The Status Quo Of Computer Vision 69
prostoalex writes "The Industrial Physicist sums up the recent advances and developments in the world of computer vision. They mention an application for human-computer interfacing using a Webcam, Philips Research Lab Seeing with Sound product, which augments vision for visually impaired, as well as various frontal face detection applications."
Don't forget the DARPA Contest (Score:4, Informative)
Algorithmic Progresses (Score:5, Informative)
While it is clearly true that only the recent advances in computer speed allowed the Computer Vision Systems we are seeing now there are also other important influences.
In particular there are really also better algorithms than a number of years ago. Many if not most successful computer vision systems use statistical Methods. In the case of faces for example they often build a probabilistic model of what a face is. Such models know that a face should usually has eyes but not always. That some people have beards etc. And these models train themselves up from a database of stimuli, for example real faces.
A number of recent advances makes such probabilistic models fast enough to work well on real world data. In a sense is the problem of computer vision very similar to the problem of understanding a voice or extracting the highest possible bitrate from a stream of data transmitted via a telephone line. And indeed the resulting algorithms are often surprisingly similar
Related article (Score:5, Informative)
Nouse-ing (Score:5, Informative)
All you do is calibrate it by centering your nose in the image and clicking. The program draws a green box around your nose and follows it...it's pretty hilarious. Good oblique lighting seems to work best, too dark or too light and the box will want to follow your chin or ear. Overall, pretty reliable and lots of fun.
I loaded up the Bubble Frenzy game, which at first looks like a DOS-era Frozen Bubble. The Nouse worked fine...added a bit of challenge, levels I'd laugh at in Frozen Bubble were suddenly difficult. It's hard to keep track of the pointer when your head is moving. It was pretty fun, someone walked in and saw me playing, apparently just hitting the space bar while tilting my head from side to side.
I had a neck injury a while back in a car accident though, and all this motion started to bring on a little soreness. I had to quit after about 20 minutes of Nouse-ing, about the same effect as an hour of driving.
Nice Demo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't forget the DARPA Contest (Score:0, Informative)
Medical Imaging is where it's at. (Score:2, Informative)
Don't forget the movies (Score:4, Informative)
To lump all computer vision together and say "it's not there yet" is phooey! There are lots of problems in vision, and they do get solved, but those problems are all specific-- you can't use a red-light-runner system to do facial tracking...