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Scientists working
in the field of artificial vision are intrigued by the visual strategies
the human eye appears to adopt. Even when researchers use artificial
retinas with optical properties that are at least the equivalent of
the human eye, they have great difficulty reproducing the eye's ability
to recognize shapes.
Saccadic
eye movements "interrogate" the scenes upon which we cast
our eyes. The duration of each saccade (between one tenth of a second
and a half second) as well as the fixation of one's gaze on an image
appear to be optimized according to the visual strategy and the task
to be performed, with different strategies being adopted for different
tasks-for example, the memorization of a scene, the identification
of an object in a picture, or the reading of a printed text.
French
scientists at the "Laboratoire de statistique et probabilités"
(Laboratory of Statistics and Probabilities, CNRS-University of Lille
1) and the "Centre de mathématiques et de leurs applications"
(Center for Mathematics and Applications, CNRS-Ecole Normale Supérieure
in Cachan) are currently investigating the modeling of artificial
vision. They are studying visual strategies using mathematics and
probability games such as the one known as "choix d'Alice"
(Alice's choice), pattern analysis, etc. This field offers examples
of simple situations that, surprisingly, defy mathematical and statistical
strategies. When probability is applied to artificial vision, the
results are capable of accelerating algorithms-for example, for the
tracking of roads in satellite images or for face detection.
References
:
- Model-Based Classification
Trees. Donald German, Bruno Jedynak. Forthcoming in IEEE Transactions
on Information Theory.
- An Active Testing
Model for Tracking Roads in Satellite Images. Donald German, Bruno
Jedynak. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
January 1996.
- Efficient
Focusing and Face Detection. Yali Amit, Donald German, and Bruno
Jedynak. Face recognition: From theory to applications, H. Wechsler
et al., NATO Asi Series, F. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1997.
For
more information, see the following web site:
http://www.inria.fr/multimedia/Videotheque-fra.html
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