Vision
Modified: 2024-03-27 10:49 PM CDST
For humans who are not visually impaired, vision is the most important source of information about the world. Cognitive scientists have demonstrated how human, animal, and computer vision works. Whether natural or created, vision and its interpretation is a data intensive process. In humans and animals interpretation of visual input begins early in the structure of the visual system and continues deep in the brain. Watch the Kiki video below, to see how it takes nearly five minutes to explain a few seconds of visual input and interpretation. Computer vision, too, has progressed rapidly. Facial recognition technology is a recent example. Facial recognition works but there are privacy concerns about its use that will need resolution soon.
The Eye
Sign Clutter

Notice the confusion of typefaces, colors, and sizes. All make reading a sign from a vehicle difficult.
Overglow

Usually, light helps reading. Here, too much light makes reading difficult
Clearview Details

Notice the subtle but important differences that make Clearview easier to read
Comparison

Here, a new Clearview sign replaced the older Highway Gothic one
Research

Here is one way signage research can be conducted safely. Notice that the driver is NOT a participant!
Why is all of this cognitive science?
Animal Vision
- How animals see the world
- Interactive demonstrations of the vision of:
- dogs
- geckos
- garden snails
- giant clams
- jumping spiders
- 15 Animal Eyes
- Site shows eyes from: cats, chameleons, giant clams, crabs, crocodiles, cuttlefish, dragonflies, goats, humans, jumping spiders, and leaf-tailed geckos. mantis shrimp, owls, tarsiers, and penguins (be sure to click to page two)
- Evolution of the "camera" type eye (video)
- Cyclovergence in grazing animals (video)
- Shows how the horizontal pupil in sheep and horse stays horizontal as the animal's head moves
- Helps animal remain aware of its visual surroundings
- How animals and people see the world differently (video)
- More on eye types in animal kingdom (video)
- Vision is an extremely important sense for all kinds of animals. Eyes have evolved to adapt to particular environments and come in many kinds of evolutionary "designs"
Computer Vision
- A gentle introduction to computer vision
- "Computer Vision, often abbreviated as CV, is defined as a field of study that seeks to develop techniques to help computers “see” and understand the content of digital images such as photographs and videos."
- Covers:
- Definition
- Difference between computer vision and image processing
- Challenges
- Tasks
- Optical character recognition (OCR)
- Machine inspection
- Retail (e.g. automated checkouts)
- 3D model building (photogrammetry)
- Medical imaging
- Automotive safety
- Match move (e.g. merging CGI with live actors in movies)
- Motion capture (mocap)
- Surveillance
- Fingerprint recognition and biometrics
- Everything you ever wanted to know about computer vision
- Probably more than you wanted to know :-)
- Discusses:
- How it works
- The evolution of computer vision
- Deciphering images
- Applications:
- Self driving cars
- Facial recognition
- Augmented reality
- Healthcare
- Challenges
- Types
- Object Classification: What broad category of object is in this photograph?
- Object Identification: Which type of a given object is in this photograph?
- Object Verification: Is the object in the photograph?
- Object Detection: Where are the objects in the photograph?
- Object Landmark Detection: What are the key points for the object in the photograph?
- Object Segmentation: What pixels belong to the object in the image?
- Object Recognition: What objects are in this photograph and where are they?
- Video motion analysis uses computer vision to estimate the velocity of objects in a video, or the camera itself.
- In image segmentation, algorithms partition images into multiple sets of views.
- Scene reconstruction creates a 3D model of a scene inputted through images or video.
- In image restoration, noise such as blurring is removed from photos using Machine Learning based filters.
- Face Recognition
- The EFF on face recognition (look at "How Face Recognition Works)
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation "champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. We work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows."
- How does facial recognition work? (video, long, but worth it)
- FYI: algorithms now exist to recognized masked faces
- IRS
-
Feb. 7, 2022
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service plans to stop using facial recognition software to identify taxpayers seeking access to their accounts on the agency’s website amid concerns over privacy and data security.
The I.R.S. was already coping with a daunting tax season, faced with backlogs of old tax returns, staffing shortages and the additional complexity of paying stimulus and child tax credits. Now the agency must also change how it verifies the identity of taxpayers.
The I.R.S. said on Monday that it would “transition away” from using a third-party service for facial recognition to help authenticate people creating online accounts. The transition will occur over the coming weeks to prevent additional disruptions to the tax filing season, which ends April 18.
The tax agency came under criticism after the Treasury Department awarded ID.me, an identity verification company, an $86 million contract last year to make taxpayer accounts more secure from data leaks, a growing concern. But the service, which requires taxpayers to take video selfies as part of the verification process, frustrated taxpayers and raised concerns about the collection of sensitive biometric data.
- Computer vision cameras
- Camera selection (somewhat technical but useful)
- Network vs Industrial
- Monochrome or Color
- Sensor Type, Shutter Technique, Frame Rate
- Resolution, Sensor, Pixel Size
- Interface
- Housing (of camera)
- Machine learning and object recognition
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