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Well, Steve Grossberg has always believed that every discovery in neural networks and AI is isomorphic to Adaptive Resonance Theory. That's why he never needs to cite anyone except himself!
It's true that ART was an early unsupervised learning model, and it's true that some of its innovations were rediscovered later by others. But by now there's a lot going on in the field that has no real connection with ART.
I'm not a fan of Numenta, BTW -- I think Hawkins should get back to doing what he does well a
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Yes, having a computer scan for and actually find tanks, aircraft, missile silos, and the like would be useful. Especially those that turn up in unexpected places. There's a lot of planet here and I assume t
Good bye privacy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tinfoil hat you say? One only has to look at history, Alexander thought himself a god (or wanted to be one) and man is obsessed with improving his power to dominate and control both peaceful and hostile populaces, the truth of the matter is, why let the future happen to you when you can start to predict it, and thereby shape it?
That is what the power mongers of this world want, is some modicum of ability to guide and shape history in their favor. And if you were at the top, among competitors that may beat you to it... you'd want it too.
URGENT (Score:4, Informative)
The Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT) program is will develop a 3D urban object recognition and exploitation system that enables advanced mission planning and situation analysis capabilities for the warfighter operating in urban environments.
The recognition of targets in urban environments poses unique operational challenges for the warfighter. Historically, target recognition has focused on conventional military objects, with particular emphasis on military vehicles such as tanks and armored personnel carriers. In many cases, these threats exhibit unique signatures and are relatively geographically isolated from densely populated areas. The same cannot be said of today's asymmetric threats, which are embedded in urban areas, thereby forcing U.S. Forces to engage enemy combatants in cities with large civilian populations. Under these conditions, even the most common urban objects can have tactical significance: trash cans can contain improvised explosive devices, doors can conceal snipers, jersey barriers can block troop ingress, roof tops can become landing zones, and so on. Today's urban missions involve analyzing a multitude of urban objects in the area of regard. As military operations in urban regions have grown, the need to identify urban objects has become an important requirement for the military. Understanding the locations, shapes, and classifications of objects is needed for a broad range of pressing urban mission planning analytical queries (e.g., finding all roof top landing zones on three story buildings clear of vertical obstructions and verifying ingress routes with maximum cover for ground troops). In addition, it will enable automated time-sensitive situation analysis (e.g., alerting for vehicles found on a road shoulder after dark and estimating damage to a building exterior after an explosion) that will make a significant positive impact on urban operations.
Phase 1 of the URGENT program is developing techniques for the rapid exploitation of EO and LIDAR sensor data at the city scale to recognize urban objects down to the soldier scale. URGENT is applying image processing technology to geospatially registered 2D/3D data collected from airborne and terrestrial sources, yielding precise annotations for the objects in an urban area.
Phase 2 of the URGENT program will develop a 3D reasoning engine to query over object shapes, locations, and classifications for rapid urban mission planning, mission rehearsal, and situation analysis. Phase 3 will focus on the integration and transition of the URGENT system to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).
LIDAR rocks (Score:2, Interesting)
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Brian Inspired? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck guys.
I, for one, (Score:1)
how ironic (Score:1)
I don't remember seeing that icon before (Score:2)
Inside heads? (Score:2)
Last I checked, there wasn't any technology growing inside my head. Am I living in the wrong 2007 or something?
Pointless waste of money (Score:2)
Although the concept of using LIDAR to create an extremely detailed topographical map is certainly a neat (and useful) thing to do -- military and non-military applications alike, I question exactly how the AI engine is going to come into play.
This sort of system would make sense if you were scanning for subs and stealth aircraft from space -- the sort of thing that has a regular shape. But as to our current military situation, how the heck are you going to correctly d
cool darpa (Score:1)