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."
Computers' Vision? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Computers' Vision? (Score:2)
My computer must need glasses.
It cannot tell which window I am looking at when I type. I have to tell it which window to use by clicking with the mouse.
With better computer vision, the computer would know which window I was looking at when I started typing. With highly acute vision, it could even know which button I was looking at when I hit the return key.
I will know that computer vision is a reality when I no longer need to use a mouse. Likewise, I will know that speech recognition is a reality
Re:Computers' Vision? (Score:1)
That's actually a pretty good idea for using computer vision. The one problem I've always had with a GUI is the overhead in switching windows and such.
I think having your current window in front, with others as small pictures at the top, getting smaller as unused longer (with a limit of course) would be great--you could just look at a window and it would pop up.
Re:Computers' Vision? (Score:1)
Don't forget the DARPA Contest (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't forget the DARPA Contest (Score:5, Insightful)
Medical Imaging is where it's at. (Score:2, Informative)
Choose your words carefully... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft webcam assistant (Score:5, Funny)
* Your porn collection
* An AIM conversation with a guy pretending to be female
* Recommended self pleasuring techniques database
* Featured lubricant merchants
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
Philips Research... (Score:1)
Face detection for Windows (Score:4, Funny)
Linux, too! (Score:2, Funny)
Artificial intelligence in under 20 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Type a sentence like Zork, and it makes the scene for you.
Give it a book, and it could turn it into a movie for you.
Vision recognition has a great many uses already, but when vision recognition matures, you'll be able to take a scene and reduce it into 3d reality space. You take the 3d reality space, and give the computer some goals, and its trying to accomplish something in the world.
Thing is, it won't stop at plain vision, you'll get infared, sonar, ultraviolet, radar, all that crap to get the best 3d image possible.
So since vision is progressing, the gap towards AI is shrinking. Also as video games become more realistic, the AI gap is shrinking. I could be bold and say 15 years from now we should have basic AI.
Re:Artificial intelligence in under 20 years (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Artificial intelligence in under 20 years (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Artificial intelligence in under 20 years (Score:2)
The mapping is probably not direct. It's likely, that there is no straight conversion of words-to-pictures even in our heads. We like to visualize, as it simplifies understanding and memorization. However, there are a lot of words (mostly concepts) that don't evoke any pictures when pronounces. We never encountered them in physical worlds to give us visual representation. Yet, we
Re:Artificial intelligence in under 20 years (Score:3, Insightful)
AI already here (Score:2)
Re:Artificial intelligence in under 20 years (Score:1)
Related article (Score:5, Informative)
Computer Vision! (Score:3)
We could be talking about a revolution in isolationism here! I can't wait!
could a machine eye read mozilla's itallics? (Score:2, Funny)
BUT my itallic fonts when on slashdot still look fucking shit by default!
And don't try and tell me how to set my desktop up properly - check me out:
I AM THE 'KIN DESKTOP (all your desktops are belong to me now)
Re:could a machine eye read mozilla's itallics? (Score:1, Funny)
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.
Re:Nouse-ing (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing like playing games with your nose. Now I'm tempted to borrow a USB2 card for nose to nose pong!
Some of the posts on here are getting a bit vapor (Score:5, Insightful)
Too often vision projects find speedups by sacrificing one or another components. For instance, you can get some great face recognition with PCA... as long as the person's face is immobile. Tilt your head slightly or rotate too much and the system has no clue.
I'll admit, there is some killer work out there. But not of the full-blown "20 years and we will all have robotic man servants" thing. Keep the hype to a minimum.
Re:Some of the posts on here are getting a bit vap (Score:2, Insightful)
I think at some point we went down a path which will never lead to the solutions we expected to have by this time. And the reason we can't get off the current path is because of the way the tech culture is, you always have to publish an extension to previous work with copious references.
And its not even the b
Re:Some of the posts on here are getting a bit vap (Score:1)
Re:Some of the posts on here are getting a bit vap (Score:3, Interesting)
Shape models and combined m
Nice Demo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nice Demo (and the Evil Empire...) (Score:1)
Now idn't that funny?
Researcher's Perspective On "Big Brother" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Researcher's Perspective On "Big Brother" (Score:1)
Re:Researcher's Perspective On "Big Brother" (Score:1)
While your correct the feret database had more than that (1200 individuals in 2000 I even double checked it witht the feret website) they'r
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...
high speed high res cameras (Score:3, Insightful)
Eye Tracking (Score:4, Interesting)
"Face blindness" in autistics is the key (Score:1)
Re:"Face blindness" in autistics is the key (Score:2)
Other people helping vision with computers... (Score:1)
They use computer techniques to help people with Intermittent Central Suppression read. They're fighting the good fight too!
A similar microsoft research project (Score:2)
I can't get the videos to play right now, but when I saw them before, as people walked on and off camera, it would find their face, put a square around it and label their name on it.
Pretty neat.