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C00002 00002			Kidode     April 7,1975
C00004 00003			John McCarthy    April 7,1975
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		Kidode     April 7,1975


				Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
				Computer Science Dept
				Stanford University
				Stanford, California,94305




Dr. Masatsugu Kidode
Information Systems Laboratory
Toshiba Research and Development Center
1,Komukai Toshiba-Cho,Saiwai-Ku
Kawasaki-City
Kanagawa 210, Japan




Dear Dr. Kidode:




I strongly support your coming here as a visiting researcher, paid
by Toshiba.  Research in satellite and aerial imagery is interesting
and timely for us.  I have written Prof John McCarthy who must
approve.  You might contact him c/o Prof Takase, Kyoto.

I am glad to hear from you again and hope that all is well with you.



				With Best Regards,



				Thomas O. Binford

		John McCarthy    April 7,1975



Dear John:



1) Meir Weinstein  contacted me to  negotiate about moving  here with
$100k and  three students.  I'll  give you the facts  as I know them,
and my opinion.   He has $40k from NASA  and $60k from Bill  Whitney.
He thinks  he can  bring both along.   If he  can't bring  both, then
financially  we have no interest.  Figure  $40k for Meir and $30k for
three students,  according  to Les,  and that  leaves  only $30k  for
overhead, which is less than we have on other contracts. 

What do  we get out of  it?  Three  students: Srinivas-error recovery
and representation  of  plans; Udupa-collision  avoidance;  Ross-LISP
hacker and possibly  vision.  My  opinion is that Weinstein  would be
occupied  with his  own things  and would not  be of  great utility.  
Fredkin thinks of him as  not having produced anything original,  but
he has the right ideas.  I agree and do not expect much.  We also get
some overhead, but not much. 

He wants  to change because Caltech has decided not to have robotics;
Fredkin  confirms   this.     He  is  negotiating   for  some   other
possibilities at Caltech, also Irvine and UCLA.  He has a fallback at
JPL.  His priorities are Caltech, Stanford, then Irvine or UCLA.   He
wants to come July 1 for two years, after which he will go to Israel.
He will accept whatever appointment is easiest, preferably a research
appointment. 

Are there any risks?  He  might want to stay and do some  politicking
for that. 

I  recommend that  we don't  do it  under these  conditions.   We get
marginal value.  Are there any conditions that are attractive? 

2)  Masatsugu Kidode of Toshiba has  written asking about possibility
for visiting here  for a  year and a  half.  He  has worked for  five
years on character recognition (at least one Toshiba system I saw had
a reasonable approach,  as contrasted to  most) and automatic  cancer
cell detection.   He  wants to  do research  on satellite and  aerial
imagery.  He does  not say that he has support.  I will follow it up.
If you like, you might get in touch with him.  I met him  but did not
have an evaluation.  If he has support, I want him; otherwise, not. 

3) An EE who is on leave from DuPont, Mike Roderick, is going to work
free  for us on arm control.   He is going  to do z-plane analysis of
control, to see what sample  rates are possible.  The idea is  to cut
the computation load.   In my estimate, something  good will come out
of it, even though  computing hardware will  probably be cheap  soon,
and the motivation to cut computing is not  so important as it seems.
For  the next couple  of years that  might be important.   Lou thinks
this is a good  thing to work on.   He thinks that Roderick  is good.
Roderick works in  the area for DuPont and the  project would be good
for him.  I have agreed to his working here, using the facilities. 

4)  In the light  of the financial  problems and the  threat of worse
problems, my  own plans  for the hand/eye  group are  to cut  support
including hardware as  much as possible, to find how  we can fit into
ARPA programs, and to  seek other support.   for vision  for vehicles
and aerial  imaging.  In  particular, I am  now evaluating biomedical
and biological imaging.  What I want is an alliance with a biological
group; I don't think that out  of our heads we can conceive  advances
in biology.   I do want to know enough  to evaluate whether something
seems  like a good idea to  me.  I don't want  to get involved in any
bad ideas.  I think there are enough good projects around. 

Please call about Meir



				With best regards



				Tom