Vision Review

This report describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under Office of Naval Research contract N00014-75-C-0643.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc

Robot environment expert system

The Robot Environment Expert System uses a hexidecimal tree data structure to model a complex robot environment where not only the robot arm moves, but also the robot itself and other objects may move. The hextree model allows dynamic updating, collision avoidance and path planning over time, to avoid moving objects

Interpreting line drawings of curved objects,”

Abstract In this paper, we study the problem of interpreting line drawings of scenes composed of opaque regular solid objects bounded by piecewise smooth surfaces with no markings or texture on them. It is assumed that the line drawing has been formed by orthographic projection of such a scene under general viewpoint, that the line drawing is error free, and that there are no lines due to shadows or specularities. Our definition implicitly excludes laminae, wires, and the apices of cones. A major component of the interpretation of line drawings is line labelling. By line labelling we mean (a) classification of each image curve as corresponding to either a depth or orientation discontinuity in the scene, and (b) further subclassification of each kind of discontinuity. For a depth discontinuity we determine whether it is a limb-a locus of points on the surface where the line of sight is tangent to the surface-or an occluding edge-a tangent plane discontinuity of the surface. For an orientation discontinuity, we determine whether it corresponds to a convex or concave edge. This paper presents the first mathematically rigorous scheme for labelling line drawings of the class of scenes described. Previous schemes for labelling line drawings of scenes containing curved objects were heuristic, incomplete, and lacked proper mathematical justification. By analyzing the projection of the neighborhoods of different kinds of points on a piecewise smooth surface, we are able to catalog all local labelling possibilities for the different types of junctions in a line drawing. An algorithm is developed which utilizes this catalog to determine all legal labellings of the line drawing. A local minimum complexity rule-at each vertex select those labellings which correspond to the minimum number of faces meeting at the vertex-is used in order to prune highly counter-intuitive interpretations. The labelling scheme was implemented and tested on a number of line drawings. The labellings obtained are few and by and large in accordance with human interpretations

Reasoning with visual knowledge in an object recognition system

The impact of artificial intelligence on computer vision has provided various perspectives and approaches to solving problems of the human visual system. Some of the symbolic processing and knowledge-based techniques implemented in vision systems represent a meaningful extension to the low-level, algorithmic processing which has been emphasized since the advent of the computer vision field. The higher-level processes attempt to capture the essence of visual cognition, specifically by encompassing a model of the visual world and the reasoning processes that manipulate this stored visual knowledge and environmental cues. This thesis includes a discussion of existing computer vision systems surveyed from a high-level perspective. The goal of this thesis is to develop a high-level inference system that implements reasoning processes and utilizes a visual memory model to achieve object recognition in a specific domain. The focus is on symbolically representing and reasoning with high-level knowledge using a frame-based approach. The organization and structuring of domain knowledge, reasoning processes and control and search strategies are emphasized. The implementation utilizes a frame package written in Prolog

Computer recognition of occluded curved line drawings

A computer program has been designed to interpret scenes from PEANUTS cartoons, viewing each scene as a two-dimensional representation of an event in the three-dimensional world. Characters are identified by name, their orientation and body position is described, and their relationship to other objects in the scene is indicated. This research is seen as an investigation of the problems in recognising flexible non-geometric objects which are subject to self-occlusion as well as occlusion by other objects. A hierarchy of models containing both shape and relational information has been developed to deal with the flexible cartoon bodies. Although the region is the basic unit used in the analysis, the hierarchy makes use of intermediate models to group individual regions into larger more meaningful functional units. These structures may be shared at a higher level in the hierarchy. Knowledge of model similarities may be applied to select alternative models and conserve some results of an incorrect model application. The various groupings account for differences among the characters or modifications in appearance due to changes in attitude. Context information plays a key role in the selection of models to deal with ambiguous shapes. By emphasising relationships between regions, the need for a precise description of shape is reduced. Occlusion interferes with the model-based analysis by obscuring the essential features required by the models. Both the perceived shape of the regions and the inter-relationships between them are altered. An heuristic based on the analysis of line junctions is used to confirm occlusion as the cause of the failure of a model-to-region match. This heuristic, an extension of the T-joint techniques of polyhedral domains, deals with "curved" junctions and can be applied to cases of multi-layered occlusion. The heuristic was found to be most effective in dealing with occlusion between separate objects; standard instances of self-occlusion were more effectively handled at the model level. This thesis describes the development of the program, structuring the discussion around three main problem areas: models, occlusion, and the control aspects of the system. Relevant portions of the programs analyses are used to illustrate each problem area